2025 Birmingham Barons season review

For the second straight season, the Birmingham Barons won the Southern League championship. For the second straight season, we can get right into the numbers and individual stories, because we already discussed how it all came together for them as a team.

By now everybody is well aware that the Birmingham offense found equilibrium by abandoning all attempts at power-hitting and turning head-on into the Dead Ball Era.

And that was more than enough for a run-prevention unit that turned out to be the best in the Southern League.

If a moderately experienced pitcher couldn't make it in Birmingham, he couldn't make it anywhere.

Hitters

Braden Montgomery: Consider the range of paths his season could have followed since he came to the White Sox without a professional game under his belt. On one end, he could've made a case for a major league debut by Septmeber. On the other, he could've given the White Sox a second Alexander Albertus situation. On that spectrum, Montgomery's first full pro season was ... fine, assuming he recovers from the foot fracture he suffered the final week of the season.

He hit .270/.360/.444 over 121 games and 517 plate appearances, including .272/.364/.416 over the last 125 PAs with Birmingham. The home runs turned into doubles in the Southern League, while the strikeout rate crept up to nearly 29 percent, so a return engagement is likely to open 2026, but the tools underneath his game are legit, and the concerns about his right-handed swing can be set aside for now. If he fails to progress from here, you won't be able to fault his work ethic.

Sam Antonacci: The same can be said for Antonacci, who hit .291/.433/.409 over 116 games, with only his slugging suffering below his season line over his 49 games at Birmingham. He couldn't quite finish the year with more walks (69) than strikeouts (73), but then you factor in the absurd HBP number (35), and he took as much ownership of the plate -- and batter's box -- as he possibly could. He finished the year with just five homers, and his 48 stolen bases are more indicative of will than real-deal speed, so it's always feasible that he hits a wall when he encounters advanced defenses that are too talented to be fazed by his nonstop motor, but this was his first professional season, so let's see how he takes what he's learned and apply it to his offseason before fixing a ceiling in place.

William Bergolla: He opened the season ostensibly sharing time with Jacob Gonzalez at short, but it didn't take long for him to establish ownership of the position, as he made just 10 starts at second, and none after July 9. His shortstop play is a needed carrying tool, because Bergolla makes Sam Antonacci look like Corey Seager by comparison. He hit .286/.342/.333 over 551 plate appearances, totaling just 21 extra-base hits over 125 games, and none of them homers.

He made up for it with 40 stolen bases in 51 attempts, and he generated that many opportunities due to Costco-sized quantities of contact. His 4.7 percent strikeout rate qualifies as the lowest K rate in full-season minor league baseball, and that number is somehow front-loaded. From June 1 through the end of the Southern League playoffs, Bergolla struck out just 11 times over 391 plate appearances, or 2.8 percent.

Rikuu Nishida: Kicking off the Barons' Three Table-Setter Lineup was Nishida, who offered the most absurd production of them all. His OBP (.403) was nearly 100 points higher than his slugging (.308), as he collected just 11 extra-base hits over 502 plate appearances. Instead, he used his five-foot-six frame to draw 75 walks and absorb 14 HBPs, which generated the opportunities to steal 40 bases himself. His profile is by far the least viable of the three since it's coming from an outfield corner, but as long as it works at the level he's placed, it's baffling, infuriating and exhilarating to watch.

Ryan Galanie: Somebody had to benefit from all of those waterbugs on base, and Galanie stepped up. His 94 RBIs were good enough for ninth in all of minor league baseball, even though he only drove himself in 11 times, and he would've had a chance at 100 were it not for a broken nose late in the season. Galanie did it by serving the song. He hit .266/.320/.386 over 98 games with Birmingham, homering just seven times, but augmenting it with 19 doubles, two triples, 12 stolen bases, and a whopping 10 sacrifice flies while striking out just 15 percent of the time.

Besides a sub-.400 slugging percentage by a first baseman, the big concern is a walk rate that dropped from 12 percent in A-ball to 7 percent at Birmingham. It's not about a lack of discipline and more about his ability to put the ball in play. But corner players who can't outslug the competition have to compensate with OBP.

DJ Gladney: His strong finish to close out Birmingham's first championship season didn't translate into a encore in 2025, unless you only count another brilliant September. He hit .302/.308/.635 over 19 games in the final month of the season before jamming his knee into the center field wall in the opening game of the playoff series against Montgomery. That surge gave the Barons one (1) 10-homer hitter, but it couldn't salvage his season line. He hit just .235/.277/.368 over 100 games, with a strikeout-to-walk rate that's now reached 5-to-1.

Wilfred Veras: Along the same lines, Veras spent a second consecutive full season in Birmingham, and with worse results:

• 2024: .267/.319/.424, 536 PA, 6.3 BB%, 26.1% K
• 2025: .215/.293/.327, 464 PA, 9.3 BB%, 30.0% K

Veras has now played 289 games at Double-A, and familiarity is breeding contempt. He posted a .532 OPS at Regions Field, as opposed to .704 on the road, hitting only one of his nine homers at home while striking out a third of the time. He might need a literal change of scenery.

Pitchers

Hagen Smith: Considering Smith dealt with elbow soreness and wayward mechanics, his year could've been far worse. He finished with a 3.40 ERA over 20 starts and 124 strikeouts over 84⅔ innings when including his two postseason appearances, and he's fully functional at the open of an Arizona Fall League aimed at getting more work in. The good news is the bad news, in the sense that he gets himself in trouble more than anybody else. It's just a lot of trouble -- 63 walks and seven hit batters -- it arrives suddenly, and he has a hard time finding the off switch. The result was frequent early exits while far less heralded lefties like Shane Murphy and Jake Palisch often finished six innings with dozens of pitches to spare.

Tanner McDougal: After ending his 2024 muddling through a stinging demotion to Kannapolis after getting thumped out of High-A, McDougal responded to a professional low with unprecedented professionalism. He returned to Winston-Salem with a renewed emphasis on conditioning and a better mindset for dealing with uneven results, and at the end of May, everything clicked into place. He finished the year with a 3.26 ERA over 113⅓ innings divided neatly between the Dash and Barons, and he eclipsed 120 innings when including his two outstanding postseason starts, over which he allowed just one hit and zero runs over seven innings while striking out 11.

He's a lock to be added to the 40-man roster next month, and after setting career highs in starts and innings yet somehow finishing stronger than he started, there isn't a whole lot standing in the way between him and eventual 26-man roster consideration.

Riley Gowens: The last man standing from the Aaron Bummer trade, Gowens was a key cog of the Barons rotation, leading the Sox farm system in innings when including his two postseaon starts, which got him to 140. He also struck out 151 hitters, which was good enough to lead the system for a second consecutive year. You may be wondering why he spent the entire year in Birmingham after throwing 12 starts for the Barons in 2024. It's a fair question, but a chasm between his splits might have something to do with it:

• vs. RHB: .200/.246/.298, 4.4 BB%, 28.2 K%
• vs. LHB: .243/.346/.394, 12.9 BB%, 27.2 K%

There also haven't been any particular time pressures, at least on the White Sox's side. Gowens turns 26 on Saturday, but he's still a year away from requiring Rule 5 consideration because he got such a late start to professional baseball.

Lucas Gordon: After posting a 2.23 ERA over 113 A-ball innings with smoke and mirrors in 2024, Gordon threw more strikes in 2025 and lived to tell the tale. He posted a 3.59 ERA over 107⅔ innings, but when you look at the peripherals and the levels involved, you'd much rather have the more recent body of work.

• 2024: .180/.290/.308, 13.5 BB%, 21.7 K%
• 2025: .214/.299/.344, 9.6 BB%, 31.2 K%

It could've been smoother sailing, but after throwing six scoreless innings in his Double-A debut on June 20, a back problem knocked him out of action for the next month. He then returned to Winston-Salem to work his way back up, so while he made 24 starts around the injury, only four of them came with the Barons, plus a couple of relief appearances in the playoffs. He fared well enough -- 21.1 IP, 9 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 7 BB, 24 K -- to start next season at Double-A with no reservations.

Tyler Schweitzer: His 1.27 ERA and 41 ⅔ innings without allowing an earned run at Birmingham would've been more impressive were it not for the knowledge that Triple-A hitters knocked him around to the tune of a 7.92 ERA and .920 OPS over 15 games with Charlotte. Also, regression came for him at the end of the year, as he allowed 16 runs over his final 11⅓ innings with the Barons when including the playoffs. His minor league experience had been a smooth rise until the rudest of awakenings in the International League, so either he'll come back from the offseason with a way to combat more advanced right-handed hitting, or he'll serve as a cautionary tale for excitement about the organization's other pitchability lefties.