White Sox Minor Keys: May 24, 2022

2022-05-29 01:42:39 By : Ms. Anna Liu

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With the way they started their seasons in Winston-Salem, Bryan Ramos and Oscar Colás looked like they might be in Birmingham by now.

Instead, Ramos has cooled off in May, and Colás spent some time on the injured list with a wrist issue. James Fegan talked to Dash manager Lorenzo Bundy and provided some additional input from scouting sources as he brought his readers up to speed on their stocks:

Bundy and hitting coach Nicky Delmonico are in the process of getting Ramos to settle back in after a cold stretch to start May has muted consideration of promoting him to Double A for now. Brought on by what Bundy feels was a combination of bad weather getting Ramos out of his batting cage routine and overly aggressive, pull-happy swings, he finished this weekend hitting .167/.261/.200 for the month. But Thursday saw Ramos collect his first extra-base hit and first multi-hit game since May 3 as part of a small five-game hitting streak that suggests he’s pulling out of it. Bundy is quick to note that Ramos’ strike zone judgment (10.1 percent walk rate, 17.4 percent strikeout rate in May) has not fallen apart during his slump.

And as for Colás:

“It’s kind of like you’re digging in the mine, and you haven’t found the gold yet, but you know it’s there,” Bundy said of Colás’ power. “Oscar was one of our last guys to hit a home run, and you could see where he was really trying to hit a home run. After he hit the first … (Oscar’s) got really good power to the opposite field, especially left-center field. We were harping on that for two or three days, ‘Stay over there, stay over there, hit that ball the other way, you can do it.’ And finally, his first home run happened to be the left-center field. And then I think he hit two, two more in the next two or three days. And he kind of found his power stroke.”

Writing about the White Sox for a 16th season, first here, then at South Side Sox, and now here again. Let’s talk curling.

Some benchmarks for Montgomery’s performance to be compared to. I don’t think he will be nearly as good as these players, but just checking in on what he’s doing.

Corey Seager (big shortstop who isn’t super fast). Seager was about 10 months younger in low-A. Had similar plate discipline and much more power.

Tim Anderson (drafted at a similar age [Tim played a year of JUCO], split time with basketball in high school). Tim started in A-ball his draft year and turned 20 a couple days after his first game, so he was younger than Montgomery by a couple months when starting A-ball.

Tim did not have Montgomery’s plate discipline or power, but demonstrated his superior athleticism with 24 SBs in 68 games. Tim made it all the way to AA the next year, which seems like an ambitious, but attainable timeline for Montgomery.

Story’s line is very similar to Seager’s, albeit with more air contact.

The encouraging thing about Montgomery is that his underlying metrics— plate discipline and batted ball data— are all remarkably similar at Low-A except for HR/FB%, hence the power production gap. Montgomery is obviously older, but he’s also later to high-level baseball and from a cold-weather state. Long-term there’s not much worry about his pop coming, so I think the rest being similar to his no. 1 comp is cause for optimism.

Thanks for jinxing Mena by listing him here.

I am beginning to wonder if Adolfo is playing well enough to have some value as a trade piece at the deadline.