White Sox Director Of Player Development Sees Core Position Group Forming

CHICAGO –– A key aspect of the 2025 White Sox season has been developing young players.

Significant changes have been made in doing so, as 11 players from the 26-man Opening Day roster are not on the active roster. The current 28-man roster features 12 rookies, three of whom were ranked within the top 65 of MLB Pipeline's 2025 preseason rankings.

While their American League-worst 57-94 record shows there's still a long way to go in building a winning team, the organization feels it has made progress in identifying a group that could be part of their future.

"Even from a lineup standpoint, right, you talk about some of those young guys, Edgar Quero, [Kyle] Teel, obviously Colson [Montgomery]. Not to forget about a Brooks Baldwin. There’s some context there to what is potentially a core position group starting to form hopefully," White Sox director of player development Paul Janish said Monday.

That's evidenced by young players sitting atop the White Sox leaderboard in several hitting categories. Among qualified hitters, rookies Kyle Teel (.279), Edgar Quero (.279) and Chase Meidroth (.270) had the three highest batting averages on the team going into Tuesday's game. Rookie Colson Montgomery (.808) and Teel (.797) led the team in OPS.

The White Sox also have four players within the top 10 among American League rookie position players in wins above replacement, including Montgomery (2.7), Teel (1.9), Meidroth (1.8) and Quero (1.6). Mike Vasil (2.7) and Shane Smith (2.0) rank second and third, respectively, among AL rookie pitchers in WAR.

These rookies have made team history in a few ways, too. Meidroth, Montgomery, Quero and Teel are the second foursome in White Sox history to reach the 1.0 WAR-mark in their age 23 or younger season. The last group to do so was Jack Fournier, Braggo Roth, Ray Schalk and Buck Weaver in 1914.

Meidroth, Quero, Teel and Montgomery have also combined for 308 hits, which is the most by a White Sox rookie foursome since Chris Singleton, Carlos Lee, Craig Wilson and Mark Johnson combined for 400 hits in 199. That's not to mention fellow 25-year-olds Lenyn Sosa and Miguel Vargas, who rank first and third, respectively, in both hits and RBI.

The White Sox recently rattled off nine wins in an 11-game stretch at the end of August and start of September, and there was a common theme. As part of a six-game win streak during that stretch, the White Sox achieved six straight comeback wins against the Yankees, Twins and Tigers.

Beyond the pitching, hitting and defense required to win those games, those wins reflected well on the resilience of the players and first-year manager Will Venable. Janish tries to instill that mentality throughout the minor league system, so he's been glad to see it come to fruition at the major-league level, with several rookies at the forefront.

"You see the major-league team coming back in games late, getting down and not flinching so to speak," Janish said. "It’s a real strong indicator of just the makeup and hopefully what’s to come because it is a core group of guys you can almost see them kind of molding together. You get the major-league staff, you get Will and his staff a ton of credit for helping foster that. That’s the main thing I would point to."

"The competitive nature that the team is playing with and it’s the ability to come back, kind of get knocked down and get back up which we haven’t seen a ton recently prior to some of those young guys getting there. That’s what’s encouraging to me, that’s what we see and that’s what we want to deliver guys that the expectation is you can’t win every game, but the expectation is to be competitive and regardless of the score in the game, there’s a type of play that kind of comes with the invite."

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