White Sox Prospect Colson Montgomery Returns To Triple-A After Stint In Arizona

Chicago White Sox prospect Colson Montgomery has been transferred from the ACL White Sox to Triple-A Charlotte's active roster, the Knights announced Tuesday. This move comes after the White Sox took a somewhat unique approach with the No. 22 overall pick in the 2021 MLB Draft.

Montgomery struggled mightily to begin the 2025 season in Triple-A, slashing .149/.223/.255/.479 with 43 strikeouts, seven walks, three home runs and six RBI in 103 plate appearances. So on April 29, White Sox general manager Chris Getz said Montgomery would be sent to the team facility in Arizona for individualized work.

White Sox director of player development Paul Janish said on May 3 that Montgomery’s day-to-day routine in Arizona would include work in the batting cage with White Sox director of hitting Ryan Fuller, as well as fielding ground balls, weightlifting and running in order to stay in condition when he returns to game action.

White Sox assistant general manager Josh Barfield said before Tuesday's game in Cincinnati that Montgomery also had input on the work he'd be doing.

"We had a plan that we had put together, but when you're dealing with this stuff, we feel very strongly that the players have to have ownership of the plan too, right?" Barfield said. "They have to have their input, otherwise you're not going to get the buy-in. Really that first day, him and Fuller sat down and kind of talked about what they wanted to get out of it. What he felt like when he was going good. They talked about not only like last year, but years previous, like the feels that he had and just trying to get back to some of those feels and some of those cues. And I thought they did a really good job of kind of hashing all that out and now being able to kind of carry some of those cues and feels forward into the season."

Montgomery also played in five games as part of the Arizona Complex League. In 17 at-bats, he notched three hits, three runs, two RBI, two walks, four strikeouts and two stolen bases. That comes out to a .176 batting average, .263 on-base percentage, .176 slugging percentage and a .439 OPS. In the updated MLB Pipeline prospect rankings, he dropped from No. 4 to No. 6 among White Sox prospects and fell out of the top 100 after being ranked No. 34.

There's also a mental challenge that comes with the situation.

"That’s always the hardest part, right, in trying to be delicate with it," Barfield said. "Because, a lot of us as former players, you've been in situations like that. Where it feels like you're never going to be able to get it back. There's that initial disappointment, right, of getting pulled out. Because he's a competitor, you want to go out there and play. This is not something that him or most guys when you bring this to them really are excited about. But to his credit, he went down there with a great mentality. He really, really got after it. I think knowing that the goal was to put him on a fast trajectory to get back to where we all know he could be, and eventually back up here, I think he went into it with the right mindset, and I got a lot out of it."

In his first game back in Triple-A on Tuesday, Montgomery hit fifth and played shortstop. He went 2-for-5 with an RBI and a strikeout. He hit the ball hard in three of his at-bats, with exit velocities of 104.9 mph, 96.3 mph and 109.4 mph.

"I think he did a good job with using the time well, right?" Barfield said. "Not getting off to the start that he wanted to, part of it was being able to hit the reset button right? Mentally. There's the grind that you always hear about in the game and being able to take some time to get away from that grind and really focus on getting his swing back locked in, he went down there with Fuller. And to his credit, he went down there with the right mindset and he was ready to work. They got after it every day. And day by day, got a little bit better, a little bit cleaner and got to get him in some games down there in the ACL."

"And while the results in the games, we weren’t really chasing results in the games down there. It was more getting him in a good spot, a good feel. And by the time he left there, he felt like he was in a much better spot than when he had left. And today he had two hits, hit a few balls hard. Had to hit off [Craig] Kimbrel his last at-bat. So more importantly, he just looked more like himself today. So hopefully, he can continue to build off of that."

Barfield said Montgomery, dating back to his amateur days, controlled the zone well. But sometimes when players get into a rut, they can start to chase. Montgomery had a 41.7% strikeout rate in Triple-A before being sent to Arizona, where part of the focus was on a few swing adjustments.

"There were some mechanical things and cues that he's working on. Some of the stuff with his lower half, just being a little cleaner, a little bit more square," Barfield said. "We saw that today in the game, so I think those are positive things. And yeah, when he's right in his path, he can cover the whole plate, use the whole field. And he's got tremendous power to all fields. So seeing him drive some balls the other way, I think that's been really positive."

"They're much more tweaks than a rebuild, right? I think it was getting back to the athletic, getting back to a lot of those feels that he had before. And getting better coverage over the plate," Barfield said. "I think being able to handle pitches in all four quadrants to put himself in a position for his tools to play out. I think that really was a focus. It doesn't look like to the naked eye like, oh man, this is completely different. It's more subtle changes."

While this strategy isn't necessarily common with a struggling prospect, Barfield called on example from his past to show how it can work. When Barfield was the director of player development for the Arizona Diamondbacks, they used a similar approach with Geraldo Perdomo when he was still a prospect. Perdomo is now sixth in MLB with 2.4 wins above replacement, per FanGraphs.

"He was like two-plus months into the season, hitting a buck-something, and just completely lost," Barfield recalled. "So we pulled the plug and for the first almost week, he didn't pick up a bat. We sent him back to Arizona, it was about a month he was out. Completely rebuilt the swing, just starting from the ground up. And when he came back, he ended up having a good finish to the minor-league season and ended up getting called up. And a year-plus later, he's a big-league All-Star and nobody remembers that part of it. But I think it was a big turning point in his career."

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