3 Thoughts on BP’s Top 10 White Sox Prospects

The White Sox farm system has seen better days. The previous 48 months or so has seen the team harvest an overwhelming majority of it’s current major league talent from that silo. Yes a good chunk of that was traded for and not seeded there originally, but that’s neither here nor there.

As of last season’s farm system rankings, most notable publications considered the White Sox a bottom 5 farm system. Eric Longenhagen at Fangraphs had them dead last and by a mile. Fast forward to 2022 and as most top 100 overall prospect lists come barreling into the Twitterverse in the heat of the lockout, there isn’t a single White Sox prospect to be found on any of those lists.

Not much has changed. I think that sets the table for the first individual White Sox list that I have taken a look at and that is Baseball Prospectus’ Top 10. I’m a long-time subscriber to Baseball Prospectus, I am a sucker for looking at different projection systems and PECOTA certainly is different than others. Lately I haven’t been reading as much at BP as I used to, although in 2022, I am making a promise to myself to change that. Anywho, upon reading the list I had three thoughts on the list, ranking, group. Want to read them? Even if you don’t, I’m going to write them. The FULL LIST IS HERE.

Jake Burger at #3 might be the current best prospect

I’m starting to come to the realization that Jake Burger very likely is the best prospect in this system. I know nothing about scouting, and I can barely understand the 20-80 scale. What I do know is that if your number one prospect is your most recent first round draft pick (Colson Montgomery) and that pick was towards the back of the round, it feels like a hail mary.

Burger looks like not only the best verifiable prospect in this pile, but the most likely (and quite possibly only) contributor to the 2022 White Sox. Which when you think about it is pretty fucking wild. The White Sox are in contention mode and sitting here with almost no top prospect reinforcements.

The Prep Arms of the Last Few Drafts Ain’t Shit

Remember the last few summers when the White Sox took the positive step of signing some prep arms in the draft for over slot bonuses? Yea, that shit ain’t working out too good yet. Matthew Thompson is the first one of those guys that checks in on the list at #7 and the first sentence of the review starts “Thompson was statistically awful for Kannapolis in 2021“. Incredible.

A fair amount of bonus money went to these fellas and they ain’t bearing much fruit yet. The good news is that they are all still pretty young. The bad news is that the White Sox competitive window gets shorter the longer it takes them to turn a corner down there.

This is Micker Adolfo‘s last year on the list….probably

Micker Adolfo who signed with the White Sox in 2013 is #10 on this list. Pretty incredible that he’s been with the organization over 8 years, hasn’t made it to the big leagues yet and still manages to sneak onto this list. He’s probably the second most likely player on this list to contribute to the 2022 White Sox. He is out of minor league options though and still strikes out more than Pedro Cerrano. I think it’s likely that he ends up in a different teams uniform by the time teams head north to start the championship season, but it’s pretty wild that he’s still somehow making it onto the list (and deserved really).

There you have it. A few thoughts on BP’s list. I hadn’t spent much time looking at the White Sox farm lately, but oof does it look brutal. I know you are going to get some smarty pants tell you, that’s what happens when you got a good team. That’s bullflop. Most of the other contenders seem to have a little more ready made contributors and/or valuable trade pieces hanging out on their ranch. Let’s hope 2022 is the year we start seeing some results from all of this promise.

-BeefLoaf