White Sox have 'great deal of belief' in struggling prospect Montgomery

CHICAGO -- At some point during the 2025 season, the White Sox hope to have Colson Montgomery join their Major League team.

That target is a big part of what’s behind Montgomery’s current work in Arizona, resetting during this step away from Triple-A Charlotte.

“It’s not necessarily about having success in Charlotte. It’s about getting him into a position where he’s confident and comfortable enough to compete at some point this year, he’ll go to the Major League level,” White Sox director of player development Paul Janish said during a Zoom prior to Chicago's 8-3 loss to the Astros on Saturday at Rate Field. “That’s what this is about, right? We still have a great deal of belief in Colson.”

On-field struggles for the White Sox No. 4 prospect and No. 35 overall, per MLB Pipeline, have been discussed at great length. It’s the negative side attached to falling short of expectations bumping up against the hoopla surrounding a top-rated young player.

After going 0-for-6 during last Sunday’s 13-12 victory for Charlotte over Scranton-Wilkes/Barre, dropping Montgomery’s average to .149 in the midst of a 1-for-21 funk, general manager Chris Getz announced Tuesday the decision to give the shortstop a break from daily game action. He’s going through regular daily work at Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Ariz., in terms of taking ground balls, lifting weights and continuing the workload from a running standpoint, but he’s also doing extensive cage work with White Sox director of hitting Ryan Fuller.

“The intimate environment we can create here in Arizona,” Janish said of the benefits for Montgomery's reset. “Fuller is down here with him, working the last couple of days, and then will for the next few days, as well. Just give him a chance to get back to neutral is a good way to say it, and really allow him to take a breather. To be clear, the intention is to get him back out to Charlotte sooner than later for sure.

“The response from Colson was pretty mature. He hadn’t performed the way he knows that he can. This is an effort to remove him from the environment briefly and reinsert him hopefully this coming week and give him a little bit of a fresh start with going all the way down to the daily routine and just getting him into the mindset of just competing every night.

“Just grinding out four really, really tough at-bats every single night, making the pitcher miserable,” Janish added. “Using his skillset he’s really good at, which is controlling the zone. That’s the philosophy behind it.”

Sean Burke knows Montgomery as well as anyone within the White Sox. They are teammates, good friends and lived together in Montgomery’s Nashville home this past offseason while they worked out with a group at the Bledsoe Agency and during Spring Training. Much like Janish and the rest of the organization, the White Sox right-hander has no doubt Montgomery will bounce back.

In fact, Burke has been in a similar situation. He went from the No. 5 White Sox prospect prior to an injury-plagued 2023 season, to being left out of big league Spring Training in ‘24, to getting healthy and making his Major League debut later that season, to being named as the 2025 White Sox Opening Day starter. Montgomery knows what he’s doing wrong and is frustrated with the results and how his at-bats were going more than stressing failure, Burke explained.

“A little bit is him kind of getting his swag back. Feeling good, feeling comfortable again,” Burke said. “For a couple of years now, he’s kind of been on the brink of being here and he can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and he just hasn’t put it all together completely. You see it in flashes, stretches. But I think he needs to settle back in and get comfortable being himself again.

“When he’s himself, he’s a really good player. Even when I was still in the Minors and feeling back like myself, that was a sigh of relief knowing that I was comfortable with [the fact that] I knew I was a good player, I knew the stuff I had. It was just going up there and performing and being consistent. Colson is in the same spot. He’s got the skillset. It’s just him getting back in rhythm, feeling comfortable and getting back into the flow.

“Take a step back, take a deep breath,” Burke concluded. “Get back into it smoothly. It will be good for him.”