White Sox: Three players to focus on in spring training

2. Nick Madrigal

The second baseman is certainly going to be worth watching because, unlike his fellow top prospect, Luis Robert, he will likely have to be very impressive in spring training to make the Opening Day roster.

Currently, he’s set to compete with Danny Mendick and Leury Garcia as detailed in a recent article I wrote about the current second base situation.

In 2019, the soon-to-be 23-year-old ascended through three levels as he had a .311/.377/.414 slash line with four homers, 55 RBI, and 35 stolen bases across three levels.

The most impressive part of his stats was the bat-to-ball skills that allowed him to only strikeout 16 times all season. That meant that his walk to strikeout ratio was almost 3:1 (44 walks).

Whether or not the team is actually planning on giving him a real chance to break camp with the team or not remains to be seen, but either way it will be worth monitoring his production.

Even if they don’t give him a chance to start the season with the team, his play could determine just how quickly he’s called up to the majors.

If the purpose of him being optioned is service time manipulation, which they should not pursue, then the team could simply call him up in mid-April.

However, if it is related to wanting him to get more Triple-A plate appearances and he doesn’t impress in spring training, it’s possible the White Sox might not call him up until mid-May or even June.