3 White Sox prospects that impressed the most at A-Ball in 2025

The Chicago White Sox are still in the early stages of an extensive rebuild, but the early returns have been promising.

The 2025 season has seen young players emerge to lay the foundation of the next competitive team. Rookies Colson Montgomery, Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero, and Shane Smith are on the path to stardom while youngsters such as Chase Meidroth, Miguel Vargas, Lenyn Sosa, Davis Martin, Grant Taylor, and Mike Vasil have also emerged as players who can contribute to a contending team.

This young core of players in Chicago will eventually need reinforcements as the team approaches being competitive in a few seasons.

Luckily, there are a couple of players who just had impressive seasons at A-ball that could provide an additional talent infusion by the 2027 or 2028 season (the anticipated target of when this rebuild should start to pan out).

With the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers and Winston-Salem Dash concluding their seasons last week, here's a recap of three prospects who impressed the most over the course of the year.

Caleb Bonemer

Caleb Bonemer, the team's second-round pick last season, had a spectacular first full pro campaign. Bonemer had a .281 average with an .874 OPS and 12 home runs between stints with Low-A Kannapolis and High-A Winston-Salem.

Bonemer earned a brief promotion to the Dash after a .281/.400/.458 slash line in 96 games with the Cannon Ballers. He then had an eye-popping 1.020 OPS in the 11 games he played at High-A.

The 19-year-old was so good that he played his way onto Baseball America's and MLB Pipeline's Top 100 rankings as the season went on.

The emergence of Bonemer as a highly regarded prospect has the potential to mitigate a White Sox draft mistake from 2024 - passing on Konnor Griffin in the first round.

Griffin is now considered the top prospect in all of baseball and the Sox took pitcher Hagen Smith with the No. 5 pick instead. Smith has struggled this season at Double-A, where he has seen his prospect stock take a hit.

While Smith has tumbled down the prospect rankings (Bonemer is now considered the better prospect), the team having Bonemer still gives the organization a high-ceiling bat out of the 2024 draft class. Bonemer is the No. 84 prospect in baseball, per MLB Pipeline.

Christian Oppor

21-year-old left-handed pitcher Christian Oppor was so good in A-Ball that he skyrocketed up the rankings and made himself one of the 10 best prospects in the White Sox organization (he ranks No. 8).

Oppor posted a 2.42 ERA in five starts for Kannapolis. That earned him a promotion to Winston-Salem. He did well to handle the jump in competition with a 3.31 ERA and 82 strikeouts over 17 starts.

Oppor features three pitches with above-average grades that can help him reach Top 100 prospect status next season. His fastball is considered his best pitch, which touches 98mph on the radar gun, according to the scouting report. He reportedly hit 100 mph at one point this year.

Jeral Perez

Jeral Perez provided the promise of power to a farm system that desperately needs it. The 20-year-old infielder crushed 22 home runs with a .448 slugging percentage in 480 at-bats for the Dash.

Perez did have a .244 average, but a solid slugging percentage and .763 OPS makes up for the subpar average.

I loved watching the offense Sam Antonacci, top prospect Braden Montgomery, and Perez produced when all three were in the lineup together at Winston-Salem. There's a world where all three of those prospects are putting up exciting numbers in Chicago someday.

Perez did not get promoted to Double-A like Antonacci and Montgomery did. Part of that speaks to the infield depth this organization has and his age - both William Bergolla and Jacob Gonzalez are ahead of him on the organizational depth chart.

With Perez's power potential, I think the club should explore moving him to the outfield. The franchise lacks promising outfield prospects outside of Montgomery. It would also provide a cleaner path to the big leagues for the team's No. 19 prospect.