New White Sox infielder Curtis Mead is a better hitter than his numbers show

The headlining return for starting pitcher Adrian Houser is 24 year-old infielder Curtis Mead.

Mead was acquired by the Chicago White Sox along with two minor league pitchers at the 2025 trade deadline and optioned to Triple-A Charlotte.

The former Australian Baseball League standout was a top prospect in the Rays organization for years. In 2023, he climbed to No. 2 in Tampa Bay‘s organization and No. 33 in all of baseball thanks to his outstanding hit tool and developing power.

Each of the last three seasons, Mead has had a cup of coffee in the Major Leagues, but he has never received a full season's worth of playing time.

At first glance, his numbers might be underwhelming to White Sox fans. But Mead is a significantly better player than his 2025 year-long stats or career .629 OPS will show.

Much like White Sox infielder Miguel Vargas, Curtis Mead made a mid-season adjustment to his batting stance that has completely changed his game.

Curtis Mead changed his batting stance on May 8

Curtis Mead earned his place on the Rays' Opening Day roster. He was 22-for-42 at the plate in Spring Training, which was good for a .524 batting average and 1.227 OPS.

Unfortunately for him, that success didn't carry over to the regular season. With a new, unconventional batting stance that he adopted earlier this year, Mead opened the 2025 regular season 8-for-53.

The 24-year-old had just one extra-base hit from March 28-May 7 and was looking at a .403 OPS. That's when Mead made a change to his batting stance, moving his hands up and looking "simplify" his approach at the plate, as manager Kevin Cash put it.

Mead's mechanical change has been significantly less documented than Vargas' with the White Sox, but looking back at the game film points to May 8 being the time he made the switch.

Since making a change to his batting stance, Curtis Mead is hitting .290 with an .873 OPS in the big leagues.

He hit a home run in three consecutive games from May 21-May 25, and by June 22, his OPS for the season was up to .728.

Clearly, the talent is all there. Mead is a much better hitter than his career stats show, and he has proven it over the last two months.

Now it's about making the necessary adjustments and finding some repeatable mechanics that allow Mead to maximize his natural tools. The White Sox and director of hitting Ryan Fuller already have some ideas for how to do that.

The White Sox have some adjustments in mind for Curtis Mead

"He's not the first player that has had some Major League struggles early on," said GM Chris Getz to reporters in his media availability following the deadline. (via Kyle Williams)

The White Sox are hoping to make some tweaks, but they believe staunchly that Mead's offensive game is something that they can nurture back to health.

It's a similar mindset to the one the organization had about Miguel Vargas at this point last year. Betting on the player development staff seemed to pay off in that instance.

One of the most noticeable things about the work Ryan Fuller has done with White Sox hitters this season is the increased pull rate, particularly on fly balls.

Players like Miguel Vargas, Lenyn Sosa, Andrew Benintendi, Mike Tauchman, and Brooks Baldwin have all set career-highs in pull percentage and pull air percentage in 2025. It's no coincidence that all of those players are also having exceptionally good seasons (by their standards) in the slugging category.

The White Sox value players with excellent bat speed (i.e. Colson Montgomery), and then work on getting those players to pull more fly balls.

Mead has respectable bat speed, and if he can combine the changes to his batting stance with Fuller's guidance on pulling more fly balls, the White Sox could unlock the 20-25 homer run power that's been dorment in his bat.