White Sox fans need to be careful with the pressure they put on Colson Montgomery

Colson Montgomery and his roller coaster rookie season have been the highlight of 2025 for the Chicago White Sox.

Montgomery, a former top 10 prospect in all of baseball, joined the White Sox to make his Major League debut on July 4. After an up and down first few weeks of his big league career, Montgomery has been taking baseball by storm since July 22.

In his last 34 games, Colson Montgomery has 16 home runs. Only Kyle Schwarber has more home runs than him in that stretch of time. His 1.7 fWAR is already tied for the lead among White Sox players currently on the roster.

Montgomery has established himself, not just as a member of the White Sox young core, but as one of the must-watch rising stars in baseball.

Many Sox fans, myself included, already consider Colson to be the face of White Sox baseball. The expectations for the former first-round draft pick are higher now than they've ever been before.

That said, I do think White Sox fans need to be careful about their expectations for Montgomery moving forward.

White Sox need to be more cautious

I hadn't really thought about things in this light until I heard Chicago sports media personality David Haugh encouraging White Sox fans to be more cautious.

After co-host Gabe Ramirez referred to Montgomery as "a superstar" and "the face of the franchise," Haugh was quick express wariness when it comes to lofty words such as those.

"I also worry about using those kinds of terms, because he came in as a first-round draft pick. He was as ballyhooed and highly regarded as any White Sox draft pick in recent memory, and then he really hit a dip. He was not the same hitter in the minors that he was in the majors, and he acknowledges this...mentally, it was almost like too much to handle," said Haugh on CHSN.

"He had to go away, he had a little bit of a respite, a forced vacation, and he realized you just need to stay in the moment. Maybe he's passed that, but I do worry about attaching too lofty of expectations to somebody who had issues handling those earlier in his career," Haugh continued. "I just don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves."

To be honest, those are all fair points by Haugh. It's not that we don't believe in Colson Montgomery or the trajectory he is on, but we as White Sox fans would be foolish to ignore some of the growing pains he is still working through.

Colson Montgomery has been boom or bust at the plate

Montgomery's 16 home runs are such a good sign of the things to come, but outside of driving the ball out of the park, his offensive consistency hasn't been where it needs to be.

His on-base percentage is just .286, and 53 strikeouts in 48 games played is definitely more than you'd like to see.

If you look since the start of August and remove the games in which Montgomery hit a home run, he was 6-for-57 with 23 strikeouts and six walks. He has been a boom or bust product at the plate this season.

My hope and belief is that, with time, Montgomery will develop a more advanced approach at the plate. His plate discipline and pitch recognition he displayed in the minor league will eventually translate to his big league game, and the power will naturally follow.

It's not unreasonable to think that Colson can be a 35+ home run hitting shortstop that puts up 5 fWAR seasons with regularity. I'm as excited about that prospect as anyone, but I do agree with David Haugh. It's still too early to be declaring him the next White Sox legend.

If Montgomery never truly puts it all together, and he's only ever a boom or bust infielder than hits 30 home runs, but strikes out too often...that's okay too! That would still make him a really productive big leaguer, but I don't think he should need to live up to the expectation that he's going to be a future MVP.

That would be White sox fans setting him up to fail and setting themselves up to be disappointed.