White Sox Spring Training Report: Risers and Fallers Before Opening Day

The White Sox won 19 more games in 2025 than they did in 2024. That's a real number. Not a narrative, not spin — a genuine on-field improvement that carried real momentum into this winter's offseason. They signed Munetaka Murakami to bring legitimate power to the lineup for the first time in years. They traded Luis Robert Jr. and came back with Luisangel Acuña. They brought in Seranthony Domínguez to stabilize the bullpen. They kept the young core intact and let Will Venable start building the culture.

Now they're 10-4 in the Cactus League — near the top of the standings — with Opening Day in Milwaukee two weeks away. Some of the most compelling spring stories in all of baseball are happening at Camelback Ranch and Daikin Park. Here's who's rising and who's falling as the White Sox look to build on the momentum they carried out of last fall.

📈 Stock Up

Sam Antonacci, 2B/3B (Prospect)

Nobody in White Sox camp has made a bigger impression this spring than Antonacci, and it isn't particularly close. The 22-year-old infield prospect — ranked ninth in the organization by MLB Pipeline — entered Cactus League play as a relatively under-the-radar name. He left it as the most talked-about player in the building.

In six Cactus League games, Antonacci hit .308 (4-for-13) with two home runs, a 1.346 OPS, seven runs scored, and a .500 on-base percentage. The home runs aren't just the numbers — it's the exit velocities: 107 mph and 109.5 mph. His very first spring at-bat produced a 417-foot home run off Jameson Taillon of the Cubs. Power had been considered his weakest tool coming out of a 5th-round Coastal Carolina selection. That conversation is over.

Then came Houston. Antonacci joined Team Italy for the World Baseball Classic and kept right on hitting, going 2-for-7 with a home run and three RBIs in pool play — including a shot in Italy's stunning 8-6 upset win over Team USA on March 10. Italy's Kyle Teel was the other White Sox player in that game, and his story ends very differently below.

GM Chris Getz on Antonacci: he brings "a winning style of baseball that's going to fit in very well here." Getz stopped short of penciling him onto the Opening Day roster — Antonacci will most likely open 2026 in the minors — but his call-up timeline has accelerated significantly. Also worth noting: he was hit by a pitch 39 times in 2025. This kid is not afraid of anything.

Edgar Quero, C

When Kyle Teel went down in Houston, a lot of the conversation immediately shifted to what the White Sox would do behind the plate. The answer was already standing in front of them. Quero has led the team in RBIs this spring with nine, posting a .692 slugging percentage while the coaching staff raves about his feel behind the dish and his advanced plate approach. He's 22 years old and he's been the best hitter in camp.

What makes this meaningful is where the power is coming from. Quero spent the offseason at Driveline working specifically on bat speed and launch angle — the plate discipline and bat-to-ball skills were already there, but the over-the-fence production wasn't. The .692 slugging says it might be now. With Teel out 4-6 weeks, Quero becomes the primary catcher to open the regular season, sharing duties with defensive specialist Korey Lee. That's more responsibility than planned at this stage of his development.

The optimistic read — and it's a legitimate one — is that the White Sox had always envisioned their best lineup as one where Teel and Quero are both in it, one catching and one DHing. That plan is on hold. But the Teel injury doesn't have to derail Quero's spring story. It just makes what he does in April matter a lot more.

Shane Smith, SP — Opening Day Starter

The White Sox made it official: Shane Smith gets the ball March 26 in Milwaukee. That's a sentence worth sitting with for a moment, because of how we got here.

Less than two years ago, the Brewers left Smith off their 40-man roster. The White Sox selected him with the first pick of the 2024 Rule 5 Draft, kept him on the active roster all season despite having every reason not to, and watched him make the All-Star team as a rookie. He went from organizational afterthought to Opening Day starter in about 18 months.

His spring has backed up the honor. He's been sequenced through the rotation alongside Anthony Kay and Davis Martin, and he's shown the same command profile and sinking fastball that made him so effective in 2025. Nobody in the White Sox organization is treating the Opening Day nod as a formality — it's a statement that what Smith did last year was real, and that they're betting on it again.

William Bergolla Jr., INF (Prospect)

Bergolla is probably not going to be on the Opening Day roster, and almost certainly shouldn't be. He's 21 years old and just finished Double-A last season with 40 stolen bases. But if you want to feel good about where this system is headed, watch him play.

In eight Cactus League games, the 5'9" contact machine posted a 1.148 OPS with six hits, two walks, and — this is the one that gets evaluators talking — zero strikeouts. Manager Will Venable put it plainly: "I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but he's one of our favorites." The speed, the feel for the game, the defensive versatility — Bergolla is the kind of player a rebuilding team needs quietly moving through the system. He'll get there when it's time.

📉 Stock Down

Kyle Teel, C

The night of March 10 was genuinely wild from a White Sox perspective. Sam Antonacci was in the middle of Italy's upset win over Team USA, hitting a home run in one of the biggest WBC results in years. And in the same game, Kyle Teel — going 2-for-2 with a homer of his own before the injury — ripped a ball down the first base line, tried to stretch it, and pulled up rounding first. Trainers came out. He had to be helped off the field.

The diagnosis: a Grade 2 right hamstring strain. The timeline: 4-6 weeks, which means Teel opens 2026 on the injured list and likely misses the first three to four weeks of the regular season. GM Chris Getz confirmed he'll return to camp Thursday and described the news simply: "It definitely took a little wind out of the sail."

That's honest. Teel slashed .273/.375/.411 in 78 games as a rookie last year and was projected as the primary catcher coming into this season. The best version of this White Sox lineup has Teel and Quero in it together — one behind the plate, one at DH. That vision is now on a mid-April timeline at the earliest. Grade 2 hamstring strains are partial tears, not season-enders, but they're not nothing. Cubs fans watched Luis Robert Jr. turn a hamstring situation into a years-long injury pattern. That's the worst-case scenario nobody wants to mention but everyone's thinking about.

Teel went out as a hero — homered in a game that Italy won in one of the biggest upsets in WBC history. But the South Side can't afford to celebrate that moment for too long right now.

Colson Montgomery, SS

Montgomery is going to be the starting shortstop on Opening Day, and nothing that's happened this spring changes that. He's 22, he hit 21 home runs as a rookie, and he's a cornerstone of this rebuild. So let's be clear about what this entry is and isn't.

It's not a concern about his place on the roster. It's a concern about his bat. Montgomery has been quiet throughout the Cactus League, and the Chicago Sun-Times put it in a headline on March 11: he's "a hot shot but not a hot hitter." The swing-and-miss has been present this spring. ESPN's bold prediction for 2026 has him at 31 home runs — but also below a .220 batting average, which is the projection of a player who can beat you and hurt you in the same at-bat.

There was a late encouraging sign: Montgomery broke a spring-long slump with a clutch two-run homer in a 5-4 win over the Royals, and he's been working with the hitting coaches on the approach daily. Spring slumps from young power hitters are hardly a death sentence. But the White Sox need Montgomery to take a step forward in 2026, not tread water. He's capable of it. He just hasn't shown it yet in Arizona.

Jedixson Paez and David Sandlin, Relief Pitching Depth

The White Sox made moves this offseason to build a real bullpen — Domínguez, Jordan Hicks, and others were supposed to bring credibility to what had been a chronic weakness. Paez and Sandlin were the longer shots on the depth chart, and the spring has made clear neither is going to help in April.

Paez, a Rule 5 pick who hasn't pitched above High-A, allowed six runs in a single inning in a recent outing. The case for keeping him on the roster gets harder to make every time he takes the mound. Sandlin, acquired via trade, had an injury-riddled camp and was among the latest round of cuts. Neither is a critical loss given the depth in front of them, but they were supposed to provide organizational options. Right now they're not.

Two weeks to Opening Day in Milwaukee. The White Sox have a 10-4 record in the Cactus League, a genuine Opening Day starter storyline in Shane Smith, and one of the most exciting prospect crops in camp across any team in baseball. The Teel injury stings, and Montgomery needs to start hitting. But the rebuild has momentum, and for the first time in a while, that's not just a talking point. It's visible on the field.