Colson Montgomery: Up-And-Coming Dynasty Player

Welcome back, my friends. It seems I just wrote about a player yesterday, not last week!

After diving into the dynasty value of some catchers the past few weeks, I am heading back into the field of play and taking a look at Chicago White Sox shortstop Colson Montgomery.

A preseason Top 100 prospect, Montgomery made his MLB debut on July 4, and over the last month plus a few days, he has been showing why he is an up-and-coming dynasty player.

Without further ado, I present Colson Montgomery.

Career Statistics

Road to The Show

The White Sox drafted Colson Montgomery with the 22nd overall pick in 2021. Montgomery was a standout basketball and baseball player at Southridge High School in Huntingburg, IN. He set the basketball school record in scoring with 1,966 points and was recruited by Indiana University to come to the school as a scholarship baseball player and walk-on basketball player.

But Montgomery didn’t take the offer as he signed with the White Sox and immediately started his career as a professional baseball player. It probably didn’t hurt that he received a signing bonus of more than $3,000,000. But Montgomery quickly showed why the White Sox were so high on him.

Ahead of the 2023 season, he was ranked as the 39th best prospect by Baseball America, 38th by MLB, and 32nd by Baseball Prospectus. Ahead of the 2024 season, he rose in the rankings to #15, #9, and #11, respectively, before dropping a bit in the rankings before the start of this season, coming in at #39, #39, and #43. The drop in the rankings came after a 2023 season in which Montgomery suffered an oblique injury in the spring and a back injury during the season, leading to him appearing in only 64 games that season.

• Hitting

Right now, Colson Montgomery is weak in this department. When you look at scouting reports, he has rated as a 40 to 45 hitter, which is below the average rating of 50. As a professional, he has not proven the scouts wrong. During his minor league career, he had a .246 batting average and a 24.8% strikeout rate. Those are not the kind of numbers that point to him having major success in the batting average category in the future – or in the present, for that matter.

Through his first 27 MLB games, Montgomery has a .245 batting average with a 29.2% strikeout rate. Ouch. Montgomery is hurting himself as he has a 35% chase rate and a 34% whiff rate. There are a lot of batters with high chase rates, but when it comes to Montgomery, the difference is his chase contact percentage is only 39%. The MLB average is 58%.

And when swinging at pitches in the zone, Montgomery has a 79% contact rate compared to the MLB average of 82%. So at this moment, there is a lot of swing and miss in Montgomery’s game, and unless he starts to make some improvement in that area, he will likely remain a .250 hitter at best.

The good thing is that he can draw a walk, or at least has shown the ability to draw walks in the minors. Down on the farm, he had a 12.9% walk rate. But so far with the White Sox,  his walk rate is at 7.5%, below the MLB average of 8.4%.

• Power

This area is what makes Colson Montgomery an up-and-coming dynasty player. Scouts gave him a 55 grade in power, and they may have underestimated that. Right now, he is hitting home runs at a rate that I doubt he will attain going forward, smashing one homer, like this one, every 12 at-bats with the Sox, while his minor league rate was one homer every 29 at-bats. Right now, Montgomery’s 162-game average is 48 homers and 144 RBI.

He is not going to maintain that average, but it is fun to see as it gives a glimpse into his actual power potential. With only 106 plate appearances entering Friday, Montgomery has a small sample size when it comes to looking at his data. But so, you have to like what he is doing.

He has a 15.2% barrel rate (7.1% is MLB average) and a hard hit percentage of 42.4% (MLB = 36.9%). His launch angle sweet spot percentage is at 41% (MLB = 33%). So he does a good job of barreling up the ball and hitting it hard. There are a lot of players who do that. But add in the fact that he has a 30% fly ball rate, and those hard hit balls travel over the fence.

Basically, Montgomery sells out for power. He tries to pull the ball often, and right now he has a 45.5% pull rate compared to the MLB average of 30.4%. But if this approach leads to 30 to 35 homers and a .240 to .250 batting average, then that makes him a shortstop worth having.

• Speed

As an overall runner, Montgomery is not slow. But he is also not fast. In fact, his spring speed ranks in the 50th percentile – the definition of being average. In 376 career minor league games, he stole only 15 bases. So far with the White Sox, his grand total of steals is zero.

He is not a threat to steal bases. He may swipe a bag here and there, but if you want to add him because you need help with your stolen bases, Colson Montgomery is not your man.

The Verdict

We all want the perfect player, but those are hard to find. So the next best thing is to find players who excel in one area. For Montgomery, he does excel in one area – hitting the ball for power. His career SLG in the minors was .414, and so far with the White Sox, it is .526. He will not continue to maintain that number, but he will be a player who will slug .450 or so. His swing is designed to lift the ball, and with his ability to barrel the ball, that will lead to a lot of home runs and doubles in the power alleys.

Montgomery may not stick at shortstop as he has started 17 games at that spot and another 10 at third base. Right now, that is great as it allows you to move him to short, third, middle infield, or corner infield (depending on what your league does). But in the future, he may settle in at third. I don’t see that as a problem because the power as a third baseman is still valuable.

If there is one area of concern away from what he does at the plate, it is the fact he has had some issues with injuries. He missed a lot of time in 2023 with an oblique injury, and back issues have also been an issue, forcing him to miss some time this spring. Right now, it doesn’t seem to be a big issue, but back problems always give me some pause.

But, enough pause to pass on adding Colson Montgomery if I had the chance? Nope. I like his power potential, and that is the stat that I always go after, as homers lead to RBI, runs scored, and high SLG.

Right now, he is rostered in 39% of Yahoo leagues and only 16% of ESPN leagues. So a lot of owners have not jumped on the Montgomery bandwagon. I suggest you do.

Thanks for reading, and come back again next week.