The White Sox affiliates continue to scuffle but there were some stand-out individual performances from this past week that deserve our attention. Starting in Charlotte and continuing down to Kannapolis, check out which Sox prospects are heating up.
Charlotte
Nicky Delmonico is following up on an impressive Spring Training by continuing to rake in Charlotte. Delmonico is riding a five game hitting streak and has multiple hits in four of those five contests, raising his season slash line to .328/.397/.492. Delmonico is showing good peripheral stats along with the impressive averages as well, walking 6 times to only 10 strikeouts and having balanced splits against right-handed and left-handed pitching. Interestingly, Delmonico is playing 3B exclusively in 2017, while in 2016 he split his time between third, first, and right-field. If the White Sox decide to send down or cut a position player, Delmonico would appear to be the next man up.
Carson Fulmer had a solid start on Tuesday, going 6.0 innings, only allowing one run on five hits and one walk. Fulmer’s control has been his biggest question mark and he has harnessed his stuff this year, only issued 3 walks over his first 17 innings.
Birmingham
Spencer Adams struck out a career high 10 batters over six innings during his start on Monday. Adams’ previous high was 9 punch-outs, which he last achieved in his draft year of 2014 with the rookie level Arizona White Sox. Since then, Adams repertoire has changed quite a lot, he is no longer hitting mid 90’s with a 4-seamer, but relying on a 90-92 MPH heavy 2-seam sinker. Adams was drafted as a prep, so though he’s been in a system a few years, he just turned 21 years-old and has a strong 3.65 ERA and 20/3 K/BB rate over his first four 2017 starts.
The Birmingham offense as a whole has had a brutal start the season, but catcher Brett Austin has been the outlier by slashing .333/.400/.556. Austin, who was Carlos Rodon‘s college battery mate, had a monster game on Thursday, going 2-2 with a walk, double, and a home run to drive in five runs.
Winston-Salem
Luis Alexander Basabe started the season ice cold, but has recently hit more like the player the Sox envisioned they were acquiring when they dealt for him in the Chris Sale trade. Basabe is on a eight game hitting streak and smacked his first home run of the season during that span, along with two stolen bases and five walks to six strikeouts.
Kannapolis
While Mitch Roman is continuing his torrid pace to start the season (.431 BA), it was his teammate Tyler Sullivan who owned the highest batting average among all White Sox prospects this week. Sullivan went 9-for-16 over four games this week and added two walks.
Dane Dunning had another ho-hum start on Tuesday, tossing six shutout innings while only allowing four hits and (gasp) his first walk of the year. The “third” piece of the Eaton trade return now has 26 strikeouts in 20 innings and a 0.45 ERA with only 11 hits allowed.
Dunning’s fellow rotation mates Jimmy Lambert and Bernardo Flores had great starts this past week as well. The 2016 draft keeps paying dividends as the 7th rounder Flores out-dueled 4th overall selection Riley Pint on Wednesday and 5th rounder Lambert tossed eight innings of one-run ball on Thursday.
Taking a peek to the Kanny bullpen, left-hander Kyle Kubat was untouchable in his appearance on Friday, striking out seven batters and only allowing one hit and one walk over 2.2 innings. Kubat was acquired from the Kansas City Royals this past off-season and has 16 strikeouts and a 0.84 ERA over 10.2 innings this season.
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