By just about any measurement, the Knights’ team stats for 2023 were disappointing. Overall, the team won just 53 of 149 games.
Does it matter?
The top objective, by far, of the Knights is to have players ready in an emergency when the White Sox call. This season, 25 different Knights were summoned to Chicago. Were they adequate fill-ins? Who knows? Given the dumpster fire that was the White Sox’ 2023 season, I’m not sure Babe Ruth and Cy Young would have made a difference.
Even though the Knights’ roster was mostly veterans, there also were a handful of younger hitters like Lenyn Sosa and Oscar Colas in need of coaching/player development, along with a number of bullpen arms. Were these efforts successful? Maybe. Eventually. I don’t know.
Player development is hard to quantify. But I do know this: the White Sox have a number of talented, young players in Birmingham who are knocking on the door, and we’ll find out in the next two seasons whether the White Sox are capable of turning them into major leaguers.
By the end of the 2025 season, we’ll know exactly what kind of player development operation Chris Getz has built.
The Results On The Mound
Five position players and a handful of rehabbing major leaguers were among the 48 players to take the mound for the Knights in 2023. When the final out had been recorded, the Knights surrendered the third-most home runs (216) in the 20-team International League, had the worst team ERA (6.25), gave up the third-most walks (761), and had the worst batting average against at .281.
Part of it can be attributed to the insanely-hitter-friendly Truist Field. But the Knights had the fourth-worst ERA (5.92) of all road teams, so the home park was actually much less of an issue than some might like to believe. The top performers were Davis Martin and Jesse Scholtens. Nate Fisher led the team in innings, at 103.2, followed by Garrett Davila at 102.1.
The Results At The Plate
Despite hitting in Charlotte, the Knights’ lineup was short on power hitters and, as a result, the team was 17th in home runs (144) in the league. It was 14th in batting average (.257) and last in walks (504) but had the second-fewest number of strikeouts (1,186).
Victor Reyes led the team with 20 home runs, 83 RBIs and a .279 batting average. Nate Mondou was tops in OBP (.379) and walks (69) among players who spent the majority of the season in Charlotte. (Xavier Fernandez had a .397 OBP across 36 games.) And Zach Remillard led the team in stolen bases, with 16 in 17 attempts, despite only playing in 65 games at the Triple-A level this year.