Latest White Sox list of top 30 prospects

Andrew Vaughn

With no games to watch, it's always fun to entertain ourselves by talking about lists, right? I visited whitesox.com Monday night and noticed that Jim Callis has his latest list of top 30 White Sox prospects available. 

You can peruse the whole thing by following the link, but the top 10 are usually the most notable, and here they are:

1. Andrew Vaughn, 1B
2. Michael Kopech, RHP
3. Nick Madrigal, 2B
4. Garrett Crochet, LHP
5. Dane Dunning, RHP
6. Jared Kelley, RHP
7. Jonathan Stiever, RHP
8. Matthew Thompson, RHP
9. Micker Adolfo, OF
10. Gavin Sheets, 1B

We've already seen four of those first five players in the majors. Madrigal, Crochet and Dunning were all useful-to-good during 2020, and we saw Kopech make his debut in 2018. He missed 2019 because of Tommy John surgery, and opted out of the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

All four of those guys figure to be on the roster when 2021 opens, and we'll almost certainly see Vaughn -- who is easily the top hitting prospect in the organization -- sometime next summer.

After Dunning, the depth thins out, but I do find the No. 6 player on the list of interest. Kelley, the 19-year-old pitcher the Sox drafted in the second round of the 2020 draft, stands 6-foot-3 and weighs 215 pounds. Like a lot of kids from Texas, he's got the big fastball, and he was good enough to get invited to the team's alternate training site in Schaumburg this summer. 

Kelley was featured in the organizational reports section of Baseball America's October edition. Here are some of the quotes from farm director Chris Getz, as told to beat reporter Scot Gregor:

"[Kelley's] looked very good. Jared's work ethic has jumped out to everyone observing. His attention to detail and willingness to learn are other factors that have quickly shown, the attributes we had seen and heard about prior to selecting him."

"We will be focusing on his four-seam fastball, breaking ball and changeup. All his pitches flash major league potential, so we're aiming for consistency within his delivery and arm action to fully allow him to be efficient with all his pitches."

"He is a strong, powerful kid who knows how to generate power. He knows how to use his size and strength as a weapon."

It's something new for the Sox to have three pitchers who were drafted out of high school in the top 11 on their prospects list.

Thompson, a 6-foot-3, 20-year-old right-hander, is No. 8 on the list and was drafted in the second round in 2019. Andrew Dalquist, a 6-foot-1, 20-year-old right-hander is just outside the top 10 at No. 11. He was drafted in the third round in 2019.

It will be a good test for the Sox's player development staff to see if they can get at least one of these three guys to become useful members of a big-league rotation in the years ahead.