White Sox rookie Colson Montgomery has been tearing it up since the All-Star break

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Will Venable was asked over the weekend about the “heater” that Colson Montgomery is on, one in which the White Sox rookie infielder has hit .250 with a 1.000 OPS, seven homers and 17 RBI in 11 games since July 22.

ble’s response was an indication of the Willis Tower-high expectations the Sox have for their budding 23-year-old star — one of the foundational blocks the team is rebuilding around.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily that he’s on a heater,” Venable said. “I think he’s just a good player who’s in a good spot and taking good swings. He’s been in a good spot from Day 1. He’s put himself on time. He’s seeing the ball well and getting good swings off.”

It would be unrealistic to think this is the norm for Montgomery, but the power surge in his first month in the big leagues has provided a glimpse of his potential, as well as his ability to adapt and overcome adversity.
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He had what appeared to be a major setback in late April, when the Sox sent him to Arizona to work on a swing and offensive approach that had disappeared during his opening month at Triple-A Charlotte, where he hit .149 with a .478 OPS, three homers, six RBI, 43 strikeouts and seven walks in his first 23 games.

“My swing was getting too big,” Montgomery said Sunday after the Sox’ 8-5 loss to the Angels. “I was trying to do too much, trying to go get pitches instead of letting the pitchers come to me.”

He played five games at the Sox’ spring-training complex, but his primary focus was working one-on-one with Ryan Fuller, the organization’s hitting director, to make mechanical adjustments to his swing and mental adjustments to his approach — especially with two strikes.

It helped to kind of clean the slate and get my mind off a lot of things,” said Montgomery, a former three-sport star at Southridge (Indiana) High School who was the 22nd overall pick in the 2021 draft. “It was a good restart.”

Montgomery returned to Charlotte on May 13 and found his stroke by June, a month in which he hit .281 with a 1.010 OPS, six homers and 16 RBI in 16 games. The Sox called him up July 4, and he made an immediate impact with three hits in a 10-3 win over the Rockies the next day.

It took 15 games for Montgomery to hit his first big-league homer, on July  22 in Tampa against the Rays, but that blast ignited a spree of seven homers — second-most in the majors behind Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber — and an American League-leading 21 RBI since the All-Star break.

“You look at Colson Montgomery and where things were not too long ago to what he’s doing now, and it’s remarkable — it really is,” Sox general manager Chris Getz said. “He’s had some hiccups . . . but you know that it’s in there.”

Montgomery, who hit a three-run homer and an RBI single Sunday, has joined fellow youngsters Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero and Lenyn Sosa in helping to fuel a run of 10 Sox wins in 15 games heading into a three-game series in Seattle.

“Marcus and Joel and Jirsch and all of the coaches have really prepared me as well as they could,” Montgomery said, referring to hitting coaches Marcus Thames and Joel McKeithan and third-base coach Justin Jirschele. “From defense to offense, they just broke things down pretty easily for me.

“I try to keep things as simple as possible, to understand what the pitcher wants to do and, more importantly, what I want to do. You can talk a lot about what the pitcher is trying to do to us, but you’ve got to really know what you want to do with a pitcher.”

Montgomery, who’s 6-3 and 230 pounds, has drawn comparisons to 6-3, 220-pound shortstop Corey Seager because of his size, strong arm and the raw power he generates with his vicious left-handed swings. With an average bat speed of 77.0 mph, he ranks 13th among major-leaguers with at least 100 swings, according to Baseball Savant.

And, as was the case with Seager, there’s already speculation that Montgomery, who has made 14 of his 24 starts for the Sox at shortstop and 10 at third base, eventually will have to move to the hot corner. Big-name shortstops such as Cal Ripken Jr. and Alex Rodriguez made the switch during their careers.

But 11 years into a career in which he has won two World Series MVP awards, Seager is still playing shortstop for the Rangers. Montgomery sees no reason why he can’t also stick at shortstop.

Asked where he thinks his future lies defensively, he said, “I think it’s in the lineup, at shortstop or third — I don’t really care which one. I mean, I like short, but I also like third, so wherever they want me to play is where I’ll play.”