NEW YORK — Colson Montgomery went to spring training vying for the Chicago White Sox’s starting shortstop spot.
With the 2025 season wrapping up soon, he’s among the team leaders in home runs.
But the path from start to finish wasn’t a straight line.
“I learned a lot about myself, more than just baseball,” Montgomery said of his season Wednesday at Yankee Stadium. “How to deal with some failures. How to attack pitches. I felt like I learned a lot just from defensively, too, and more mentally being aware of certain things you need to do in certain situations and try to slow the game down as much as you can.
“I feel like some rookies can probably get stuck into trying to do too much in a situation when maybe the situation only tells you to do one thing.”
After being optioned to Triple A in mid-March, Montgomery had some early-season struggles with the Knights. That led to a trip to the organization’s Arizona facility in late April for one-on-one work on his swing.
A return to Charlotte followed, and the 2021 first-round pick earned the major-league promotion July 4. He made his big-league debut that evening against the Colorado Rockies in Denver.
Montgomery has been a home run force since the All-Star break, with all 19 coming in the second half.
The 19 home runs are the most by a primary shortstop in major-league history over his first 66 career games. His 19th homer, which came Tuesday against the New York Yankees, was one of his favorites.
“It was probably one of the biggest highlights because I was a Yankees fan growing up and my dad was a Yankees fan,” Montgomery said. “My favorite player (Derek Jeter) played here, and so it was pretty cool.”
White Sox shortstop Colson Montgomery hits a two-run home run in the sixth inning against the Yankees on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025, in New York. (Frank Franklin II/AP)
Montgomery entered Thursday third on the team in home runs, trailing Lenyn Sosa (21) and Andrew Benintendi (20).
Manager Will Venable said Montgomery’s season has been, in a word, “impressive.”
“Just going back to my first interaction with him at SoxFest and just seeing him and how comfortable he was on the stage and interacting with teammates and obviously how physical he was,” Venable said Wednesday. “He’s got something special to his personality and to who he is. And then watching him kind of grind through spring training, saw little flashes, but then he gets hurt.
“And then he goes and does what he does, has to end up in Arizona of find himself again. And then to see through all that for him to get to where he was with us and then perform like he did. Just really proud of him and his journey and I think he got to exactly where we envisioned him being as a dude that helps you have a chance to win against any team in the league.”
Montgomery entered Thursday’s series finale against the Yankees with a .226/.298/.502 slash line. In addition to the 19 home runs, Montgomery had seven doubles, 51 RBIs and 39 runs in 67 games.
“I thought it was a pretty productive year,” Montgomery said.
He added that with four games to go, “you can still contribute as much as you can.”
“It’s just the game of adjustments,” Montgomery said. “(It) is something I learned a lot about myself, just being able to adjust good or bad, when things are going well or not. So, I think it’s gone pretty well.”
White Sox shortstop Colson Montgomery fields a ground ball hit by Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia in the sixth inning on Aug. 26, 2025, at Rate Field. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
He’s also played “very consistent” defense at shortstop, according to general manager Chris Getz.
“You look at how accurate his throws are, the steadiness of his glove,” Getz said last week. “He’s a reliable defender that oftentimes people point to his height (6-foot-3) and is he going to be able to stick at shortstop, I think he’s proven that he can and he can make an impact defensively.
“The way that he leads the entire field, the captain so to speak on the infield. He’s got that presence about him. We feel very confident that he’s going to be able to remain at shortstop for a while and we feel very fortunate to have him at that position.”
Montgomery said his defensive mindset has been, “Don’t try to do too much. Field the ball and throw it to first.”
“Sometimes it might not look pretty, but if you get the out, you can’t really say much,” he said. “It just goes back to believing in myself and knowing I’m a shortstop.”
Montgomery’s offseason plans include going over areas for improvement.
“The biggest thing is you want to try to bulletproof your body as much as you can to be able to play 162 (games),” he said. “That’s the goal and pretty much one of the things I’ll go into the offseason mostly worried about. You can do as much (offseason) hitting, but if you are not on the field, you can’t perform.”