It happens in an instant, as though God blew out the flame of summer and chilled the fall breeze. I remember standing at the top of the dugout with my arms draped over the protective fencing watching the sun duck behind the left field trees and sucking in the minty autumn air. The seasons were shifting and it meant the end of baseball, the beginning of football and an extended season for the gifted few.
I stood next to Stefan Gartrell, a fellow late-round pick that had just been given his marching orders to report to Double-A and then make his way to Arizona for instructional-league work. I was envious and relieved. I had shed 20 pounds under the heavy summer heat and punishing schedule but missing an invite to the instructional league was a depressing reminder of my rank-and-file order within the organization.
The White Sox announced their 2017 instructional league roster on Monday inviting a congress of recent draft picks to Arizona for extra work. Joining the White Sox 2017 draft class is a dash of heralded prospects netted in trades. Dylan Cease, Ian Clarkin and Ti’Quan Forbes will travel to Glendale to work with White-Sox coaches while Blake Rutherford will join them as well.
Meanwhile, Zack Collins will grind through another protracted and arduous season at Instructs. Although he played a full season at the University of Miami before being drafted last year, the burden was less burdensome with small breaks between seasons. Collins reported to big-league camp in mid-February with pitchers and catchers and played a full billing in 2017.
After 113 games, he will make his way back to Arizona and continue overhauling his swing while fine-tuning his skills behind the plate. Collins is one of the few call-backs from last year and might play a mentor role to Evan Skoug, the White Sox slugging catcher grabbed in the seventh round from Texas Christian University.
Collins was believed to have near major-league ability at the plate when he was drafted but White Sox brass wanted Collins to polish himself behind the dish. He caught pen after pen in the Arizona Fall League last fall and adjusted his offseason routine to relieve the pounding a catcher’s body takes and create more flexibility. The one thing he didn’t do was adjust his swing.
But professional pitchers muted Collins thunderous bat in his second season. So, he is going back to the drawing board.
“When guys are stepping up on the rubber and they’re throwing 94-95 mph at you, the last thing you want to be going through your head is how to change your swing or how to adjust your swing,” White Sox scouting director Nick Hostetler told James Fegan of The Athletic. “I’ve said it a thousand times about the catching, and catching can delay the development of the bat, and it’s true.”
Indeed catchers are shouldered with a much heavier load to carry to the major leagues than other positions. Besides solving the riddle of professional pitchers, they must learn how to outsmart professional hitters while managing the game from behind the plate. Yet, Hostetler has a bottomless well of confidence in Collins saying he would have taken the Floridian with the first-overall pick if he was blessed with it.
“…hitters hit,” Hostetler went on about Collins. “Sometimes when you get in a rut…and it’s not working for you, you have to go back to the basics and you have to go back to what’s comfortable.”
The hitch is Collins’ pesky flaw. Some hitting coaches would view Collins’ last minute batt waggle as a palpitation to feel the barrel and create whip. Others would observe that it is an invitation for pitchers to pepper him up and in, and that is what pitchers did. Throughout the season opposing pitchers raked Collins around the zone and exposed weaknesses.
Most teams want catchers to be just that, catchers first. It seems Collins will survive behind the plate and when he figures out a proper balance in his mechanics he will be an offensive force given his discerning eye.
The others
Fourteen other rookies will head to the instructional league. Jake Burger, Gavin Sheets, and Luis Gonzalez will head to Arizona as a trio of top-picks with work to do this fall. Noticeably absent are Louisville products, Lincoln Henzman and Kade McClure. Both pitchers fared well in their rookie campaigns and White Sox officials may have wanted to give their arms a break rather than push the limits too quickly.
Craig Dedelow is also remiss from the instructional league roster after posting a tremendous rookie campaign where he batted .306 with 13 home runs and 55 runs batted in.
