Everson Pereira Latest High-Upside Project For Thrifty White Sox

The White Sox have lost 324 games the last three seasons, including at least 101 per season. They are in danger of joining the expansion Washington Senators as the only major league team to ever lose 100 four years in a row.

Yet they currently project to have an Opening Day patrol of about $56 million next season. So much for feeling a sense of urgency to start winning.

Rather than focusing on a quick turnaround, the White Sox continue to methodically collect prospects and controllable big-leaguers who have flashed potential without establishing themselves.

The latest of those is 24-year-old center fielder Everson Pereira, who once hit 20 home runs in a stretch of 49 games. He was acquired along with infielder rotation candidate Tanner Murray in a Nov. 18 deal with Tampa Bay.

While the 26-man roster will continue to evolve, Pereira is positioned to platoon in a corner outfield spot. He could replace Luis Robert Jr. in center field if General Manager Chris Getz receives an offer he can’t refuse for him.

Getz expects Pereira to get the kind of long look that has come to corner infielder Miguel Vargas, catchers Kyle Teel and Edgar Quero, middle infielder Chase Meidroth and the versatile Curtis Mead since they were acquired in trades. Players who felt squeezed elsewhere sometimes thrive when they find an organization hanging a vacancy sign.

“When you have these young guys, this is such an amazing opportunity for you to get 500 plate appearances and establish, or continue to establish, yourself as a major league player,” hitting coach Derek Shomon told MLB.com. “It’s exciting.”

Shomon shares that feeling with the young players. The 35-year-old who began his coaching career with the independent Schaumburg Boomers was hired away from the Miami Marlins, where he was an assistant hitting coach. He’ll work alongside Ryan Fuller, the organization’s second-year director of hitting, to try to get results from the newcomers and homegrown players like Colson Montgomery, Lenyn Sosa and Brooks Baldwin.

Pereira is a native of Cabudare, Venezuela. The Yankees signed him for a bonus of $1.5 million in 2017, when he was 16. He didn’t play 100-plus games until his age-21 season but created over-sized expectations by hitting .303 with 20 homers and a 1.084 OPS as the Yankees shipped him between the rookie complex team in Tampa and Class A stops Tampa and Hudson Valley.

It’s fair to say the potential was noticed. Pereira quickly joined the list of top New York prospects and by 2023 had earned a spot on Baseball America’s list of the top 100 prospects in baseball.

Pereira has hit .271 with an .881 OPS and 39 homers in 153 games at the Triple-A level, and was only 22 when he made his big-league debut with the Yankees. But outside of the mid-1990s it has always been tough for young hitters to get a shot in the Bronx — think Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada — so it was no surprise he was traded after not hitting the ground running.

The Rays gave Pereira only a 23-game look last season before swapping him and Murray for Steven Wilson and Yoendrys Gomez, pitchers who can give them innings. Getz is thrilled by the upside he presents.

While Pereira has hit an abysmal .146 with 68 strikeouts in 158 at-bats in his stints in New York and Tampa Bay, he has shown both plus bat speed (74.1 miles per hour) and the ability to lay off pitches out of the strike zone (23.5 percent chase rate). His Statcast metrics included an above-average hard-hit rate (44.7 percent) and average exit velocity (90.5 mph) last season.

But he swings and misses at far too many pitches to drive the ball consistently. The hope is that Fuller and Shomon will be able to unlock his potential, as Fuller and the organization’s other coaches did with rookie shortstop Colson Montgomery last season.

He had hit .214 with a .710 OPS at Triple-A Charlotte in 2024 but earned some Rookie of the Year votes by hitting .239 with 21 homers and an .840 OPS in 255 at-bats after joining the White Sox last June. Vargas, who was traded from the Dodgers after hitting .201 in his first 129 games in the majors, continued his struggles in Chicago but hit .243 with 15 homers and a .752 OPS in his last 110 games in 2025.

Sosa, who had shuttled between Rate Field and Charlotte in 2023 and ’24, earned a regular spot in Will Venable’s lineup by hitting .264 with 22 home runs. Teel, Quero and Meidroth all hit at least .253 as rookies, locking in their presence in the franchise’s future plans.

This new-found success developing hitters undoubtedly played a role in claiming 29-year-old outfielder Derek Hill on waivers in late September. He’s a former first-round pick whose tools still speak loudly but has hit only .229 with a .277 OPS in 218 major-league games, thanks largely to striking out almost six times more than he walks.

Hill is the only player on the White Sox roster who is arbitration-eligible for the second time. Getz chose to tender him a contract based at least in part on the hope Fuller, Shomon and the other coaches can help him emerge as more than a bottom-of-the-order hitter.

While the White Sox have the payroll flexibility to compete for top-level free agents, look for them to be active trying to scoop up more entry-level talent.

They left some of their top-30 prospects unprotected in the upcoming Rule 5 draft to keep their 40-man roster at 36. The Sox have the second overall pick and could make as many as four selections in the winter meetings event.

Outfielder Braden Montgomery, a 2024 first-rounder acquired from Boston in the Garrett Crochet trade, is arguably the most intriguing prospect in the White Sox system. Middle infielder Jeral Perez, who led the South Atlantic League in home runs, joins utility infielder Ben Cowles, and outfielders Samuel Zavala and Dru Baker on the list of acquired hitters in the wings.

White Sox fans who look only at the American League standings must be at their wit’s end. But Getz has quietly established a process that may eventually lead to sustained success. The organization is getting incrementally more promising – one young, well-coached hitter at a time.