The White Sox have been assertive about calling up their prospects this season. They have had twelve players make their major league debuts this year, and the most recent of them, outfielder Braden Montgomery, ranked 21st overall in MLB’s top 100 prospects, joined the big league club Tuesday night. He introduced himself to the Sox faithful with gusto.

Up to bat in the tenth inning, the Sox trailing the Braves 5-4 and two outs on the board with a runner on third, Montgomery homered just over the White Sox bullpen in left field to give his team a 6-5 win.

“Just how we drew it up,” Montgomery joked. “That was unreal.”

Not just unreal, but rare. Montgomery was only the fifth player in major league history to hit a walk-off home run in his debut. Tuesday night’s homer puts him in a group with Miguel Cabrera.

“It’s history for me. It’s going to be well remembered forever,” Montgomery said. “Any time you are in a sentence with Miguel Cabrera, you are probably in pretty good conversation.”

Delivering a walk-off homer in your major league debut is hardly what’s expected, but like many of the other players the Sox have called up this year, Montgomery is coming up and expected to contribute. The White Sox have been one of the surprise teams of the American League this season, and although they still value the development of their young players, the Sox are calling on the young guys to produce.

“He’s here to play,” manager Will Venable said of Montgomery. “We’re not going to call him up here and sit him on the bench. He’s a guy that we’re excited to have in the lineup on a daily basis.”

Montgomery owned a .970 OPS in 56 games with Double-A Birmingham and Triple-A Charlotte this year, and manager Will Venable said the plan was to bring him up to the majors and give him some runway to play regularly. He can play all three outfield spots, but Venable said to expect him to play mostly in right field, like he did in his debut on Tuesday.

It’s not reasonable to expect Montgomery to produce offensively at the level he was in the minors, at least not right away or with consistency, but because Venable plans to keep penciling him into the lineup for the time being, Montgomery isn’t stepping into the batter’s box trying to prove himself with one at-bat.

“I try not to put pressure on myself at all,” Montgomery said. “You go and you do wherever your name is written. If your name is written on the bench that day, you’re ready for a possibly important pinch hit at-bat. If you’re written in the lineup, you’re ready for whatever that takes.

“It’s really just a matter of being where your feet are and executing whatever role you have for that day.”

Montgomery is coming up in one of the toughest stretches the White Sox have on their schedule. They face the Braves and Dodgers this homestand and then head to the Bronx to face the Yankees. In the past, the Sox might have deliberately chosen a softer landing for debuting their prospects, but that philosophy has shifted.

“The biggest focus all along was getting [Montgomery] to a place where we felt most comfortable about bringing him to the big leagues. It happens to be at this part of the schedule,” general manager Chris Getz said. “We are trying to balance what’s best for a player developmentally as long as being as competitive as we can at the Major League level. We felt like today was the right time.”

Both on an individual level and as a team, the next nine games are something of a proving ground for the White Sox and for guys like Montgomery. Venable has been clear that he thinks his team is for real, but six games at Rate Field against the two best National League teams and three road games against one of the American League’s best will put that belief to the test.

The same is true for a guy like Montgomery. He’s not in Chicago just because it’s the right time in his personal development as a player, but also because the Sox are looking for ways to keep winning.

Whatever happens with Montgomery in the short term, and however the 2026 season turns out for the White Sox, they have already surpassed preseason expectations. No projections had them owning an above .500 record in the second week of June.

It’s possible they will bolster the roster via trade in the next month, but Getz was clear on Tuesday that he does not plan to stray far from his long-term timetable for the White Sox just because they’ve gotten off to a surprisingly good start this season.

“You don’t want to lose sight of the development of these players. That’s been the primary focus. And it will continue to stay on that track,” Getz said. “But I also don’t want to dismiss and be unfair to what these guys are doing. That’s the beauty of baseball and professional sports, you need to recognize how these guys are playing, where we are in the standings.

“The highest priority is finding opportunities to give runway to young players in our Minor League system or a waiver wire acquisition that makes sense to fuel this club. It’s more being respectful to this team and how they are playing but not losing sight of the future of the Chicago White Sox and what we built, where our farm system is.”

At the same time, it’s hard to ignore what seems possible for the White Sox this season. Sure, on paper the most important thing is to be mindful of the development process for guys like Montgomery, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to deny that the Sox have some serious juice.

And it’s also hard to ignore the fact that Montgomery isn’t alone in joining the big league club and providing some spark. Again, there have been twelve debuts this year — and there will be more — including Jacob Gonzalez, who has been in the majors for barely over a week. He was called upon to take Munetaka Murakami’s place when he strained his hamstring. Gonzalez has a .887 OPS so far and drove in the game-tying run in the seventh inning on Tuesday.

“Especially right there, it’s impressive what [Mongtomery] did because all of us would have wanted to hit a walk-off home run right there,” Gonzalez said, “and to actually do it and be calm […] Very impressive, and props to Braden, because that was sick.”

It could be a memorable summer, and even fall, on the south side.