The ACL season seemed to sneak up on everybody, given that as of this writing there hasn’t been a single word published about the season out there, with one game in the books. So we’ll run out a standalone season preview/Opening Morning result here, then incorporate the ACL into our regular Minor League Updates from here on out.

ACL Brewers 7, ACL White Sox 6 (7 innings)
For a sport that has shrunk its minor leagues ostensibly to save money make the remaining teams stronger and more competitive, MLB sure does sweep its Stateside rookie league into a corner. There’s no season previewing (hell, there aren’t even rosters) and there is no (or minimal) social media covering the players and games. Sure, the minute an ACL player catches any fire he heads to Low-A, but MLB is too busy to even mildly promote some of the most significant players in pro ball?

Anyhow, all that is to say it was a surprise to me when I clicked today’s White Sox minor league boxes and saw the ACL in action! This morning’s game was a seven-inning affair, which many/most in the ACL end up becoming. Perhaps that’s the new rule rookie ball, your guess is as good as mine. It seems at this level they’re just making up rules at the exchange of lineup cards, like a father-son 16´´softball game or B-list comedian celebrity roast.

Adrian Gil was a bad, bad, bad man in the DSL in 2023 and took it on the chin his first year Stateside, last summer. Well, he opened his season with authority, tripling and homering and almost assuredly on the road to doing something crazy like a rookie league cycle if not for the truncated seven-inning contest. It was Gil’s homer in the top of the seventh that brought the Complex Sox to within 7-6, but the boys just ran out of time. (We’re gonna ignore the fact that Gil had tripled in the fourth and was thrown out at home on a ground ball back to the mound from Jurickson Profar. Was this in fact a safety or suicide squeeze gone wrong? A line shot that hit the Brew’s pitcher in the gut? Hey, we’re lucky to know it was 82° at 11:02 a.m. first pitch, any details beyond that are gravy.)

Libourne, France’s own, 2023 12th-rounder Mathias LaCombe, finally made his pro debut today, starting and getting knocked around by Beertown ACL: 2 ⅓ IP, 3 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, HR, HB, and yes, the loss.

Down 4-0 in the first inning, the Complex Sox could not recover, true to their traditional form.

So, if not already well-established, this preview is written up completely in the dark. There’s not much use speculating on guys surfacing in Arizona as soon as tomorrow, so let’s just take a look at players active in the season opener and refresh you on some key names.

But first, I’m just a hobo baseball writer, but help me out here. Is it a good thing when a rebuilding team coming off of a 121-loss season has just one prospect listed among the ACL’s Top 20 Notable Prospects?

And, again, I’m slow on the uptake sometimes, but it’s not great when the one player ID’d as Notable won’t be playing at all this season due to Tommy John surgery four months ago … right?

Anyway, no, Blake Larson will not be Notable in the White Sox org until 2026 at the earliest. So check back in a year from now and the promising prep southpaw will get previewed here, somehow, maybe.

Although I just wrote that we shouldn’t speculate on who will be in Arizona, working off of one seven-inning box score isn’t ideal, either. Here’s a list of South Side Sox Top 100 prospects who are (or are likely to be) active in Arizona this spring:

64. Stiven Flores, C
65. T.J. McCants, CF
77. Reudis Diaz, RHP
78. Jurdrick Profar, SS
95. Adrian Gil, 1B
98. Marcelo Acala, RF

All six of these players, it just so happens, were active today, so … CONFIRMED PLAYERS!

Of the above, Jurickson Profar seems most intriguing. Over at Sox Populi we named him one of our 30 All-Stars in the org, as he mashed pretty well (.390 SLG) and got on base (.397 OBP) while playing young for the DSL — which I don’t have to tell you means he was barely old enough to drive. But he struck out quite a bit, so who knows. He does seem like a guy who could end up going nuts in the ACL, like José Rodríguez did in 2019.

On the pitching side, well, throwing a dart blindly, Reudis Diaz impressed me a ton with his DSL work (in a second season there in 2024, still young for the level): 2.04 ERA, 0.962 WHIP, 5.67 K/BB in both starting and relief roles. It was my push alone that got him onto our Top 100 (much less as high as No. 77), so blame me when he disappears from sight in June or call me a genius when he flexes like a mini-Schultz.

There’s one strange story (and sure to be many more) in Arizona, as former MLB third baseman (OK, one at-bat in 2022, K) Joe Perez is on the ACL White Sox … as a pitcher. He did get shelled tonight and had a worse time finding the plate than an actual Position Player Pitching, but fingers crossed he can grow into a Sergio Santos. At just 25, he’s got a chance.