BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Caleb Bonemer got the Futures Game news early, and that tracks. By the time the roster was announced last Thursday, the White Sox prospect already had weeks to sit with the idea of heading to Citizens Bank Park on Sunday.
Bonemer said the heads-up came from Winston-Salem manager Guillermo Quiroz about four weeks ago, a reminder of how long ago that chapter ended for him. He has since moved on to Double-A Birmingham, where he’s already logged 18 Southern League games after getting promoted on June 15.
“Good group of guys; I feel like the I've been comfortable with the level of play as well,” Bonemer said Friday at Regions Field. “It's been fun so far. Just trying to do my thing, not really change a whole lot.”
That approach has carried him through a season that has already packed in plenty of production and a few rough patches. Bonemer is hitting .243/.382/.528 with 21 homers in 79 games overall, and he’s at .262/.385/.431 with three homers and a playable 23 percent strikeout rate since arriving in Birmingham.
His first few months with Winston-Salem were loud. He opened by slugging .750 and had 11 homers by the end of April.
The strikeouts came with it, though, as he fanned 31 percent of the time in that stretch, a jump from the year before in Kannapolis. Bonemer said that wasn’t the part that bothered him most.
“Obviously I don't want to strike out a whole lot, but I don't think strikeouts are the end of the world, because my game is obviously hitting for power, pulling the baseball,” he said.
What changed as the season rolled on was the way pitchers attacked him. The strikeout rate dropped, but so did the damage.
In April, he posted a .284 average, .396 on-base percentage and .750 slugging percentage. In May, those numbers fell to .214/.396/.405.
In June, he hit .196/.328/.471.
Bonemer said he spent time adjusting after seeing more breaking balls than fastballs, something Ryan Fuller and James had discussed a few weeks earlier as a rarity for a low-minors prospect. A visit from Fuller helped, too.
“The first month, I was hammering fastballs pull side, and then for a while there in that second month, I was barely getting any heaters, and the ones I was getting I was missing,” Bonemer said. “So I was just getting a lot of spin and it was hard for me to keep them fair because I was really out front on everything.
“It is my strength, getting the ball up front and getting it in the air, but obviously I can't do that too much or I'm just going to pull everything foul.”
He also took a beating. Bonemer was hit by pitches 15 times in 278 plate appearances with the Dash, reaching his 2025 total of eight HBPs in just 27 games. He said he wasn’t trying to crowd the plate, but he believed teams were working him inside.
“I don't try to lean in, but I mean, I think for a while there, I think a lot of teams are just trying to throw me inside,” he said. “In A-ball, some guys might not have best feel, but I think probably just a lot of teams trying to throw me in, and just a couple just kind of get away on 'em.”
He added that the pattern may have started because he was pulling too many balls foul on the inner half.
“I think the reason why a lot of teams are trying to throw me in was because for a while there, I was pulling a lot of balls foul on the inner half, it was kind of hard for me to keep them fair,” he said.
The hits by pitch didn’t knock him out for long, though his wrist did require X-rays at one point. He hasn’t been hit in 26 games now, which might be one small benefit of facing more advanced pitching in Double-A.
The power is still showing up. Bonemer’s first Birmingham homer came on June 28 in the form of a grand slam during a four-hit game against Knoxville. Then on Saturday, he recorded his first two-homer game against Montgomery.
Right now, the glove is the messiest part of the package. Bonemer made five errors in his first four games at shortstop in Birmingham, including three in two innings on June 25.
“It could be a little bit better, yeah,” he said.
His defensive usage has already shifted. While he played shortstop twice as often as third base in 2025, his time in Winston-Salem leaned more toward third, and Birmingham manager Pat Leyland described the current setup as “third base primarily, shortstop once in a while, just to keep him active over there.”
At 20, Bonemer has time to iron out the rough edges. He’s already ahead of the usual timeline, and if he had gone to college, he wouldn’t have been draft-eligible until next season. Instead, he’s in the middle of his second productive pro year.
Bonemer was committed to Virginia before the White Sox took him in the second round, 43rd overall, of the 2024 draft and signed him to an over-slot bonus just shy of $3 million. If MLB’s current proposal to raise the draft age to 20 had been in place when he finished at Okemos High School in Michigan, he said the result would have been a tough one to swallow.
“I would have been very disappointed because obviously I wouldn't be in the spot I am now,” he said.
“Yeah, I wouldn't be happy with that, because being a high school guy and being young and playing against guys who are a few years older than me, it helps me out a lot, so if they changed that rule, that would be disappointing.”
For Bonemer, though, the path already taken is the one that matters. He put it simply when asked about the White Sox stepping in.
“Luckily, the White Sox swooped in and gave me a good deal, and yeah, now here we are.”
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