Mason Adams made his first game appearance since September 2024 on Monday, giving the White Sox a much-needed positive update from their group of young pitchers recovering from Tommy John surgery.
It's been a while since we got a positive update on one of the many Chicago White Sox pitchers recovering from Tommy John surgery.
Last year, key young arms Drew Thorpe, Ky Bush, Mason Adams, Prelander Berroa, and Juan Carela all missed the entire season recovering from Tommy John surgery.
When it rains, it pours, and the White Sox certainly felt that while watching so many of their young arms go down. Young pitching was widely viewed as the organization's greatest strength before 2025. But as we sit here with a White Sox team playing over .500 baseball in May of 2026, pitching has become the biggest weakness and source of uncertainty moving forward.
White Sox fans have been wondering when they might see some of these pitchers back on the mound. Many of them had either already pitched in the big leagues or were on the precipice of an MLB debut before going down. So the big question on everyone's mind was whether or not the White Sox could get contributions from this crop of rehabbing arms in 2026.
Berroa was the first of the bunch to make a rehab appearance, but he faced just one batter in the Arizona Complex League before being pulled from the game with right elbow inflammation. He has since been shut down again.
Fortunately for White Sox fans, Monday provided the first real positive update for any of these arms. Right-handed pitcher Mason Adams started for the ACL White Sox. It was the first time we've seen him pitch in a game since September 18, 2024.
Adams completed two innings against the ACL Athletics, allowing one hit, one run, and recording one strikeout. The only hit allowed was a leadoff single, which came around to score on a pair of groundouts following a stolen base.
In his second inning of work, Adams had a 1-2-3 frame with a pair of groundouts and a swinging strikeout.
It obviously might take a while before Adams gets stretched out to handle the regular workload of a starting pitcher, but it shouldn't be much longer now before he returns to Triple-A Charlotte or Double-A Birmingham to pitch against legitimate competition.
Anything the White Sox get out of these arms in 2026 is house money, but for a pitcher who was on the verge of making his MLB debut, it's starting to look like we could see Adams in Chicago at some point this season, provided everything continues as planned.
Even at 26 years old, Adams remains the No. 12 ranked prospect in the White Sox organization by MLB Pipeline, a testament to his potential and MLB floor. Evaluators believe he'll at worst be a back-end arm in an MLB rotation thanks to his excellent pitch sequencing, control, and off-speed stuff.
