Colson Montgomery racks up big moments as rookie year winds down: ‘He’s a dude’

WASHINGTON — Colson Montgomery’s season was memorable enough before the White Sox headed out for their final road trip of the season.

First Montgomery added to a lengthy rookie highlight reel with a home run in his first trip to Yankee Stadium, against the team he grew up rooting for as a budding shortstop in Holland, Indiana.

Then he helped his team steal a victory over the Nationals Friday with a ninth-inning dinger, his 20th since his July Fourth call-up, all of them since the All-Star break. He tagged the Nats for No. 21 on Saturday, too.

It’s the highest home run total ever recorded by a primary shortstop in his first 70 career games. It’s the best rookie output for the Sox since Eloy Jimenez’s ceiling looked sky-high.

And Montgomery and the Sox are hoping that it’s just the beginning.

“It’s just the game of adjustments,” Montgomery said on the eve of wrapping up his first big-league campaign. “I felt like this year I learned a lot about myself, just being able to adjust, good or bad, when things are going well or not. I think it’s gone pretty well.”

That’s the understatement of the year coming from a 23-year-old long heralded as the future franchise cornerstone, who couldn’t crack the team out of spring training — and couldn’t hack it in his first month of the season at Triple-A Charlotte, prompting a desert sabbatical to set his hitting mind straight.

“I learned a lot about myself more than just baseball. How to deal with some failures,” Montgomery said. “I felt like I learned a lot just from defensively that too, and more mentally being aware of certain things you need to do in certain situations and try to slow the game down as much as you can.”

It’s worked as Montgomery has jumped to a .239/.309/.534 line with 9 doubles and 55 RBI. He leads the team with 2.9 WAR despite playing less than half a season, while giving baseman Lenyn Sosa a run for his money for the team lead in homers as the season winds down (22 for Sosa).

The 6-3 shortstop says he’s just as proud of the progress he’s made with his glove, after years of doubts cast by scouts who say his big frame doesn’t profile at short in the long-term. Montgomery, who has also played 12 games at third base, announced his arrival to the big leagues with a diving, over-the-shoulder web gem to catch a fly in his debut at Colorado.

But he’s more focused on keeping things simple with the glove as much as the bat.

“I feel like some rookies can probably get stuck in trying to do too much in a situation when maybe the situation only tells you to do one thing,” Montgomery said. “Sometimes it might not look pretty, but if you get the out, you can’t really say much. It just goes back to believing in myself and knowing I’m a shortstop.”

His knack for coming through in big moments, along with his outgoing nature, has made him an instant leader in a young clubhouse.

“He’s got something special to his personality and to who he is,” manager Will Venable said. “For him to get to where he was with us and then perform like he did, and really kind of overnight just feel like he’s a dude out there, and a major-league shortstop that looks like he’s going to be around for a little bit — I’m just really proud of him and his journey.”

Now he’s got to prove he can do it again, if the Sox are to have any chance of righting their rebuilding ship.

“The biggest thing is you want to try to bulletproof your body as much as you can to be able to play 162,” he said. “That’s the goal and pretty much one of the things I’ll go into the offseason mostly worried about.”