Kannapolis 2025 Year in Review: 19 Ballers Make the Jump to High-A
Christian Oppor
Promotions. They may be the most important way to measure the short-term success of a minor-league team. And by that yardstick, the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers excelled, sending 19 players to Winston-Salem in 2025.
Leading the way are two stars, Caleb Bonemer and Braden Montgomery. Given how far these two studs are likely to advance in the 2026 season, I suspect we’ll forget they were even in Kannapolis for the outset of the 2025 season.
Montgomery was too talented and experienced for Low-A and played just 18 games in Kannapolis before moving up, while the much younger Bonemer spent all but two weeks of the season with the Cannon Ballers. He started the season strong, became worn down and struggled a bit but then returned from the All-Star break refreshed and finished the year like gangbusters. He’s now a fixture in every top 100 prospect list.
In 96 games with the Ballers, Caleb hit .281, with a .400 obp and a .458 slug. He pounded out 26 doubles, 3 triples and 10 homers along the way, plus 27 stolen bases in 35 attempts, as well as 68 walks to 91 strikeouts.
On the mound, starter Christian Oppor dominated Low-A hitters before he too got the call to pack his bags. Surprise ace Grant Umberger finally got the bump to Winston-Salem as well with a week left in the season.
Other Kannapolis position-player promotions included Ryan Burrowes, TJ McCants, Lyle Miller-Green, Jordan Sprinkle, Cal Harris, Jorge Corona, Miguel Santos, Arxy Hernandez and Grant Magill. In addition, six relievers were bumped up as well.
What About George?
Beyond promotions, the biggest question mark on the success of the season is attempting to quantify the progress of 19-year-old slugger George Wolkow.
Statistically, 2025 was a step forward, including 16 doubles, two triples, and 13 home runs, plus 55 walks and a strikeout rate of 29.6%. But, beyond these stats, I’m told by the White Sox that the 19-year-old’s contact rates, plate discipline and hard hit rates showed marked improvement. All I know is that his at bats seemed to be much more competitive, especially versus breaking pitches, against which he was over-matched in 2024.
Overall, the team was 64-68, third fewest wins in the 12-team Carolina League.
But the team had its moments, most notably a surge in late June that came up just a tad short for the first-half division pennant. (Minor leagues divide their seasons in half, with two pennant races.)
Of course, the won-loss record doesn’t come close to capturing the ups and downs of the season, with so many players coming and going. As guys were being put on the IL, promoted and/or released, they were replaced by youngsters like Adrian Gil and Abraham Nunez along with a wave of older, college guys in early August from the 2025 draft. As a result, the roster for the final month of the season had just a handful of familiar faces.
Familiar Faces
In addition to Wolkow, those familiar faces most notably included Ronny Hernandez, Javier Mogollon and Nate Archer.
Mogollon’s season started with a bang, but he went on the IL with a hamstring pull in early July and was never able to get back on the field. He ended up playing in just 51 games. Hernandez, meanwhile, was a fixture in the lineup and behind the plate, and was solid from start to finish, hitting .251, with a .344 obp. He’s a line-drive hitter at this point in his career, but he’s still just a kid (20), with time to add power. Defensively, he threw out 37 of 152 base stealers. At 24%, this is just a tick below the major-league average.
Archer’s season started strong as well before plateauing and never bouncing back. He struggled with strikeouts — 128 in 343 at bats.
A lot of the younger guys like Arxy Hernandez, Adrian Gil, Jorge Corona and Abraham Nunez battled strikeouts as well.
Overall, the Cannon Ballers hit .238, the second-highest batting average in the league, along with 64 homers (4th most). They walked 640 times (2nd most) but struck out 1,242 times (3rd most). They also stole an impressive 302-381 bags on the season, second most in the league. The success is as much a point of emphasis by manager Chad Pinder and his staff as well as a reflection on the inconsistent catching and inability of Low-A pitchers to hold base runners.
Bright Spots on the Kannapolis Mound
Three starters, Blake Larson, Mason Moore and Nick Pinto, missed most if not all of the season with injuries. But the remaining guys repeatedly answered the bell, with generally solid results.
Leading the way was Christian Oppor, who made just five very impressive starts with the Ballers before a promotion to Winston-Salem.
But the biggest surprise had to be Grant Umberger, a free agent signee out of the University of Toledo. The 6’4, 225 pound lefty excelled all year, and frankly it was baffling why he wasn’t promoted until just a week to go in the season. Perhaps the White Sox simply needed him to cover innings in Kannapolis? Regardless, he ended up with a team-high 9 wins over 18 starts and 105.2 innings, plus a sparkling 2.56 ERA.
Umberger (and Oppor, before his move to Winston-Salem in mid-May) got a lot of the love but Justin Sinibaldi quietly put together a terrific year as well, with a 3.76 ERA and a 1.24 whip over 22 starts and 91 innings. He’s not a huge strikeout guy; rather, his success comes from an ability to limit walks (35) and homers (6). It’ll be fascinating to see if he can replicate this success with that approach in High-A next year and what if anything the pitching development braintrust can do to improve his effectiveness.
Luis Reyes took the ball 23 times, posting 87 innings and a 4.34 ERA in those starts. The results were solid, though inconsistent, as you might expect from a 19-year-old in his first year of pro ball. But there’s a lot of upside here, despite the risk, with a lively fastball and a wipeout slider.
Another high-upside arm, Mathias LaCombe, arrived in Kannapolis in mid-July with a mountain of hype, and he did nothing to quell the excitement over 7 games, 5 starts and 17.2 innings. Low-A batters hit just .197 off him, with no homers and 23 strikeouts. It’s going to take a couple of years for him to build up substantial innings, but there’s a ton to like here.
Rounding out the rotation were Ricardo Brizuela, with 23 starts, and Kaleb Sophy, with 17 starts. Both had mixed results on the year.
Overall, the Cannon Ballers’ ERA of 4.30 was near the bottom of the league. The team gave up 64 homers (6th worst), 621 walks (4th worst), and 1,001 hits (3rd worst). The team did bring the heat, however, with 1,195 strikeouts, 4th most in the league.
Even if the year-end numbers might not jump off the page, I saw glimmers of hope in the pen, including Jonathan Clark, Joseph Yabbour, Jack Young and Marco Barrios, among many others. Relief pitching in Low-A is terribly inconsistent and the Ballers were no exception.
A peak at 2026
I probably say this every year, but the lineup next year looks strong, likely to be led by several top 2025 draftees, high schoolers Billy Carlson (SS), Jaden Fauske (OF), and Landon Hodge (C), the team’s first-, second- and fourth-round picks, respectively. Other high-school draftees include infielder Matthew Boughton (who reported turned heads in Arizona) and outfielder Derek Cerda.
Whether they are with the Cannon Ballers at the outset of the season or remain behind in Arizona for a bit more seasoning, they’ll eventually join the 2025 draftees and free agents who were assigned to Kannapolis in August to get a jump on their pro careers.
A couple of these guys in particular already look quite comfortable in Kannapolis, led by outfielder Ely Brown, the team’s 12th round pick out of Mercer, who hit .317, with a .417 obp in 101 ABs. He added 17 walks to just 19 strikeouts, and was 15-15 in stolen bases.
Also making a smooth transition to pro ball was 7th rounder Anthony DePino, a third baseman out of the University of Rhode Island who appears to be transitioning to first base. There will be multiple guys vying for playing time in the middle infield and at third base in Kannapolis and Winston-Salem next year while first base offers a much more open path to at bats. A power bat, DePino had 4 doubles and 2 homers in 29 games, plus 20 walks to 29 strikeouts.
Free agent outfielder James Taussig got into just 6 games after his mid-August arrival, but opened a few eyes. And, at 6’6, 230 pounds, he’s hard to miss, as were his two doubles and a triple.
For a few other draftees — 6th rounder Colby Shelton, 13th rounder Rylan Galvan, and 16th rounder Kaleb Freeman — the transition wasn’t as immediate and will take a bit longer.
Not to be overlooked, next year should also see the belated arrival of two other noteworthy draft picks — from 2024 — outfielders Nick McLain (3rd round) and Casey Saucke (4th round) — both of whom were injured this year and both of whom could make a lot of noise and be fast movers through the system.
So how about this as a lineup at some point next year in Kannapolis:
Brown, OF
Carlson, SS
Fauske, OF
DePino, 1B
Saucke, DH
McLain, OF
Hodge, C
Shelton, 3B
Mogollon, 2B
Bench: Taussig, Galvin, Eblin, Boughton, Cerda, Gil, Freeman, Nunez
Where do I sign up?
