Is Madrigal ready to start at second base for White Sox?

Luis Robert didn't go looking for attention when the White Sox opened summer camp three weeks ago at Guaranteed Rate Field.

Nonetheless, the White Sox's 22-year-old wonder child has constantly been in the spotlight as he's opened up the tool box and shown off tool after tool.

The off-balance home runs, incredible range in center field, cannon arm and blazing speed that prompted Sox third baseman Yoan Moncada and former right fielder Avisail Garcia to nickname him “The Panther” in 2018 have made Robert the talk of summer training.

While Robert has been hogging the headlines, there is another young White Sox player that is quietly having an impressive camp.

His name is Nick Madrigal, and we'll let Robert provide the scouting report.

“Since the first moment I saw (Madrigal), I realized he was a pretty good baseball player,” Robert said through a translator. “He's a player with good speed, good defense and great, great contact. Those tools are going to make him a big leaguer pretty soon.

“I don't know if we are going to start the season together but I know sooner rather than later, we're going to be playing together in the majors.”

Last year, Robert and Madrigal were teammates at three different levels in the Sox's farm system — high Class A Winston-Salem, AA Birmingham and AAA Charlotte.

Robert got most of the attention in 2019 as well en route to being voted USA Today's Minor League Player of the Year, but Madrigal showed why the White Sox grabbed him with the No. 4 overall pick in the 2018 draft.

Not only did the 23-year-old prospect bat a combined .311/.377/.414, but Madrigal struck out only 16 times in 532 plate appearances and was a Rawlings Minor League Gold Glove winner.

In regular spring training this year, Madrigal was scuffling in the Cactus League and likely headed back to Charlotte for more seasoning.

That plan was scrapped on March 12, when the coronavirus pandemic halted play. When major-league baseball resumed on July 3 with summer training, Madrigal reported to Chicago.

Manager Rick Renteria and the Sox's coaching staff have noticed a difference.

“More than anything, just the higher level of being comfortable in his own skin,” Renteria said. “We know that he has a skillset to play the game, the major-league baseball game. Our hope this year, before everything that was going on, was to be able to continue to get him seasoned a little bit more, get down there (Charlotte), have some more at-bats, go through the whole process.

“But I think he's felt more and more comfortable. He continued to work through the down time.”

With the regular season opening Friday night at home against the Twins, the White Sox have to decide if Madrigal is ready to take over the starting job at second job.

If not, he could ease his way into the lineup coming off the bench or be assigned to the White Sox's taxi squad that is training at Boomers Stadium in Schaumburg.

Madrigal's choice is obvious, he wants to be on the field vs. Minnesota this weekend.

“Yeah, 100 percent, I feel as ready as ever right now,” Madrigal said. “I feel like not only my on-the-field play is ready, but my body and speed and everything feels game-ready at this moment. I don't know what's going to happen. We should hear pretty shortly here what's going to happen, what the roster's going to look like.

“But I feel ready as ever right now. I had a lot of time to kind of evaluate how I was playing in spring training, and just kind of slow things down. I feel like in spring training, I was not pressing but I feel like I wasn't as comfortable as I am now.”