Charlotte Knights Edge Sounds in Close Game as Montgomery Powers Up

Braden Montgomery, the Chicago White Sox's top-ranked position prospect, put the organization's front office on notice Friday night at First Horizon Park, going 2-for-4 with a home run and three RBIs in a 7-6 loss to the Nashville Sounds that Charlotte had every statistical reason to win.

The final score tells only part of the story. The Knights outhit the Sounds 12-6 and went 6-for-13 with runners in scoring position, yet dropped their third loss in four games in a series that has become a recurring test of Charlotte's ability to convert contact into wins. What sank them was a single five-run burst in the bottom of the second inning, four of those runs arriving on one swing of the bat: a two-out grand slam that erased whatever damage the Knights had threatened to do.

Montgomery was the performance that demands the most immediate attention from Chicago's decision-makers. The 22-year-old switch-hitting outfielder, acquired as the centerpiece of the Garrett Crochet trade with Boston, entered 2026 with a 2025 Double-A line of .272/.364/.416 and just one home run in 34 games at Birmingham. His work Friday night suggests the jump to Triple-A has not slowed his bat. With the White Sox carrying a persistent gap in outfield power and right-handed run production, a Charlotte center fielder hitting home runs and driving in three runs against International League pitching is not a prospect the organization can quietly rotate through the system.

Catcher Calvin Harris added a home run and two RBIs of his own, giving Charlotte two different players who connected for long balls in a loss. That kind of production from behind the plate directly addresses another Chicago roster pressure point: the major-league club has had inconsistent pop from the catcher position, and Harris's early-season output gives the front office a legitimate fallback option.

The pitching picture was less flattering. Starter Lucas Gordon lasted just 3.2 innings, surrendering six hits and five earned runs on 83 pitches before exiting with Charlotte already in a hole. The bullpen steadied things considerably: Jacob Heatherly worked a clean frame, Jairo Iriarte scattered no runs across 1.1 innings, and Nick Altermatt struck out three in 1.1 innings while the game remained winnable.

Charlotte's three-run seventh inning showed the competitive character driving this roster. Dustin Harris, Dru Baker, and Tanner Murray each delivered RBI hits to pull the Knights within one run. Baker, Drew Romo, Murray, and Harris all finished the night with multiple hits, turning an afternoon that could have become a blowout into a one-run game decided in the final frames.

Ben Peoples and Brandon Eisert each contributed a scoreless inning from the bullpen in high-leverage situations, the kind of quiet leverage work that gets noticed in organizational depth charts when a big-league team needs a reliable late-inning arm on short notice.

Three games into a difficult stretch, Charlotte sits at the bottom of a win column that should be fuller based on its hit totals and runners in scoring position. The bigger number, though, is Montgomery's: one home run in Charlotte through the season's first week already puts him on a pace he never approached at Double-A a season ago. If that trend holds through April, Chicago's hand gets forced well before summer.