The White Sox are heading into the 2026 MLB draft with a familiar kind of puzzle to solve, and their recent history offers a pretty clear outline of how they may attack it.
With scouting director Mike Shirley in charge since 2020, Chicago has built some repeatable habits. The club has leaned away from high school pitching, kept a close eye on on-base ability in college bats, and used the middle rounds to stockpile arms. The result has been a draft approach that looks less random than it might seem at first glance.
The first trend jumps out quickly: the White Sox have not been eager to chase prep pitching. Since 2023, they’ve made 61 draft selections, and only eight of those players were high schoolers.
Just one of those eight was a pitcher, LHP Blake Larson in 2024. Stretch the window back over the last five years and the total only rises to three pitchers among 13 high school picks, with Noah Schultz and Tanner McDougal joining Larson.
High school arms come with more projection, but that projection also demands more development, and that adds risk. When the White Sox have used early picks on prep talent, they’ve usually gone with position players, often shortstops or outfielders.
That caution with young pitching has not stopped Chicago from loading up on arms elsewhere. In fact, the middle rounds have become a kind of pitching warehouse.
Since 2021, the White Sox have drafted 54 pitchers, and 30 of them came in rounds 6 through 15. That strategy has already produced some useful organizational pieces, including Mason Adams in the 13th round in 2022, Shane Murphy in the 14th round in 2022, and Mathias LaCombe in the 12th round in 2023.
It’s the classic logic of never having too much pitching, and the White Sox have clearly embraced it.
The bat side of the equation has its own pattern, and it starts with plate discipline. Over the last three years, the 24 college hitters the White Sox have selected since 2023 posted an average on-base percentage of .441 in their draft year.
That preference is already showing up in the majors. Sam Antonacci, a former fifth-round pick who carried a .523 OBP in his draft year at Coastal Carolina, currently leads all qualified White Sox hitters in OBP.
Jacob Gonzalez, who posted a .435 OBP in his draft year, has also been seeing meaningful playing time while filling in for Munetaka Murakami at first base. The message from the organization has been pretty clear: teach strength and power later, but start with hitters who already know how to get on base.
Chicago’s overall draft record under Shirley has also stayed fairly even. The team did lean more heavily toward pitchers in 2021 and 2022, but since 2021 it has selected 54 pitchers and 47 hitters.
That balance fits a broader philosophy of rebuilding the farm system without locking into one extreme. Other clubs have their own identities - the Brewers and Rays are known for loading up on pitchers before moving them for bats, while the Angels are associated with targeting players who can help right away - but the White Sox have seemed comfortable keeping things more evenly spread out.
That brings the conversation back to the top of the 2026 board, where the White Sox have to decide between Roch Cholowsky and Grady Emerson. Cholowsky brings the polished college profile, along with a career .448 on-base percentage, strong power numbers, and low strikeout rates across three full seasons at UCLA.
Emerson offers the higher-upside prep route as a shortstop, which would fit the White Sox’s run of early high school bats. Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey has also been mentioned as a possibility, but the team has taken either a shortstop or a left-handed pitcher in every draft under Mike Shirley, and that doesn’t look likely to change now.
The major league club still needs pitching badly, which is why the middle rounds figure to matter again. The White Sox have shown they’re willing to keep drafting arms there, and the recent track record says they’ll keep targeting hitters who already understand the strike zone. That combination has helped build a system that Bleacher Report recently ranked sixth in baseball, and it gives the White Sox a workable blueprint as they try to make the 2026 draft count.
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