The White Sox prospect picture has changed fast, and the biggest reason is sitting inside the historic 2026 Draft class.
MLB Pipeline’s midseason Top 30, released Thursday, reflects that shift. It also shows how much Chicago had to protect at the Trade Deadline.
Caleb Bonemer, the shortstop-third baseman at No. 2, drew plenty of interest from other clubs around Aug. 3.
Billy Carlson, ranked No. 3, was in that same conversation. Together with Bonemer, the White Sox have three prospects in MLB Pipeline’s Top 100.
General manager Chris Getz said the organization had no interest in stripping away the kind of young talent it has spent time building.
“We have a lot of players who were asked for from our prospect group. It’s not that we were dismissive and unwilling,” Getz said. “It just didn’t make sense with some of the asks.
“It’s very clear that a Caleb Bonemer, a Billy Carlson, very attractive pieces, but then with us wanting to maintain the group that we have been able to grow on the Minor League side, that’s only going to help us in the future. We felt like we were able to accomplish adding wins to our Major League club but also maintaining prospect depth.”
That depth got a major boost from the ’26 Draft, which sent eight players into the White Sox Top 30 - the largest Draft pool in baseball history. Roch Cholowsky, the top pick overall, leads the group at No. 11.
Cholowsky has already started at High-A Winston-Salem and entered Saturday 6-for-33 with one home run, three doubles, 10 RBIs, three runs scored, six walks and three stolen bases in eight games. He signed for a record $10.35 million bonus, and he made an impression before his first professional at-bat by taking 25 players from the White Sox Draft class to dinner at Steak 48 in Charlotte during camp just days after the selections.
The move was meant to create a memory, and it seems to have landed the way he hoped. There’s also the talent. Getz wouldn’t pin down a big league timetable, but he left the door open for a possible Major League arrival during the ’27 season.
“He's a player that, just like most highly talented players, they'll let us know,” said Getz, who was hesitant to put a big league arrival timeline on Cholowsky. “We just want him to go out there and be himself and be the best version of Roch Cholowsky that exists.
“We're going to support him in doing that and we're very confident that he's going to take to professional baseball and being in a White Sox uniform, and he's eventually going to help us when the time arises. … He’s just very comfortable in his own skin.
Very determined to be a productive Major League player. He’s a great teammate.”
The rest of the White Sox top group now includes Bonemer at No. 2, Carlson at No.
3, Hagen Smith at No. 4 and Cole Prosek at No. 5.
Beyond the headliners, Pierce George made one of the biggest jumps in the system. The 13th-round pick in the 2024 Draft went from unranked in the preseason to No. 20 at midseason.
Across Single-A Kannapolis, Winston-Salem and Double-A Birmingham, the right-hander owns a 4.20 ERA with 64 strikeouts in 49 1/3 innings, a 1.09 WHIP and a .184 opponents’ average. His time with the Barons has been rougher, though, with a 7.23 ERA in 16 games and 18 2/3 innings, along with 18 strikeouts and 11 walks.
Jeral Perez went the other direction. The infielder, who was No. 15 in the preseason and now is unranked, put together a big year at Winston-Salem last season with 22 homers and 24 doubles.
He opened this season in Birmingham but struggled to a .180 average and .563 OPS, then returned to Winston-Salem and has hit better there. Even so, he has only six home runs in 350 at-bats overall.
The Draft class keeps showing up throughout the rankings. After Cholowsky, the White Sox also have Prosek at No.
5, Landon Thome at No. 6, Joey Volchko at No.
9, Alex Weingartner at No. 15, Kyle Casteel at No.
16, Cal Scolari at No. 26 and Eric Segura at No. 28.
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