The No. 1 pick delivers not only elite talent but unmatched draft capital, giving the White Sox a rare chance to fast-track their rebuild.
Chicago White Sox fans braced for a shot to the heart on Tuesday evening as the MLB Draft Lottery unfolded from the Winter Meetings in Orlando.
Instead, they got a shot to the arm — a jolt of hope injected straight into the rebuild as the White Sox landed the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft.
For a franchise that’s felt cursed at times, weighed down by decades of bad luck and organizational missteps, this was a rare moment where the baseball gods finally smiled on the South Side.
The club lost a record 121 games in 2024, but due to new MLB lottery rules, they were ineligible to pick higher than 10th in the 2025 MLB Draft. Because it’s the White Sox, so of course that was the new rule, when for decades the worst team in MLB has received the number one pick and an opportunity to get a face of the franchise player.
But ultimately, it may have been a blessing in disguise.
Had the White Sox been eligible for the lottery last year, they would have picked sixth overall — the slot they drew — despite being the worst team in baseball by a mile. Then this year, they would’ve been stuck picking 10th (like the Rockies) in a much stronger draft class.
Instead, the Rockies and Nationals — two teams that normally would share equal odds with Chicago — were ineligible for the No. 1 pick. That pushed the Sox’ chances higher, and they cashed it in. The result: the first pick in a great draft class with a clear-cut selection at the top of the draft board in UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky.
Cholowsky is already touted as the best all-around college shortstop in 20 years. If he were eligible today, some evaluators believe he might already rank as a Top 10 prospect in all of baseball. He's that good.
Landing the No. 1 pick could reshape the entire trajectory of the franchise — whether the White Sox ultimately select Cholowsky or someone else.
But the value of that pick goes far beyond simply choosing the best player in the draft.
The No. 1 Pick Also Gives the White Sox the Largest Bonus Pool
The top pick doesn’t just give the White Sox first choice — it gives them more spending power than any other team.
Under MLB’s draft system, every pick in the first 10 rounds comes with an assigned slot value, and those values make up a team’s bonus pool. The higher you pick, the larger your pool.
Because the first pick carries the highest slot value in the entire draft — typically several million dollars more than the picks that follow — the White Sox will automatically enter 2026 with the largest bonus pool in the league.
That financial advantage matters. A lot.
It allows the Sox to go "over slot" to sign elite talent that falls due to bonus demands, take calculated risks on high-ceiling high school players, and spread money strategically across rounds to build one of the deepest draft classes in baseball.
In short, the No. 1 pick doesn’t just mean selecting the best player. It means maximizing the entire draft — and building the strongest overall class possible in a deep talent year.
The White Sox Have Done This Before
We’ve already seen the White Sox use their pool money creatively to build better draft classes. After selecting Hagen Smith fifth overall in 2024, Chicago floated high school shortstop Caleb Bonemer to pick No. 43 and signed him for just under $3 million.
Bonemer is now a Top 75 prospect in baseball, and he could skyrocket even higher in 2026.
That’s the beauty of the MLB Draft: if you scout well and allocate your money wisely, you can find gems outside the first round.
White Sox fans should expect Chicago to take the best player available on draft day — someone who will immediately become a Top 20 prospect in the sport — and still walk away with one of the deepest, most upside-rich draft classes in the league.
The No. 1 pick is a turning point. The bonus pool is an accelerant. Together, they could become a catalyst for meaningful, sustainable progress in a rebuild that already has some momentum.