After selecting Arkansas ace Hagen Smith in the first round and using the next two picks on high school players on Sunday, the White Sox spent the second day of the 2024 MLB draft picking college players, with a heavy emphasis on the outfield.
Besides the absence of subsequent prep picks, you'll also notice a shortage of ranked players. That may give you an indication of how much over slot the White Sox will be going with second-round pick Caleb Bonemer and third-round lefty Blake Larson, which is something Mike Shirley suggested when discussing Day 1.
Come Tuesday, you'll probably see most of the White Sox's Day 3 selections sign for more than several of the Day 2 guys below, because those picks only start counting against the pool money after $150,000.
Third round (78th overall): Nick McLain, OF, Arizona State
Ranks: BA: 208 | ESPN: 222 | MLB: 129 | Law: 83
The brother of Reds infielder and former first-round pick Matt, Nick McLain's ascent was slowed by a pair of hamate injuries, but he finally had a stretch of healthy play since high school and ended up hitting well on the Cape, and following it up .342/.457/.663 with 33 extra-base hits, 33 walks and just 27 strikeouts over 230 plate appearances. The short track record and build (he's a bulky 5'10") helps explain the skepticism of the rankings, because while he has the skills to play right field, the pop needs to prevail. Writing this out -- undersized, brother of an MLB player, corner outfielder who needs to overcome 'tweener traits -- it sounds like a version of Dominic Fletcher, although his switch-hitting ability makes him less natural of a platoon candidate.
Fourth Round (107th): Casey Saucke, OF, Virginia
Ranks: BA: 145 | ESPN: 103 | MLB: 127 | | BP: 53
Baseball Prospectus was very high on Saucke, a 6-foot-3-inch right fielder who has made steady progress over three years with Virginia, aside from a disappointing showing on the Cape. He hit .344/.407/.578 while stealing nine bases in 10 attempts and playing a strong right field. He can turn around good fastballs and the exit velocities are strong. The summer league line (.185/.254/.241) and the 18.2 percent strikeout rate make it fair to wonder how it'll translate to wood bats.
Fifth round (140th): Sam Antonacci, IF, Coastal Carolina
Ranks: BA: 299 | ESPN: 193 | MLB: 201
Move over, Zach Remillard: There's a new Chanticleer utility infielder to steal a coaching staff's heart. Antonacci, a Springfield native who used a strong JuCo season to find his way to a prominent college program, hit .367/.523/.504 with 50 walks over 306 plate appearances. Plate discipline is his calling card, as he doesn't hit for much power and was stretched at shortstop.
Sixth round (169th): Jackson Appel, C, Texas A&M
It took until seven picks, but the White Sox finally selected a Jackson, as well as an unranked player. He transferred from Penn -- where he graduated from the Wharton School of Business -- to Texas A&M for his senior season, and hit hit .331/.422/.534 with 34 walks, 33 strikeouts and 16 stolen bases.
Seventh round (199th): Phil Fox, RHP, Pittsburgh
Fox, 5-foot-9-inch righty, struck out 45 batters against just three walks over 36 2/3 innings for the Panther, and he's up to 41 innings after two scoreless, walkless appearances on the Cape. He does most of the damage with a deceiving flat-angle fastball.
He hails from Greensburg, Pa., which is about 2 hours west of St. Thomas, Pa., which is Nellie Fox's birthplace and final resting place. Coincidence? Looks like it, because this in-depth story about his Pittsburgh connections doesn't mention it. Sorry for wasting your time.
Eighth Round (230th): Aaron Combs, RHP, Tennessee
I asked Josh if he'd seen Combs pitch while covering SEC games, and he had plenty to say:
Down 1-0 in the fifth inning in Game 2 of the College World Series, Tennessee handed the ball to Aaron Combs in hopes of bailing them out of a jam. Volunteers starting pitcher Drew Beam (selected in the 3rd round by Kansas City) put runners on first and second with no outs. The Aggies were champing at the bit, looking to blow the game open and be on their way to winning their first national championship.
Combs stuck with his two primary pitches: a fastball that sits 94 mph and a gnarly curveball in the high 70. Combs throws out of an odd three-quarter-like angle, which generates some sink on his high heaters and gets opposing hitters off balance when the breaking pitches come. It looks like another high fastball out of the hand before it falls off the table, and Combs commanded the pitch well to throw five straight against opposing Aggies hitters.
It was in this pivotal moment that Combs struck out back-to-back batters and benefitted from a fantastic back pick, nailing the runner at first base to escape the jam. Combs pitched four scoreless innings in relief as the offense rallied for the comeback victory to force Game 3, which Tennessee won for its first national championship.
If Combs doesn’t do his job, maybe history shakes out differently for both A&M and Tennessee.
Ninth round (259th): Jack Young, RHP, Iowa
It took one extra level of digging to ascertain Young's position, because this is how his pick surfaced on the MLB.com draft tracker:
It turns out he's a right-handed reliever who struck out 47 batters against 38 baserunners over 32⅔ innings in his fifth-year senior season with the Hawkeyes.
10th round (289th): Cole McConnell, OF, Louisiana Tech
Another fifth-year senior, McConnell hit .378/.461/.671 with 18 homers, which earned him honors as a Dick Howser Trophy semifinalist. The lefty-hitting center fielder doubled his home run total in the same number of plate appearances from 2022. As for 2023, he only played four games before the school suspended him for the remainder of the season due to a violation of team rules. That made the top of this otherwise useful Twitter thread age poorly in hindsight.
Scouting director Mike Shirley explains it all
Just some bullet-point takeaways from your friendly local beat writer:
- Both of the Day 1 high school picks required over-slot bonuses, which Shirley strongly hinted at on Sunday night and is generally a safe assumption with Day 1 prep players. As a result, much of Day 2 was dedicated to college players who could sign at slot or more outright money-saving picks toward the back half.
- There should be some bonus pool room left to take another over-slot swing in the 11th round, but Shirley once again sounded as though Day 1 had accounted for the majority of their draft budget.
- In lieu of being able to chase ceiling in the prep market, McLain and Sauke represent an attempt to bank on proven performers from major conferences/programs. Both have some history of power production, but Shirley notably lauded makeup, know-how, baseball acumen rather than raw tools when talking them up.
- Shirley projected Antonacci as an everyday second baseman with feel to hit, rather than a utilityman future that his history at other positions and Remillardian origins might suggest.
- While the ACL season will end soon, Shirley was confident that there would be bridge leagues and intrasquad games at the complexes to keep prep draftees active.
- All the talk about how much effort the White Sox made on players who got taken before No. 5 makes Hagen Smith sound a bit like a consolation prize at times. In addition to lauding Smith, Shirley detailed that the Sox draft room was 60/40 in preference for Smith over Chase Burns, which presumably is just in terms of college pitching prospects.
- When Brian Bannister spoke last month in Arizona, he talked about wanting to be deferential to Shirley and the scouting department's preferences and providing his insight on pitching prospects when asked. Shirley said nice things about a lot of staff members, but he also echoed those sentiments on workflow, calling Bannister "a great teammate," who was respectful of scouting observations, helped them order the list of targets they had already built.
Previous White Sox draft coverage
- Big themes from Day 1 of the 2024 White Sox draft
- Sox Machine Podcast: Hello, Hagen Smith
- White Sox select Blake Larson with final Day 1 pick of 2024 MLB draft
- White Sox select Caleb Bonemer in second round of 2024 MLB draft
- White Sox select Hagen Smith in first round of 2024 MLB draft
- 2024 MLB Draft: Day 1 Draftchat
