Prospect Week at Sox Machine is leaving the station, and over the course of the next several days, we'll be sketching out more than 50 White Sox prospects, offering assessments on the states of their games as they enter the 2026 season.
The first dozen prospects discussed below just started their pro careers, and most of them haven't even played in a regulation game, making their forecasts the most open-ended of the bunch. Hazard your own guesses below and let's see where the wisdom of the crowd takes us.
Billy Carlson
If everybody on the White Sox 40-man roster was suspended by Major League Baseball for one season due to endangered species trading, and the organization was forced to field a roster only from players already in the system, Chris Getz might choose William Bergolla Jr. to play shortstop for the White Sox over a 162-game season instead of Billy Carlson, because he's sure-handed and has experienced something closer to the speed of a major league game. Given that Carlson is just 19 years old and has yet to play in any official professional games, it's a testament to his toolbox that he requires a hefty amount of consideration.
Carlson drew easy 70 grades for both his fielding and his arm during the draft process, which made him a consensus first-round pick despite questions about his swing, which lacked the fluidity that's his signature on the other side of the ball. He's aware of the doubts and set out to attack shortcomings with his coach, so let's see what it looks like when he finally appears on your screens, whether via Kannapolis livestreams or Arizona Complex League side-angle video. It's probably prudent to prepare for an Adam Everett-like existence out of the box, but if Carlson's hitting were an equally a finished product, there's no way he would've been available at No. 10. And if it somehow all comes together, it'll be very easy to make a star out of him. -JM
Jaden Fauske
Fauske could be Andrew Benintendi. Whatever reaction that sentence produced for you … yes, I think that outcome is on the board.
Benintendi is a former All-Star, a Gold Glove winner and the owner of four separate seasons that are within the margin of error for 3 bWAR, all of which would represent bonkers success for a second-round pick like Fauske, even one that got a $3 million bonus. It was also Benintendi, not Yoán Moncada, who was a unanimous No. 1 overall prospect pre-2017. That sort of prospect helium is probably beyond Fauske’s grasp, but the polished and aesthetically pleasing nature of the 19-year-old’s game could similarly produce low minors performances that overstate his ceiling.
The man can hit. Whether it’s something like a tepidly 55-grade tool or a true 70-grade magic wand will take some time to discern, and either one might be a shoe to the ant that is A-ball pitching all the same. Despite having a hit-over-power projection, Fauske was a multi-sport athlete who is pretty developed for his age and could quite feasibly keep pace with the power production of the best of his peers for now, while also getting a chance to play center field. The odds are slim that he winds up as the best defensive option in center for a division-winning team, but even grading out below-average-but-viable at an up-the-middle position would be another feather in his cap.
Having spent much of his senior year managing his diet to slim down from his former football physique, and doing speed training to make a switch to outfield viable, Fauske doesn’t have the typical path toward fulfilling power projection for a prep pick. The last two years of Benintendi in Chicago give a view to how a sweet-swingy left fielder can clearly demonstrate that they’re a quality major league-caliber hitter, yet still face a very narrow path to accumulating value if their hit tool is merely pretty good, rather than something that keeps them annually in the top-20 in the league for batting average. Prep picks are usually where teams are willing to incur risk in order to have a shot at star ceilings, but Fauske feels like a high-floor inversion of that trend. Whether you think that’s complimentary or derogatory, you might be right. -JF
Kyle Lodise
After choosing longer developmental runways with prep picks Carlson and Fauske in the first two rounds of the 2025 draft, the White Sox added some college polish to the class in the third round with Lodise, a shortstop with Georgia Tech coming off a .329/.429/.667 line in his junior season. Since another prep pick in Caleb Bonemer was manning shortstop at Kannapolis in August, Lodise made his pro debut at Winston-Salem, where he largely struggled outside of one Player of the Week-caliber series against Wilmington.
As presently constructed, Lodise is on the smaller side for a shortstop who hit 16 homers over 55 games with the Yellow Jackets. There's some power there, but it's very pull-conscious, so he may be forced to make a choice between pursuing homers and having the timing to cover higher velocity and better location if “late-blooming” turns into “stopped blooming.” The shortstop play isn't Carlson-grade, but it's sound enough that infielders like Bonemer and Jeral Perez were asked to play elsewhere to accommodate him at Winston-Salem. -JM
Landon Hodge
One of the reasons we can’t just assume Roch Cholowsky will certainly be the No. 1 overall pick is that prep prospects rise and fall very rapidly. It’s as if their bodies are going through some sort of changes; hopefully someone can come up with a name for it. Case in point, within days of reading a pre-draft scouting report about the White Sox fourth-round pick – a high school catcher from Encino, Califorian – and how he needed to add strength, I traveled to bridge camp in Arizona on Sox Machine readers’ dime and met a very jacked youngster who reliably responded to the name Landon. In just the few months since that assessment was written, Hodge had made a lot of progress from being a skinny teen from Encino, and transformed into something closer to a sort of Encino Man.
Despite Battle of Stalingrad casualty levels for high school catching prospects, Hodge’s athleticism, throwing arm and sheer appetite for the mental gymnastics of handling a pitching staff are the strengths of his profile right now. Growing into meaningful power would help an offensive profile that has more question marks, but are those questions up to date? Hodge had a concerning amount of swing and miss in national showcases heading into his senior season, but racked up those whiffs with a different swing. Both of the interviews I’ve had with him since draft day have involved him detailing how an added leg kick allows him to keep his weight back and better track pitches. Is that a profile-changing adjustment for a compelling raw athlete or a marginal tweak for someone whose mitt will have to do the heavy lifting? He’s played zero official professional games, so it’s hard to tell. But these things change quickly. -JF
Matthew Boughton
If Chase Meidroth is proof that the White Sox fan base is perfectly ready to love an ankle-biting, slap-hitting second baseman provided the acquisition price checks in slightly under fourth overall pick, Boughton could be a testament that South Siders can also be made to appreciate a raw, multi-sport athlete who projects as a Leury García clone if the cost is closer to a $200,000 flier in the 11th round of the draft, rather than the primary trade return for Luis Robert Jr.
Boughton spent his prep days competing in a small parochial conference in suburban Dallas that produces few pro athletes, but he also beat their brains in. The matter-of-fact tone in which he describes showing up at track meets and smoking the competition in the long jump despite never having time to really practice adds to its entertainment value, rather than detracts. Boughton has had threadbare exposure to good pitching, his power potential is all just projecting on his frame despite him already being 20, and Sox player development types already selling him as a six-position utility guy is reflective of the uncertainty of his stick. But Boughton is the sort of athlete where Sox employees who aren’t in baseball operations will pull you aside at bridge camp to say I don’t know who this kid is but he seems like a good pick because he can MOVE, which is nice to hear. -JF
Gabe Davis
It’s hard to understand how different of a time 2017 was in the White Sox organization. The current assistant international scouting director was playing left field for the Winston-Salem Dash, Esteban Loaiza hadn’t done any federal prison time yet, and drafting Alec Hansen after a disastrous junior season for a college located in Oklahoma had tanked his first-round hype was looking like a stroke of genius. Building off that last one, Davis entered his junior year at Oklahoma State expected to vault from a wild-but-electric bullpen arm to the ace of the staff. I’m sure it seemed like a compelling idea at the time, but he ended his time in Stillwater back in the bullpen, battling shoulder issues and saddled with a collegiate career walk rate over 14 percent.
The track record for throwing strikes and staying healthy is not encouraging for Davis, and like a lot of Sox pitching picks from last July, he did not pitch after the draft. But the fifth round is where interesting collegiate arms become hard to find, let alone safe ones, and this is a man who is 6’9” and has touched 100 mph. That’s compelling stuff to work with, which is good, because some assembly is obviously required. -JF
Colby Shelton
Based on results, it’s hard to know what to make of Shelton, who clubbed 45 homers against SEC pitching in his first two seasons of college ball but incurred a frightening amount of swing-and-miss to do it, before lifting just seven homers in his draft year while making much, much more contact. Then he hit an absurdly snake-bitten .141/.243/.172 in 27 games at Low-A Kannapolis, on the heels of Jacob Gonzalez ravaging our ability to shake off a proven SEC performer faceplanting in a brief post-draft look.
With the benefit of minor league Trackman data and access to a Synergy account … it’s still more confusing. Shelton looks like he was recently cast in a Marvel movie based on his Instagram posts of his offseason workouts and has me wondering if someone can actually be too jacked to play shortstop, but he put up well below average exit velocities in Kannapolis last summer. He made a roughly average amount of overall contact in his pro debut with solid swing decisions, but had a truly worrisome performance against fastballs, which is a flaw that can quickly make everything else irrelevant. In what’s hopefully a theme going forward, Shelton’s volatility can be shrugged off given the sixth-round acquisition price, and another wild swing to a wholly different shape of results would be welcome now. -JF
Anthony DePino
DePino earned rave reviews from the White Sox's research and development team, as well as Jim's friend, whose nephew was Rhode Island teammates with DePino. The former is likely to possess far more sophisticated descriptors than the latter (“Great kid!”), but DePino's numbers spoke for themselves to some degree, as he hit .354/.505/.730 over 58 games with the Rams before the White Sox selected him in the seventh round and paid him an under-slot bonus ($147,500; slot value $314,500).
DePino played third base exclusively at Rhode Island, but he played only first base when he wore a glove (or mitt) in his pro debut at Kannapolis because the White Sox drafted so many damn shortstops. His initial pro production took a strange shape for a guy listed at 5’11” and 218 pounds. He hit .223/.359/.320 with just six extra-base hits over 29 games with the Cannon Ballers, but he also stole 11 bases in 11 attempts. The left side of the infield doesn't figure to clear up anytime soon, so his immediate future relies on fleshing out his offensive bonafides. -JM
Blaine Wynk
Wynk didn't pitch for the White Sox after they selected him in the eighth round and paid him approximately slot value, but that's because he barely pitched for Ohio State. He was supposed to jump into the rotation after a successful season as a leverage guy for the Buckeyes in 2024 and a fine showing on the Cape, but injuries limited him to 8⅔ mostly ugly innings. He has a three-pitch mix – fastball, changeup, cutter – if the White Sox want to take another run at stretching him out, but pitching regularly in any role will represent workload-building progress. -JM
Truman Pauley
Pauley's raw strikeout total at Harvard stands out – 91 over 70⅓ innings – but the strikeout rate takes a hit when incorporating all the walks (48) and plunkings (16). Despite the control problems underneath unimpressive run-prevention numbers in a conference that's the furthest thing from a powerhouse, the Mets drafted Pauley in the 12th round and dipped into their bonus pool to sign him for $400,000, and the White Sox acquired him as the secondary player alongside Luisangel Acuña in the Luis Robert Jr. trade.
Mets president David Stearns also graduated from Harvard, so perhaps Pauley's bonus merely reflects the value of the Crimson network in action. The White Sox have no such obvious connections, although Pauley grew up in the Los Angeles area receiving youth pitching lessons from Ethan Katz. Judging only on the baseball merits, the appeal is the combination of an extreme riding fastball and a gyro slider. -JM
International signings
The White Sox opened the 2026 international signing in January by announcing 18 picks, headlined by seven-figure bonuses for catcher Fernando Graterol and outfielder Sebastián Romero. There are more pitchers than in previous classes, and all picks have bonus amounts attached, so there will be less detective work involved in figuring out which players have expectations going into Dominican Summer League play, and which ones end up exceeding them. -JM
