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They wouldn't get the comp pick. You have to be on the same team in the majors for the full season prior to free agency.

In the game thread, CWS mentioned our diminished minor league pitching. I dug and found enough stuff to split it out for those interested. I looked from Draft class in 2020 to 2025. I had limited data from 20 and 21 but only in the last two years have we really drafted position players heavily. In 2020, picks 1-3 and 5 were pitchers. Only Crochet became something. 2021 , limited data only 4 draftees I think still playing including Burke and McDougal picks 3 and 5. 2022 10/20 draftees pitchers including 1-3 and 5-8. So far only notables are Schultz, Pallette and Cannon. 2023 9/20 Draftees including 2,3,5,6,9,10. Only Taylor notable. MLB rated 12/22 top WS prospects pitchers with only Burke and Schultz in majors now. 2024 Draft shifted to position players after H Smith at 1. MLB rated 13 of top 20 pitchers with Taylor and Leasure making MLB. 2025 Draft again position player heavy with Gabe Davis at 5 the first pitcher and only 8 of 20 pitchers drafted most later. My takeaways ? They put a lot of resources into pitching via the number and often high rounds(granted 8-10 ish range often underslot senior signs) but have little to show for it currently. Injuries, poor development, poor evaluations all probably at work. It wasn't like a ton of guys were traded who became something. Currently 8 of top 20 are pitchers but all are returning from injury or struggling. The closest to an exception being Sandlin but he was delayed this spring. Hopefully some get healthy and can help in the second half but I was surprised how bad/bust rate things have been because I always thought of the Sox as decent to good developing pitching. (not a ton of high school arms who naturally take a little longer notable exceptions Schultz and McDougal) I would be very surprised if after a pick or two in this coming draft that they don't go very heavy pitching with college pitchers especially fourth round on. Anyway, my thoughts on a slow Monday.

First up we'll do Sam Antonacci, who god bless him, is looking like at worst a super utility guy, most times a rare, valuable plus bat that can play 2B and corner OF. He started his college career with Heartland Community College a D2 school, promptly racked up a POTY, transferred to Coastal Carolina, slashed a fun 367/.523/.504 and was drafted in the 5th round by the Sox in the 2024 MLB Draft. Preseason, he wasn't that highly regarded on most Sox lists, but was noted as a high floor guy by Fangraphs in their writeup, which had him 11th: Our friends at Future Sox had him 9th in the org, with a similar profile while noting his excellent stat cast data from the minors:* Ok, enough about the past: Sam comes in with .8 fWAR in 208 PA. ZIPS figured he'd be a decent bat out of spring, projected for a 99 wRC+, but so far he's exceeded that modest projection with a 119 wRC+ and perhaps has been a bit unlucky with a xwOBA of .370. ZIPS has reacted and rest of schedule they think's he's good for a 107 wRC+. Sam is the def of a "spray hitter" with a pull percent of only 33.3%, middle 40.1%, and oppo 26.5%. He does a great job avoiding popouts, at only 4.3%.** Sam destroys fastballs, he's 5.6 runs above average already. That's his bread and butter and if you can hit fastballs, you can hit anybody. Eye test wise we see this, he's a very wristy hitter and that allows him to really see the ball "deep" compared to guys that are full go big lower body load, eg Colson Montgomery. But this analysis is mostly stat focused so we'll get back to that: FG has him down for -3.8 runs in the field, which sounds bad, but is fairly benign for a rookie convert. For example Vaughn was -28 his convert year and Sam isn't going to approach that. Let's look at his statcast profile: 78th percentile spring speed is excellent: FG has him for -.1 runs below average on the bases, which makes sense given he's been picked off a bunch and done other stupid stuff. He's fast, but he needs to be a bit smarter to fully unlock the value. His rolling xwOBA has been closer to league average or slightly better the last two weeks, but 50 games into his career, he's an elite bat to ball guy -- really no two ways about it. Things can change, but usually when a guy passes the eye test and metrics test like this for even a couple months when the regression happens they will figure it out and Sam has an athletic profile that belies his relative unassuming appearance. The arm grade surprised me but makes sense and that will play at 2B. Who could you comp Sam to? I see some Ray Durham with less pop (for now). Ray had a long and productive career, I'm sure Sam and us fans would love 2/3 of that 34 career bWAR for Ray. Or if you want a white guy we'll go with rich man's Craig Grabeck. ______________________________________________________________________ *Good job guys **I'm going to make up a new stat here, it's gonna be called "BIF", which is barrels to infield flies / popups. So far Sam has 11 barrels and 8 popouts so by my math that's a BIF of 1.375. For comparison, Mune has a BIF of 1.92, Vargas has a BIF of 1, Colson has a BIF of .49, Quero has a BIF of ∞ despite only two barrels he has not popped out. Is it a useful stat? Maybe? Someone smart could run some regressions. It certainly is a good ratio for how tolerable a hitter's ABs are from a watchability standpoint Gonna try and do one of these every off day for next couple months. NORTHERN SOUL, THE INTENTIONS - DON'T FORGET THAT I LOVE YOU

Gonzo can go back down to Charlotte and stop his arb clock once Mune is back. That's fine. He just got a nice pay pump for 6 weeks or whatever and now he knows he close he is and what he has to continue to work on. Worrying about solid players getting traded or having to be optioned is a GOOD PROBLEM.

It's clear Getz learned from the failings of the previous regime. He's recruited some of the best minds from the best run organizations in baseball. You can see the difference in philosophy, especially hitting, from the minors up through the big leagues.

From this fans’ perspective, he may be the most important member of the clubhouse. Seems like he brings the energy and Colson is BFF’s with him. I’d rather not trade him under any circumstance.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7356208/2026/06/14/jacob-gonzalez-white-sox-swing-changes/?source=athletic_thewindup_newsletter&campaign=18534014&userId=159096 Good write-up on Jacob Gonzalez by Keith Law on The Athletic

Also, if it wasn’t obvious above, Meidroth is currently leading the AL in fWAR amongst 2B.

Jose Ramirez had a career MiLB OPS of 766 including a 674 OPS at AA. Glad I could help answer your question Caufield.

We're somehow 6th in the mlb.com power rankings.

Idk I was just throwing out a hypothetical. It's not that deep.

At this point, it's hard NOT to believe. They just won two series against two of the best teams in baseball without Mune and Teel. The offense will just get better when they come back. The pitching still needs some help. Another quality starter and some fortification of the bullpen would be great. I really think these guys are feeding off each other's energy. I think that's one reason why they are playing better than just about everyone thought they would.

Shane Smith and McDougal are also headed to rehab assignments. Pitching depth may be right around the corner.

It feels like 1 day he was a prospect, then in the WBC and then on the Sox. He is the epitome of the new front office regime and as a 5th round draft choice a true talent that has defied odds to will himself to prominence quickly and efficiently.

This gives me goosebumps

Great idea if you want to completely derail what seems to be going on in the clubhouse.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-sox/2026/06/14/dodgers-white-sox-los-angeles-chicago-shohei-ohtani-freddie-freeman-dave-roberts-rate-field-mlb

I’m still 100% confident that Schultz will be a solid mid-rotation starter at minimum with the potential for much more than that. Health is really the only concern there. Smith is much harder to get a grasp on, but way too early to write him off. Worst case scenario, I think he ends up a high leverage reliever, which still has a lot of value from the left side.

Bulls hire splitter, my fav of their finalists.

As someone that kept cheering on Gonzo (mostly out of spite for just haters), Law saying he has star potential has made my eyebrows perk way the f*** up.

I’m still surprised at how bad our minor league pitching seems to be. In most years when I checked the box scores, there was a 60% to 80% chance that the SP was someone of note or semi-interesting. I honestly don’t know who half of these guys are.

Yeah. Thought we'd go 3-3 in these two series. I believe as far as the regular season goes. The key for them in the postseason is getting some sort of home field advantage, even if it's only two games. When rocking, Comiskey is one of the best atmospheres in all of baseball. It's a truly frightening place for opposition players to go, and they have said as much. The blackout game is as close as I've seen to seeing a premier league atmosphere transposed in the United States. I think on an October night, it's reminiscent of Goodison Park.

I know high school pitching is a risky demographic, but it's also a huge strength of this class. I'm popping a few high ceiling prep arms if I'm Shirley. Especially with the savings that are going to come with the first pick. The system is in desperate need of arms.

I wouldn’t be mad if they pulled an Angels and drafted pitching with every pick (after #1 of course). Maybe sprinkle in a couple outfielders too, but pitching is definitely the biggest need of this organization currently.

Grebeck was tiny in terms of height but had a lot more power although hardly any speed...and was always more of a jack of all trades infielder, rather than an everyday player, due to the superior infield talent on most of those Sox rosters. Exceeding expectations/underdog/dirtbag types is their main commonality. Feels closer to peak Eckstein than Durham...who was such a dynamic speed/power threat in his 20s.

For reference, when I look at the AA rotation listed on Roster Resource I see three non-drafted free agents and one minor league free agent. That leaves two guys who were drafted by the Sox or signed as international free agents in Gabe Davis (5th round pick) and Lucas Gordon (6th round pick). Back in 2024, the Barons’ rotation consisted of Noah Schultz, Drew Thorpe, Mason Adams, Jairo Iriarte, Ky Bush, Jake Eder, Tyler Schweitzer, & Riley Gowens. Every single one of those guys made 10+ starts for the Barons. Just a massive fall-off in terms of talent. Obviously that 2024 AA rotation was highly inflated due to a lot of sell-off trades, but take half of them and it would still blow the 2026 version out the water. And the real problem is the High A & Low A rotations reflect the same types of talent, which is a lot of undrafted free agents, college Sr. picks, and other draft picks in the 11 to 20 rounds. There is only one LatAm signing in any of the three rotations I mentioned. LatAm has always been a problem to some extent, but it shows its ugly face much more when don’t have a regular reinforcements.

Gross on many levels. Overpaying for a rental would be the dumbest thing we can do. That's the sort of thing Hahn would do or KW and would end up gutting the upper minors just at a time when we needed reinforcements from the Farm. We'd get a comp pick when he leaves, but that's hardly enough carrot.

MLB.com has been higher on the Sox than the Athletic or ESPN all year. I’ll be shocked if ESPN has the Sox in the top 20 this week.

I just don't want Gonzo to turn into Semien 2.0 where we give up a guy too early thinking his development is over and we have others anyways.

I have firmly planted my feet in the ground on Lackey being the best player in this class. Passing on him would be a mistake; even moreso when there's chatter about him being cheaper.

A healthy Mune would make it 3

Watched some of the Dodgers broadcast from last night's game. They were really going after Ant for his missed challenge because "it's not like it's Colson Montgomery up at the plate. These guys don't understand when to challenge and it's not good." Very satisfying seeing the next pitch go out to the RF seats a few seconds later.

"The 2005 White Sox lost the best player in franchise history for the season. How are they going to replace that?" 😄

If Gonzo was on the Dodgers or Royals, Caulfield would want to trade Schultz for him.

Yeah I'm not writing his name in in permanent marker. Just saying that if he continues hitting the rest of this year (he's cooled) and next, if we need a long term answer, that he can be an option. As of right now, he's the obvious guy to go down to Charlotte when Mune comes back.

I'm definitely starting to adjust expectations upwards from "I think this team can be fun and watchable this season, and that's way more than I expected," which is where I was during May. This season has been such a great reminder of three principles that baseball reinforces over and over (but nonetheless don't seem to make any better as a prognosticator): 1) baseball is weird; 2) progress and regression are not linear; and 3) it's hard for pretty much everybody--fans, media--to recognize and react to an emerging phenomenon in real time rather than falling into the trap of replaying past seasons in their heads and expecting future results to match. These are why I really hate the common offseason analysis of starting with last year's season as a baseline and adding or subtracting based on personnel moves. In that analysis, "this is basically a 60-win team plus Murakami -- even if he's great he doesn't get you to more than 6-7 wins, so this is at best a 70-win team." Every season is a unique animal with wide ranges of progress/regression for individual players, intangibles, team cohesion, etc. at play. That's the beauty of watching the season actually play out. Basically: "that's why they play the games."

1972 was a strike shorten year. Dick Allen hit 37 of the teams 108 total homers, 34%. Only two other players were in double figures at 10 & 12 home runs. Bill Melton only played 57 games because of a back injury and hit 7 homers. Dick Allen was a one man gang , league MVP, it was the greatest single season I have ever seen from a Sox player. He was the Michael Jordan of baseball in 1972.

The view of the skyline in Charlotte is so damn cool.

We really, really need Schultz to pan out. Him being a good pitcher this year is crucial.

that's pretty dope, knew that song but never knew the album.

One of the best albums of all time !

Boy oh boy it’s always an adventure with Sir Anthony. 😬 Stoked to see Sam give one a ride @Bill The Boy! Keep this train rollin straight into the Bronx! This team is able to win on any given day ( except if Yamamoto is on the bump ). 😆 LETS GO SOX!!!!

I'll go ahead and too my own horn, figured with the off day for travel Teel would be playing Tuesday. I also said 3-5 rehab games and back in Chicago possibly on the 22nd. We'll see.

Your first place Chicago White Sox are 38-32! First series win vs. LAD since 2014. First series loss for LA since May 8-10 vs. ATL. The White Sox are the only team with a series W vs. both LAD and ATL this season, and they did it without Mune or Teel. 24 home wins is tied for the MLB lead (Rays). They have won 8 straight home series. I liked Venable's creativity with the staff today given the off day tomorrow.

it was a guantlet for our opponents

Famous Kap's (which shows how unprofessional he is) Appearing on set in a specially made Cubs jersey with the name Pujois on the back Saying the next Cubs manager would be Joe Girardi Saying the Cubs would not be outbid for Masahiro Tanaka Guy is an idiot.