Chicago White Sox

There is still some fat on the 40 man roster that can be trimmed. I just struggle seeing how we can carry two Rule 5 guys in our bullpen next year with some of the other pitchers in place (including Gilbert with no options). That being said, maybe you bring both into camp, get a good look at them, and then proceed for with one of them on the major league team.

I will say it’s better that it’s the Guardians who plan to compete next year than a true rebuilding team who could more easily absorb a lack of production.

Excellent…and it should be given our tiny payroll at the moment.

You also have better roster flexibility with someone like Palette who would have options and could move up & down. I just don’t get the logic here.

I hate that we didn’t protect him

Link to live telecast of Rule 5 draft: https://www.mlb.com/news/rule-5-draft-results-2025?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage

I could say that happening

How do we finagle Coby Mayo out of this.

He’s not going to be ready by 2027 though.

Robert + $7M for big red dog…who says no?

Meidroth vs. Antonacci for 2B. I may be the biggest Meidroth fan on this board, but he’s got to find a way to impact the baseball and/or draw more walks. If not, he becomes a high UT guy off the bench with Antonacci likely claiming the 2B job. Bonemer does feel destined for LF the more thought I put into it. Just not sure he will be ready by 2027 Opening Day or not. Big year ahead of him.

I wonder if there are big deferrals given how much he blew his projections out of the water.

I wouldn’t mind it with a 2nd pick, but I also think there is better upside with Bleday and he shouldn’t cost all that much.

A 20 to 30 year sample is completely irrelevant to the modern baseball environment. It’s been proven there is a significant advantage in the MLB today being a large market team vs. a small market team in terms of making the post season. There is a much lesser issue in the NBA and almost non existent in the NFL. You’re confusing a much different issue which is teams with stars in the NBA and elite QBs in the NFL are more to make the playoffs, but that has very little to do with market size because all teams have the chance of acquiring and retaining them unlike in baseball.

Top Players Available These are names that have come up multiple times in conversations with representatives in multiple organizations through our Rule 5 draft reporting over the last few weeks. These players have a high likelihood of being selected. Yordanny Monegro, RHP, Red Sox Every year at the 40-man deadline, there’s a talented pitcher who goes unprotected due to injury. This season, that pitcher might just be Monegro. Teams are able to stash players on the long-term injured list for an entire season, delaying their need to keep a player selected in the Rule 5 on the active roster. That’s key for Monegro, as he had Tommy John surgery in late August 2025 and will miss all of 2026. Prior to his injury, Monegro had been superb over eight starts with Double-A Portland, pitching to a 2.34 FIP and 2.67 ERA with a 57% groundball rate, 35.8% strikeout rate and 5.8% walk rate. Had it not been for the injury, there’s a case to be made that Monegro might have pitched himself to the majors by the end of 2025. His combination of swing-and-miss stuff, command and the ability to generate a high rate of groundball outs makes him a virtual lock on performance alone. Factoring in his injury timeline, it would be surprising not to see Monegro picked. He has plus stuff with a plus slider and curveball that he mixes with a sinker, a four-seam fastball and a changeup. Return to top ↑ Zach McCambley, RHP, Marlins McCambley’s raw stuff is modest, but his performance in the upper minors in 2025 could prompt a club to consider him for an early 2026 look. The 6-foot-2 righty, a 2020 third-round pick from Coastal Carolina, turned in a 2.90 ERA with 83 strikeouts and 22 walks over 62 innings, including a 3.32 ERA in 40.2 Triple-A frames. His mid-80s slider was the centerpiece, showing sweep and producing a 51% miss rate with a 34% chase rate, while a high-80s cutter added another bat-missing option with a 34% whiff rate. He also mixed in a four-seam fastball that reached 97 mph but typically sat 93-95 with limited carry. McCambley’s 33.1% strikeout rate was a career high while his 8.8% walk rate marked the lowest since the 26-year-old’s debut season in 2021. Return to top ↑ RJ Petit, RHP, Tigers A 14th-round pick out of Charleston Southern in 2021, Petit reached Triple-A in 2025, racking up 20 appearances with Toledo. Over 47 total appearances split between Double-A and Triple-A, he pitched to a 2.44 ERA, 2.94 FIP and 3.35 xFIP. During his time in Triple-A, Petit continued to perform with a 2.74 ERA, 3.19 FIP and 3.18 xFIP while generating ground balls at a 51% rate. Most importantly, he collected strikeouts and limited walks, punching out 29.5% of batters faced while walking just 8.2%. From a strictly performance-based evaluation, Petit checks a number of boxes. He strikes out batters, shows at least average command, has flashed the ability to generate ground balls at above-average rates and has a solid sample of Triple-A experience. That combination puts him in a bucket better than 50% of potential Rule 5 picks. Petit shows the prerequisite stuff to match his performance, mixing a four-seam fastball, sinker, slider and changeup. His four-seamer sits 95-97 mph and touches 98 at peak with six and a half feet of extension and 11-12 inches of armside run. His two-seamer sits 93-95 mph with true sink and heavy armside run, averaging 15-17 inches. Petit’s slider is his best bat-missing pitch, and despite its slider tag, it looks like a mid-80s deathball curveball with negative vertical break and about five inches of sweep. Petit’s changeup is used nearly 1:1 with his slider and features good vertical separation off his fastball, though it’s on the firmer side at 88 mph. All in all, Petit has one of the most intriguing profiles in the Rule 5 draft. Return to top ↑ Matthew Wood, C, Brewers The Brewers drafted Wood in the fourth round in 2022 out of Penn State. Over the last three seasons, he has performed better than his numbers would suggest based on underlying Statcast data. After spending parts of each of the last three seasons with High-A Wisconsin, Wood made the jump to Double-A in 2025. Over 59 games with Biloxi, he hit .271/.371/.415 with six home runs and 30 walks to 33 strikeouts. Under-the-hood data really tells the story, though, as Wood ran a 10.7% in-zone whiff rate in 2025 with a 17% chase rate and good hard-hit and pullside launch angles. His 88.4 mph average exit velocity and 103.2 mph 90th percentile EV are fringe-average but good enough to provide at least 40 power to pair with 55-to-60 grade plate skills. Wood caught 78 games last season and shows enough ability behind the plate to fit as a rotational catcher. Return to top ↑ Carter Baumler, RHP, Orioles Over the last five years, injuries have limited Baumler to essentially one fully-healthy season. That came this year after he missed the second half of 2024 and the first month of the 2025 season recovering from a shoulder injury. Baumler worked regularly out of the bullpen throughout the season. However, he didn’t pitch on back-to-back days and tended to see 4-7 days of rest in between outings. That is likely to be a disqualifier for a team looking to select him, but he still has some interesting traits to discuss. Baumler’s 2025 second half was outstanding, as he allowed just one run across his final 17.1 innings spanning 14 outings. In fact, post-promotion to Double-A Chesapeake, Baumler didn’t allow a run in his six appearances in the Eastern League spanning 7.2 innings. Over his strong second half, he struck out 25 batters while allowing six walks and seven hits. Batters hit just .125 against him during that stretch, and he ran a groundball rate north of 40%. Beyond Baumler’s performance this season, his stuff has also made a full recovery. He mixes three pitches in a four-seam fastball, slider and curveball. His four-seamer sits 95-96 mph, touching 98 with elite vertical break, over 10 inches of armside run and an extremely flat vertical approach angle of -4.12. Baumler creates only fringy extension, but his lower arm slot and 5-foot-7 release height allow the plane on his fastball to play up. Baumler’s primary secondary is his curveball. It sits 83-85 mph—plus velocity for a true curveball—with heavy two-plane break. He generates whiffs at a rate of 32% while running a 39% chase rate against the pitch. It’s a solid one-two combo of pitches that should consistently get results. Return to top ↑ Jose Rodriguez, RHP, Dodgers When it comes to the ideal template for a Rule 5 pick, Rodriguez checks a lot of boxes. He’s tall, physical, comes complete with a deceptive delivery and outlier pitches. The 24-year-old signed out of Mexico in 2019 and has wound his way through the system. He reached Triple-A for the first time in 2025 and struck out 84 hitters in 54 innings between a pair of upper-level stops. Rodriguez starts his motion from the stretch, turns his torso away from the hitter, plunges his arm deep enough that the baseball is nearly parallel to his ankle before uncoiling and delivering. His long levers create huge extension, which ranges between 6.8 and 7.1 feet throughout his arsenal. He combats hitters with four- and two-seam fastballs in the mid-to-upper 90s as well as a slider and changeup that each racked up miss rates of better than 51%. His changeup, in fact, the 65.4% miss rate on his changeup was fifth in the sport among those thrown more than 100 times. His slider is nearly as wicked, with sharp, straight drop that elicits chases at a rate of nearly 30%. His walk rate is higher than ideal at 14.2%, and his long limbs and complicated delivery doesn’t make it seem like he’ll ever have pinpoint control or command. Nevertheless, his stuff is loud enough that a team might be willing to take a chance and add him to their bullpen.

Feels like we will go with pitching at the #2 pick. I’ve gone through the list and there isn’t that one dude that pops out, so no obvious prediction at this time.

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2025-rule-5-draft-preview-top-players-to-know/ Link above to Baseball America’s preview.

The draft is at 1pm today. Who do you want to the Sox and who do you think they go with?

The ceiling on Emerson would have to be massively above Roch’s to pass on both the floor and proximity to the majors. Seems like very unlikely, but there is a ton of time between now and the draft so you never know.

We’re extending Benintendi??

If I’m a major leaguer, why not? Better than living in a place like Cleveland.

Looking at our lineup for next year, I agree with Getz on the need for more LH hitting. Over the second half of the past season when guys were finally hitting their strides, we had five hitters that were well above average against RHP in Colson (140 wRC+), Teel (135 wRC+), Baldwin (129 wRC+), Robert (129 wRC+), & Tauchman (119 wRC+). Robert has had a few seasons like that against RHP in the past but I’d wager for some regression in 2026 and Tauchman is obviously gone. From a 1B/DH perspective, there isn’t a great option against RHP at the moment. The bulk of our internal options did most of their damage against lefties during the second half of last year as shown by Benintendi (148 wRC+), Vargas (130 wRC+), Quero (129 wRC+), & Sosa (121 wRC+). For Benintendi, his splits are inconsistent each year and he’s mostly league average against both righties & lefties (which sucks for a DH). The other three aren’t terrible against RHP (95 to 100 wRC+) but leave obvious room for upgrades. Given the lack of options in the minors, this is a clear spot to add a LH bat and possibly one on a multi-year agreement. From an OF perspective, assuming we keep Robert for now, Baldwin should be regularly starting against RHP and on the bench against LHP. Pereira serves as a perfect platoon partner for him in one of the corner spots. To me, it’s very obvious another corner OF is needed that can hit RHP, especially if you want to get Andrew out of LF where is a massively negative value player. However, it can’t be ignored that Braden Montgomery should / could be up at some point this year. We should still add here, but I wouldn’t go multi year on a B / C tier free agent. As such, I’d like to see us go out and sign two free agents. The first one would be Ryan O’Hearn to a 2/$27M deal. He’s not a stud by any means, but has averaged a 122 wRC+ against RHP over the past three seasons and will provide some stability to the middle of the order. The second one would be JJ Bleday to a cheap pillow contract. While his defense has fallen off some, he should be able to provide plus defense in a corner OF spot. Obviously the bat is the other big concern, but from 2023 to 2024 he put up a 119 wRC+ against RHP. At only 28 years of age and with multiple years of control left, he is 100% worth the gamble as placeholder until Braden is ready.

Not sure what you are arguing here, but let me clear on my point. There is zero fucking chance that Fairbanks gets a 3/$34M contract. Yes, a zero surplus value option presents no trade value for the acquiring team theoretically, but it also implies that no one believes he’s worth more than that or the option would provide value. And if any team would try to cash in on that it would be the Rays. He may get a two year deal…have literally never said otherwise. In fact, I assume he will get a two year deal. I just very much doubt it will be worth more than $11M AAV and it won’t be three at the exact AAV every team in baseball declined.

?

These are arguments have been made time & time again. The parity of the MLB fucking sucks and is not remotely comparable to the NFL or even NBA from a market size perspective. People are so bitter about Jerry being cheap that they refuse to accept that the sport is rigged to benefit large market teams. Yeah, the sport deserves better owners than Bob Nutting, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Dodgers have a regional TV that allows them to spend endlessly more than half the league and it shows in their sustained success. You trying to use the Dodgers winning the World Series last year against another major market team (#5 in payroll) as proof parity exists because it went to game 7 is candidly absurd.