With MLB Pipeline posting its prospect lists over the last week -- here's the top 30 for the White Sox -- all of the most prominent baseball outlets have posted their organizational rankings ahead of the 2026 season.
Here's where the White Sox rank, with their previous season's finish in parentheses. In almost every case, the graduations of guys like Colson Montgomery, Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero, Grant Taylor and others hurt their standing.
- The Athletic: 8 (12)
- MLB Pipeline: 17 (6)
- Baseball Prospectus: 17 (7)
- Baseball America: 18 (4)
- ESPN: 20 (2)
Nobody can say Keith Law hates the White Sox right now, because not only is he multiple tiers higher on the farm system than the other outlets, but he's the lone voice who thinks it's a stronger system relative to the rest of the league than it was the year before.
The White Sox would love to prove him correct, as it would validate the vision the team has been touting since Chris Getz took over during the first of three consecutive 100-loss seasons. Or perhaps Law is merely making a canny wager on a hunch, because with the White Sox picking first overall, the boost a No. 1 overall pick for next season's rankings provides might make it impossible for a bullish bet to age terribly.
Spare Parts
Back on Opening Day in 2015, Alexei Ramírez wore Minnie Miñoso's name and number on his jersey to pay tribute to the Cuban Comet, who died a month earlier. Now we'll have to see if he gets into a game, as he sat in Cuba's opener against Panama.
Jose Contreras' son is facing some of the best hitters in the world as a 17-year-old; the youngest World Baseball Classic participant in 13 years. He fared well enough in his debut against the United States, and perhaps it's due to the tutelage of the only possible pitching coach for Brazil, old favorite Andre Rienzo.
The Tigers invited top-10 prospect Max Clark to his first major league spring training, and it's been a rough one. It's not so much that he's 2-for-16 with five strikeouts because he's barely 21 years old. It's more that he's lost or misplayed multiple fly balls, and the awkward attempts look sillier when he's wearing four diamond chains and Ultimate Warrior eyeblack. It set him up for ridicule among the former player/back-in-my-day crowd, and he could be handling it better.
Evan Petzold relayed Clark's response to the viral criticism, which starts with "I don't care what they have to say," but then goes on for 572 more words and includes the phrase "I grew up in a two-story house."
Max Rieper asks what constitutes an "old friend' for an Old Friend Alert, and as far as I'm concerned, it's almost exclusively players who appeared in a major league game for that team, with some allowances for draft picks or prospects who consumed a requisite amount of online oxygen.
When the White Sox unceremoniously designated Will Ohman for assignment in 2012, I used some lines from "Death of a Salesman" to frame the story. Well, it turns out his son is not a dime a dozen.
For the past couple decades, the best deal in sports media is Blackhawks games on WGN Radio, because you could listen to a radio team that would leave you wanting for nothing, and it didn't cost you a dime. John Wiedeman is still going strong, but Troy Murray departed too early, succumbing to cancer at the age of 63.
