Roch, chalk: White Sox select Roch Cholowsky with No. 1 overall pick in 2026 MLB draft

12:41 PM CDT on July 11, 2026

UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky — Roch Cholowsky
|Josh Nelson / Sox Machine

After months of consideration, reconsideration, first-guessing, second-guessing, analysis, paralysis by analysis, wailing and the gnashing of teeth, the White Sox used the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 MLB draft to select Roch Cholowsky, who was the favorite all along.

"They expressed Thursday night that they wanted me to be the guy, and they knew I wanted to be there, I felt like things definitely got a lot easier," Cholowsky said. "The conversations the last couple of days with [Mike] Shirley, [Chris] Getz and my agent was very stressful. And then this morning waking up to a call at around 8:45, 9 [a.m.], I went and got myself a hotel room around the corner from my house just because I was a little stressed out and worried about what was going to happen. I felt very tied to Chicago ever since I went out there, where I wanted to be. I was worried about it not working out. Getting the call from my agent that him and Getz were able to work something out today, I was jumping around my hotel room. There were a lot of tears."

The biggest surprise ended up being not who the White Sox selected, but how commissioner Rob Manfred butchered his name. Given months to prepare for this moment, Manfred came to the podium and said, "With the first pick of the 2026 MLB draft, the Chicago White Sox select Roch Choloosky, a shortstop from UCLA."

"I don’t think [the pronunciation] is too hard," Cholowsky said. "I sent in a video the other day, the correct pronunciation. I didn’t hear it get butchered. I heard Roch and kind of lost it."

It's Cholowsky, not Choloosky, but he's indeed a 21-year-old UCLA shortstop who was the consensus preseason pick both at the draft lottery in December and the start of the college baseball season in February, but a merely so-so season by his established high standards allowed others to come into the discussion, namely Texas prep shortstop Grady Emerson and Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey.

Cholowsky hit .320/.452/.636 in his junior season, which was a little bit worse than the breakout sophomore season that propelled him to the top of the charts. Moreover, he wasn't particularly scintillating on Friday nights nor postseason tournament play, which is any top collegiate hitter's time to shine. That said, he offers the most power potential of the three considered, and while the bat isn't major league ready, you could probably drop him in at shortstop today, speaking only in terms of defense.

"We looked under the hood and there was still a lot of consistency with underlying numbers," Getz said. "At the end of the day, we were most comfortable with Roch Cholowsky with our first pick regardless of the signing bonus."

It's the third time the White Sox have picked first overall. They selected Harold Baines at the top of the 1977 draft, and Danny Goodwin with the first overall selection in 1971. In terms of MLB success, Cholowsky seems likely to fall somewhere between the two.

"Whether it be myself or Ryan Fuller, we talk about decisionmaking scores and contact scores and power scores, it was pretty close to being on par for what he had done in the past," Getz said of Cholowsky's junior year struggles. "When you break down the swing, there are some things that need to be adjusted at some point. He’s open minded and excited to dive in on his offensive game. We felt like if we unlock that, we’ve got an even better player then where he currently is."

With Cholowsky now in the fold, the biggest surprise might end up being what he ends up signing for. The slot value of the pick is $11,350,600, but largest signing bonus in MLB draft history is $9.25 million. That leaves a lot of room in the middle, but it seems like Cholowsky will set a new record, and not by an incremental amount.

CORRECTION. Roch Cholowsky will get north of $10m to become the No. 1 pick. https://t.co/Gd107WGuti
— Joe Doyle (@JoeDoyleMiLB) July 11, 2026

What's Roch Cholowsky's game?

Dansby Swanson is the most common comparison for all sorts of reasons -- a righty-hitting collegiate shortstop taken first overall, sure, but also a guy whose combination of defense and some power gives him a floor of a playable everyday shortstop, and the ceiling of an All-Star when he's hitting his best.

"I just want to develop as a shortstop, knowing that I can play that," Cholowsky said. "It’s a tough position to play at the big-league level. I feel like I’m very capable of doing that. I know that the White Sox love drafting shortstops, and they have a lot of good guys up there playing right now at different positions. My main goal is to get to the big leagues and play wherever the team sees fit for me and where they need me to be at."

Just like Swanson, there's a lot of variability in projecting the bat. There's 30-homer potential if he gets the barrel to the ball, but Josh watched Cholowsky get jammed by a lot of collegiate pitching over the second half of the season, leading to subdued production in the UCLA lineup.

The athletic talent is there, and the White Sox have been flexing an ability to alter swings and emerge victorious, but more development may be necessary than Cholowsky's preseason reputation let on.