White Sox select Landon Thome with second first-round pick in 2026 MLB draft

3:33 PM CDT on July 11, 2026

Landon Thome of Nazareth Academy — Nazareth Academy shortstop Landon Thome after making a throw to first base against Marion Catholic on April 20.
|Josh Nelson / Sox Machine

It's not often that a team's second pick is as predictable as its first, but the White Sox and prep shortstop Landon Thome are a special pairing.

Between his father, Jim Thome, playing and working for the White Sox, Landon Thome playing for the White Sox's Area Codes team, and Thome being high school teammates with last year's second-round pick Jaden Fauske, all signs pointed to the White Sox following suit with another selection from Nazareth Academy in La Grange Park if it were at all possible.

"There was nothing surprising, let’s put it that way," Getz quipped about the team's in-home visit with Thome. "We’ve known Landon for a long time. We know the Thome family and what they are about, we love to dive in. We know it’s important to dive into support systems and what you are getting from a player and to know what we are getting with Landon, we are very confident he’s going to reach his ceiling because how he was raised."

And once the White Sox traded Jacob Gonzalez to Pittsburgh as part of a larger deal that brought back the No. 34 pick in the Competitive Balance A round, it became rather possible.

Sure enough, after taking the consensus favorite Roch Cholowsky with the first pick overall, the White Sox took their local favorite with their second pick, and now Landon Thome is now a part of the White Sox organization. You could call it destiny, but that'd overlook the amount of work that went into it.

What's Landon Thome's game?

One of the nice things about the White Sox following their own patterns is that Josh has been tracking Thome for a while. He put him on his prep players to watch list back in March, and then got multiple first-person looks during the season, including a game where he sat by Pirates scouts who might have been mulling their choices with the No. 34 pick before trading it away.

Thome isn't as large as his dad as we know him, but his listed height (6 feet) and weight (185 pounds) are similar to Jim's at the same age. And while the elder Thome mostly DH'd with the White Sox, he was also a shortstop when he was 18.

Landon Thome will likely need to find a different position down the road, but he has the athleticism to stay there for now, as well as the baseball IQ. Either way, his bat is the main attraction. Pulling from Josh's report:

Offensively, Thome doesn’t have his father’s open stance. It’s more closed, and his hands are directly behind his head. As Thome drops his hands into position to swing, there's a leg kick to load up before whipping his hips through.

And:

With how well Thome uses his lower half in the swing, I think there’s a good deal of projectable power in his prospect profile. I do wonder if hitting directors will have Thome make some adjustments with his hands to better align with his back hip for a smoother swing.

Given the fact that Landon's dad is his hitting coach and works for the Sox, I imagine there will be a fair bit of alignment when it comes to approaching the work ahead.