Two years ago, the Baseball Writers Association of America expanded the number of spots on the Rookie of the Year ballots from three to five. It's a change recent enough that it's not reflected on the the BBWAA's FAQ page, which still lists the ballot as a 5-3-1 points system, rather than the 7-4-3-2-1 points system it is today.
Still, it's one the White Sox have benefited from. For the second straight year, their rookies have received attention that would have been unavailable to them on a shorter ballot.
While Kevin McGonigle was named the AL Rookie of the Year, three different White Sox received votes, with the bulk of them coming in the added spots. Munetaka Murakami finished a defined fourth behind McGonigle, Parker Messick and Peyton Tolle, while Tristan Peters finished eighth, and Sam Antonacci ninth.
| Rookie | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| McGonigle | 28 | 2 | 204 | |||
| Messick | 2 | 25 | 2 | 1 | 122 | |
| Tolle | 12 | 6 | 6 | 54 | ||
| MURAKAMI | 2 | 7 | 2 | 6 | 39 | |
| Jensen | 4 | 9 | 1 | 31 | ||
| DeLauter | 1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 23 | |
| Okamoto | 1 | 4 | 6 | 17 | ||
| PETERS | 2 | 1 | 4 | 12 | ||
| ANTONACCI | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Bazzana | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Ureña | 1 | 2 | ||||
| Beavers | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Bolte | 1 | 1 |
I'm a little surprised that Messick didn't receive more first place votes given that he's a Cy Young finalist, and those who use WAR systems might be inclined to swap Murakami and Peters in the finishes, but the results feel directionally correct. And thanks to those additional slots, the larger field better reflects just how much the White Sox got out of rookies in 2026, and how they propelled them to an 84-win season and a projection-defying wild card berth.
With FanGraphs, you can sort team leaderboards by rookie contributions, and the White Sox are at or near the top in so many categories reflecting both quantity and quality:
- Plate appearances: 2,178 (1st)
- WAR: 10 WAR (1st)
- Home runs: 67 (1st)
- Runs: 296 (1st)
- RBIs: 248 (1st)
- wRC+: 113 (3rd)
If it seems pretty rare for a team to get so much out of so many rookies, a search through Baseball-Reference.com's Stathead tool seems to confirm that notion. A query for the teams with three rookies who accrued 2 WAR while amassing at least 450 plate appearances found just four teams meeting those criteria:
1952 St. Louis Browns: Clint Courtney (2.2), Jim Dyck (2.8), Bob Nieman (2.3)
1960 Baltimore Orioles: Marv Breeding (2.4), Jim Gentile (3.1), Ron Hansen (3.9)
2006 Florida Marlins: Hanley Ramirez (4.9), Dan Uggla (3.1), Josh Willingham (2.2)
2026 White Sox: Sam Antonacci (2.5), Munetaka Murakami (2.2), Tristan Peters (3.6)
The Orioles are the only team of the first three that had a winning record, as they had a 15-win improvement from their sixth-place finish the year before. The White Sox put a third of their lineup in the hands of untested players and lived to tell the tale.
That said, development isn't linear even after one full season in the majors, and you only have to look back to the previous year's ROY voting results. Colson Montgomery finished fifth, Shane Smith finished 10th, but the following year posed setbacks small and large, and without a clear answer at the end of the season. Ideally, one of those two bounces back, nobody else loses ground, and you can look at these two years of Rookie of the Year voting as stages of a White Sox core coalescing. A fourth-place finish from Caleb Bonemer in next year's Rookie of the Year voting would provide welcome insurance against lesser scenarios.
