The Chicago White Sox opened the 2026 MLB Draft at 1 p.m. ET Saturday with the No. 1 overall pick, and the Roch Cholowsky decision is no longer the formality it looked like a year ago.
What was once framed as a certainty turned into a genuine three-way scramble, with the front office’s final call in flux hours before the draft opens. But in the end, the White Sox selected the 21-year-old UCLA shortstop Cholowsky.
@lambo_media Roch Cholowsky making it look easy🤌 Via: Rawlings #collegebaseball #uclabaseball #rochcholowsky #mlbdraft #fyp
♬ son original – Jackk – Jackk
Roch Cholowsky’s Case for the Chicago White Sox
Cholowsky spent essentially the entire 2025-26 draft cycle as the presumed top pick, a UCLA shortstop with a polish scouts compared to Troy Tulowitzki’s game from two decades ago, South Side Sox reported.
He hit .329 with 52 home runs across three UCLA seasons, closing his junior year at .320 with 21 homers, 60 RBI and more walks than strikeouts, numbers that helped make him MLB Pipeline‘s top-ranked prospect in the class, according to MLB.com.
Pipeline grades his hit, arm and glove all at 60 on the 20-to-80 scale, with a 65 overall, and evaluators still consider him the safest bet in the class to stick at shortstop long-term.
Cholowsky comes from baseball lineage. His father, Dan, was a first-round pick of the Cardinals in 1991 and later became a scout, and Roch has credited those childhood scouting trips for shaping his instincts. He grew up in Chandler, Arizona, after the family relocated from Vallejo, California, and led Hamilton High School to back-to-back state baseball titles while also drawing a football scholarship offer from Notre Dame as a quarterback.
“My dad’s not only watching how they play, but how they act,” Cholowsky said, as quoted by MLB.com. “There’s a lot of guys that he’d tell me what they were doing and some things that I can add to my game.”
Grady Emerson, Vahn Lackey Complicate White Sox Plans
Getty2026 prep class prospect Grady Emerson.
Texas prep shortstop Grady Emerson has closed the gap steadily since the spring, drawing Bobby Witt Jr. comparisons for his blend of contact skills and instincts, according to CBS Sports.
Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey has surged too, hitting .397 with 20 home runs and more walks than strikeouts as a junior, a jump that put him firmly in the mix for the top selection.
ESPN draft analyst Kiley McDaniel has called the top of the class close to a coin flip between the three, and White Sox vice president of amateur scouting Mike Shirley acknowledged the process was still unsettled days before the draft.
“The Cholowsky/Emerson conversation, the Vahn Lackey conversation, these are real. They are happening. They’re happening up to the minute,” Shirley said, as quoted by ESPN.
@highheatvisuals Roch Cholowsky (@RochCholowsky) goes deep @uclabruinsbaseball Swinging @Easton Fuze 360 #baseball #college #homerun #athlete #fyp
What Comes Next for Chicago
Chicago landed the pick by winning the draft lottery in December, marking just the third time in franchise history the White Sox have owned the No. 1 selection, following Danny Goodwin in 1971 and Hall of Famer Harold Baines in 1977, according to MLB.com.
The pick arrives as the rebuilding White Sox in real playoff contention entering the All-Star break, raising the stakes on adding a foundational piece up the middle or behind the plate.
The first round begins with coverage on Peacock and MLB Network, with Cholowsky, Emerson and Lackey widely expected to come off the board in some order among the draft’s first three selections before the first round wraps up Saturday evening.
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