Nothing about the 2024 Chicago White Sox season was pretty.
You've read all about it before, we don’t need to repeat it. The White Sox got another reminder of how dismal the franchise has been in recent years with their position in the 2025 MLB Draft.
Following a 61-win season in 2023, Chicago earned the fifth pick in the first round of the 2024 MLB Draft during the MLB Draft Lottery. Per MLB rules, teams that do not earn revenue sharing dollars can't receive a lottery pick in consecutive years. The White Sox are one of those clubs; thus, with their fifth overall pick in 2024, they could not pick higher than 10th in this year's draft despite their historically awful season.
Having the 10th pick isn’t such a bad deal in this year's draft, though. Many analysts believe this is the weakest class at the top since 2016. No player taken with the first 29 picks of that year's draft has been an All-Star. Mickey Moniak, the No. 1 overall selection by the Philadelphia Phillies, has a career .229 batting average and played in over 100 games in a season once since making his debut in 2020.
The 2025 MLB Draft class doesn’t have a superstar at the top...
Despite its weakness at the top, the depth of the 2025 draft class is one of the best in recent years. There's a chance the White Sox can come away with one of the more talented players in the first round, even with nine teams picking ahead of them.
Multiple outlets have identified Ethan Holliday, the younger brother of 2022 first overall pick Jackson, as the top prospect in the class. However, his selection at No. 1 is not a foregone conclusion. A host of high school and college shortstops could stake their claim as the first player chosen. Several pitchers have also entered the conversation, showcasing impressive seasons in their final taste of amateur baseball.
To give you a sense of how wide open this draft could be, of the ranked prospects by MLB Pipeline, The Athletic and ESPN, only three players are in the top-10 of all three (Holliday, Jamie Arnold, Aiva Arquette).
Rankings are subjective, but the lists are put together by people who live and breathe the MLB Draft. They have a sense of what teams at the top are looking for and evaluate prospects with fairly rigorous systems. The mixed bag of rankings might mean nothing, but it illustrates there are no sure things in this year's draft.
A team like the White Sox picking in the middle of the first round might need to go in with as many as a dozen players they're comfortable with taking. The draft won't be chalk because there's no single pick set in stone.
It's not good that the White Sox won a combined 102 games in 2023 and 2024. Missing out on a top pick this year isn’t the worst thing, though. It sets Chicago up for a potential top-six pick in 2026, with that class projected to be loaded with great college players.