The White Sox made it official Saturday: UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky is the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, only the third time in franchise history Chicago has held that top slot and the first since Harold Baines went No. 1 back in 1977. He hit .320/.452/.636 with 21 home runs for the Bruins this spring, and he's the first UCLA player taken No. 1 since the Pirates grabbed Gerrit Cole in 2011. That's the kind of company the White Sox are betting on.
The moment Roch Cholowsky realized he’s the first overall pick
That reaction is the whole story in miniature. A kid who reportedly told his agent "that's where I wanted to be" after a pre-draft visit to Chicago got exactly what he wanted, and the cameras caught every second of it — hands over his mouth, his mom kissing his cheek, the room erupting. It's not just draft-day theater. For a rebuild that's been searching for a face, that kind of raw emotion on the way in matters.
This relay throw from Cholowsky stands out to me. His game is so polished. For a White Sox team that's already on their way up, what a gift
The scouting case for Cholowsky was never really in doubt — everyone in the industry had him going No. 1 for months. Everyone, apparently, except Rob Manfred, who stood at the podium and mangled the kid's name on the biggest stage of his life. It became an instant punchline.
In Rob Manfred’s defense he only had 365 days to learn how to pronounce Roch Cholowsky’s name
"For months the baseball world knew that Roch Cholowsky was going number one overall, except Rob Manfred who absolutely butchered his name at the MLB Draft", and the pile-on wrote itself from there — "You had one job, Rob...". Even the local White Sox account got in on it, calling the name a natural fit for the South Side: "This name plays soooooo hard for Chicago. We've had a great run of 1-1s in this town", before floating the inevitable comparison a couple hours later — "Cholowsky and Thome, just as many suspected over the last few months".
Behind the jokes, there's real credit going to Chris Getz and the front office for how quietly they handled the buildup. "Props to Getz & his staff for keeping Roch under wraps as long as they did. Didn't hear a peep of a leak that he was even in town a while back" — a small thing, but in an era where every pre-draft visit leaks within hours, that discretion says something about how this front office is operating.
“I came out here about a month ago and just fell in love with the city” Roch Cholowsky is fired up to be coming to Chicago
"I came out here about a month ago and just fell in love with the city," Cholowsky said, and that's the part that outlasts the Manfred jokes. Name pronunciation is a footnote; a No. 1 pick who already sounds bought-in on Chicago before he's thrown a single professional pitch is not. The bonus talk, the pro debut, all of that comes later. Right now the White Sox just have a kid who cried on draft night because he got exactly the team he wanted — and a commissioner who's got the rest of the summer to practice saying his name right.