The White Sox don't get a ton of positive buzz these days, but their draft room quietly did work this month. One of the picks getting the most love from national evaluators is Cal Scolari, a 6-foot-4, 220-pound righty out of Oregon who Chicago grabbed in the 5th round at pick No. 137 overall.
5th-rder Cal Scolari signs w/@WhiteSox for $550k (slot 137 value = $547,700). Physical @OregonBaseball RHP, up to 98 mph, mid-80s SL is a bat-misser. Believe he's one of @JonathanMayo's favorite sleepers. @MLBDraft
Per Callis, Scolari signed for $550,000, a bit over the $547,700 slot value for that pick. That's the kind of number that tells you the team wanted to make sure he didn't sniff around and consider going back to school. And Jonathan Mayo apparently had him marked as one of his favorite sleepers in this class, which is a notable cosign for a guy who went in the 5th round.
The stuff is easy to see why. Scolari's fastball works in the 94-95 mph range and touches 98, and he pairs it with a mid-80s slider that's a legit swing-and-miss pitch. This spring at Oregon he threw 14 games, went 5-1, and racked up 85 strikeouts with a 3.32 ERA — production that got him onto Baseball America's top-300 board as one of the better arms in a program that sent a program-record 7 players off its roster in this draft.
What makes the profile interesting is the road that got him here. Scolari's high school senior year and his college freshman season both got wiped out by Tommy John surgery, which is part of why he was a rare draft-eligible redshirt freshman back in 2025 while at San Diego — and still went undrafted. He transferred to Oregon, stayed healthy, and turned into one of the best arms on that staff, finally cashing in a year later.
For a White Sox system that's been starving for pitching depth for years, landing a guy with legit mid-90s-to-98 heat and a bat-missing slider in the 5th round, at a discount relative to his stuff, is exactly the kind of value swing a rebuild needs. Whether he sticks as a starter or profiles better in a bullpen role long-term is the question player-development types will be chewing on for the next couple of years — but for $550K, this is the definition of low-risk, high-upside.