With top odds for No. 1 pick, White Sox hope to celebrate at Draft Lottery

This story was excerpted from Scott Merkin's White Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CHICAGO – The GM Meetings are taking place at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, meaning the Winter Meetings are just one month away.

People from around baseball gather in early December in Orlando, Fla., to discuss free agents, potential trades and myriad other topics over those three days. For Mike Shirley, the White Sox director of amateur scouting, the focus will fall directly upon the MLB Draft Lottery scheduled for Dec. 9.

With a third straight season of at least 100 losses, the White Sox (60-102) enter with the best odds to get the No. 1 overall pick at 27.73%. The Rockies (43-119) had a worse winning percentage this season (.265 to Chicago’s .370), but after receiving a lottery pick in the ’23 and ’24 Drafts, they are ineligible in a third straight year.

A similar issue hit the White Sox for the 2025 Draft. Coming off a 121-loss season, they were ineligible to receive a lottery pick in consecutive years as a “payor” club – a team that gives rather than receives revenue-sharing dollars – after they picked left-hander Hagen Smith at No. 5 overall in ’24.

As the rebuild progresses for the White Sox, hitting on that No. 1 pick overall can be the ultimate difference maker for a young and developing team. It also can hold a little extra pressure.

“There’s always pressure with that,” Shirley told MLB.com during a Sunday interview. “I do think we have been in preparations knowing our percent chances are elevated. We have a pretty good foundation even at this point who we feel like out of those top 12 or 15 players in the Draft, that we will investigate them deeply to get to the right road map to hopefully be picking at the top.

“If the ping-pong ball goes right, we get the top pick. Obviously, last year being penalized a little bit, so we’d like to get our place in line toward the top if we can and do our best to select the right player.”

The 2026 Draft will mark Shirley’s seventh at the helm, with his first coming for the White Sox during the COVID-abbreviated endeavor in ’20. Garrett Crochet was Shirley’s first first-round pick, at No. 11 overall in ‘20, and the southpaw has turned into one of the game’s top pitchers.

Crochet flashed those signs of excellence in his debut year as a starter for the White Sox in 2024. He then helped with the White Sox rebuild by bringing back catcher Kyle Teel, infielder Chase Meidroth, right-hander Wikelman González and outfielder Braden Montgomery – the No. 1 White Sox prospect and No. 35 overall, per MLB Pipeline, and a player the White Sox worked hard on in the ’24 Draft, according to Shirley – in a trade with Boston on the last day of the ‘24 Winter Meetings.

“Your job is to draft Major League value, whether it happens in a White Sox uniform or use the pieces to acquire and grow your club,” Shirley said. “You need to capture Major League value. You have to do it. It has to be presentable, or people want to buy it from you.

“What you learn quickly is you better cover all your bases. You better make sure your staff is in order, they are prepared as the Draft approaches. And I do think you learn to trust your instincts a little bit more when you do maybe make a couple of right selections, which is hard to do. You start to trust your process, trust what you have seen in players, trust that you can make those decisions and feel really good about them.”

Shirley also has grown comfortable going a little bit against the curve if that’s what’s needed, making sure the White Sox do their best to investigate all details. Chicago will have the No. 2 pick in every round after the first even if the lottery ping-pong balls don’t work in their favor.

But if they align for the White Sox, does Shirley have a No. 1 pick already in mind at this early date?

“We have it zeroed in on. We worked hard this fall, this summer, to feel like [we identified] who the candidates are,” Shirley said. “You remain open-minded as the story is yet to be told. They need to go through their Draft year to make sure they are checking the final boxes, finish healthy. The integrity of the entire process needs to be complete before you actually get there.

“There’s always financial constrictions. You may have players you are in on, but financially the second player or the third player could be really close to him, and what does the financial picture look like? With the pool spacing system, you have to be able to separate your candidates and allocate the best you can.”