The MLB conducted the first four rounds of the 2026 draft on Saturday in Philadelphia ahead of this year’s All-Star Game.<\/p>\n
Below, we share our list of winners and losers from Round 1.<\/p>\n
Winners<\/p>\n
Chicago White Sox<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0The suddenly rich White Sox got richer at No. 1 overall. The AL Central leaders grabbed the top college prospect in this year’s class, UCLA Bruins<\/a> shortstop Roch Cholowsky, giving Chicago one of college baseball’s most productive players over the past three years.<\/p>\n “Cholowsky comes with a high floor and an All-Star ceiling,” ESPN MLB expert Dan Mullen wrote<\/a> in his evaluation of the pick. This past season, the 2026 Big Ten Player of the Year slashed .320\/.452\/.636 with 21 home runs and 60 runs batted in for the Bruins, who went 52-8, while showing a keen eye at the plate with as many walks as strikeouts (36). With 2021 first-rounder Colson Montgomery establishing himself as a quality power hitter, offsetting his team-high 116 strikeouts entering Saturday with 23 home runs \u2014 the most in the majors among primary shortstops \u2014 Cholowsky could be an ideal addition.<\/p>\n The White Sox (49-45) have been among the biggest surprises during the first half of the season, and by taking the top college prospect, they might quickly go from sleeper to giant.<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Rays<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Like the White Sox, the Rays added to a division-leading squad with a prime pick, using No. 2 overall to take MLB.com’s top overall prospect<\/a>, shortstop Grady Emerson from Fort Worth (Texas) Christian HS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The MLB conducted the first four rounds of the 2026 draft on Saturday in Philadelphia ahead of this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":797287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-797286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}