Our Sox Populi staff combines their prospect lists each offseason, coming up with the Top 100 players in the system. We’ll be summarizing and counting them up here, five at a time, leading up to the regular season.

40
Zach DeLoach
Left Fielder
Chicago White Sox
Baseball Cube Rating 61.50
OK so DeLoach, in his first year with the White Sox after coming over in trade from Seattle, had a poor major league debut (22 games, .622 OPS). But he was dynamite at Charlotte, dicing Triple-A pitching for a .287/.375/.401 slash. His reward? Getting DFA’d off of the 40-man roster, and then being neglected by all 29 MLB teams, who could have picked him up for free.

39
Tim Elko
First Baseman
Charlotte Knights
Baseball Cube Rating 64.50
Elko is a man mountain whose pro career, between past injury and present swing holes, should have been over almost before it started. And yet, here he is at Triple-A, mashing on the doorstep of the majors. There is a lot still to resolve in his swing, but he’s got the overall makeup to keep defying the odds.

38
Shane Smith
Right-Handed Starter
Nashville Sounds (Brewers Triple-A)
Baseball Cube Rating 82.50
The consensus top pick in the Rule 5 draft last December, Smith is a near-guarantee to break camp with the big club (given the rules, if Smith can’t be demoted without offering to sell him back to the Brewers for half of the purchase price). The only real question is whether he will work in the rotation or the pen. But he’s been getting rave reviews, while the Sox rotation hasn’t/shouldn’t, so you do the math.

37
Rikuu Nishida
Second Baseman
Birmingham Barons
Baseball Cube Rating 58.38
Simple WAR 6.1
Everyone with a beating heart lists Nishida as their favorite White Sox prospect. And for good reason, as Rikuu spun an underwhelming pro debut in 2023 into a gravity-defying run up the ladder (starting in Kannapolis, ending at Double-A Birmingham) and making an impact at each stop. He’s a pest, and a character, and a sneaky runner, and a solid fielder at both second and in left field. The majors? We’ll see. But it will be fun watching him try.

36
Casey Saucke
Right Fielder
Winston-Salem Dash
Baseball Cube Rating 62.50
Saucke had a quick pro audition after being selected in the fourth round in 2024, and aside from an awful lot of swing-and-miss (six walks, 26 Ks in 24 games, albeit facing the immediate challenge of High-A pitching) there was much to like.

Rikuu Nishida photo courtesy of Rikuu Nishida/Instagram.

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