Wolkow signs with White Sox for a cool million

That news, plus a snapshot of every 2023 pick’s status

While George Wolkow grew up a White Sox fan

and apparently carved out a path for only that club in the 2023 draft, until the player signs on the dotted line, you never know.

Well, on Tuesday Wolkow accepted a huge overslot bonus, of $1 million, to start is career for his boyhood team.

And while the signing bonus (possibly a bit north of his $150,000 slot), Rikuu Nishida has also signed as of today:

That puts every pick in the fold, as while Mathias LaCombe has not yet officially signed, he has “agreed to terms” and will report to Camelback Ranch.

Here’s a look at the current status of all picks:

The math as we see it now spins as the White Sox drafting Jacob González higher than his predraft status would have warranted (he was the No. 18 MLB Pipeline prospect); the No. 18 pick slot was $4,021,400, so theoretically the White Sox could have agreed before pulling the trigger to draft him higher but pay him his “true slot” money. The $460,000 savings right there went a long way to pushing Wolkow to his $1 million bonus, which is about $750,000 higher than Chicago’s seventh-round slot.

The guess here is that sixth-rounder Lucas Gordon also comes in under slot to chip in on some of the Wolkow overage.

Everything here is in order, so we may not update the signings from here. If there are a lot of strange totals coming up in picks 11-20, we will update and address that, because any lower-half pick getting considerably more than $150,000 indicates a real find/high priority for the White Sox, which is something we should see translate into that player’s handling in the system.