3 Chicago White Sox draft takeaways, including a ‘dream come true’ for Nazareth’s Landon Thome
· Yahoo Sports
Pitching was a priority for the Chicago White Sox during the second day of the MLB draft.
The Sox selected eight pitchers Sunday, which featured rounds 5-20.
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Overall, the Sox took 10 pitchers, six infielders and four outfielders and one two-way player (outfielder/pitcher Alex Weingartner of St. Augustine (N.J.) Prep in the sixth round) with their 21 picks over the two-day event. Here are three draft takeaways.
1. Saturday was a ‘dream come true’ for the Thome family.Infielder Landon Thome had a special guest behind the plate when he threw out a first pitch before Sunday’s game at Rate Field: his father, Jim Thome.
“I was telling my mom and my dad that this is the first time you walk into a stadium and people know who you are other than my dad,” Landon Thome said. “It was pretty awesome today, this is such a cool experience.”
The Sox selected the Nazareth product at No. 34 in the Competitive Balance Round A on Saturday.
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“I was always able to keep it together as a player,” the Hall of Famer Jim Thome said. “This is tough. This is so special. What a day, just to watch your son go through that, his name be called, it’s a dream come true, right?
“You watch them as kids. They grow up, they love the game. And then as they love the game, they go through this process of just wanting to play. And then when you are in that moment yesterday, you don’t really know if that will ever happen. When it does, it’s so special. It’s hard to explain, but what a great moment.”
Landon Thome, 18, also called Saturday “a dream come true.”
“I’ve been growing up coming to games here since I was a little kid,” he said. “And to be able to hear my name called by the White Sox, it’s really a dream come true. I’m just ready to get to work and do everything I can to help the city and help this team. I grew up wanting to put up a banner somewhere because my dad never got to.
“That’s something I dream about every day, to be able to win a World Series. And especially for this city. That’s the dream. That’s all I can say, dreams come true. Absolutely.”
He’ll remember some advice from his father as he begins this journey.
“He says, being able to put something in the basket every day, whether it’s an RBI, stolen base, anything like that, and then the basket’s going to fill up at the end of the year,” Landon Thome said. “Having that mindset, that positive mindset going into every day, especially now going from high school to pro ball, I know I’m going to fail a little bit, but being able to have that positive mindset is going to help a lot.”
2. The Sox stacked up on pitchers.The Sox selected college right-handed pitchers with four of their first 10 picks through the two days.
Saturday, they drafted Georgia’s Joey Volchko in the third round and Eric Segura of Oregon State in the fourth.
Volchko, 21, went 11-2 with a 3.68 ERA and 119 strikeouts in 95 1/3 innings over 18 starts for the Bulldogs this season.
“He’s a monster, big, strong, athletic, the makeup, the intelligence, the aptitude off the charts,” Sox director of amateur scouting Mike Shirley said on Saturday.
Sunday, the Sox selected Cal Scolari from Oregon in the fifth round and Luke Craytor from Virginia Tech in the ninth.
They also took college pitchers in rounds 14-16 in right-hander Isaac Yeager of Oregon State, Oklahoma lefty Cameron Johnson and right-hander Darin Horn of Coastal Carolina. And the Sox selected Indiana right-hander Jackson Bergman in the 18th round and Connor Fennell of Vanderbilt in the 20th.
“To hit Cameron Johnson, that’s our lottery ticket, this guy is one of the power left-handed arms in the game,” Shirley said during a video conference call on Sunday.
Shirley said pitcher Kyle Casteel of Butler Area High School in Pennsylvania, who the Sox selected in the 11th round, was the “big piece of the puzzle on the pitch front.”
“We believe in the strikes, the stuff and the makeup,” Shirley said. “He does it really easy.”
3. It was an ‘unbelievable’ couple of days for the Sox.
Shirley said the draft “truly has been unbelievable.”
“To have the first pick, experience it from start to finish, understand what that’s been like, you understand the staff, how we had to deliver,” Shirley said on Sunday. “There’s no excuses in professional baseball, you have to deliver. I understand the scrutiny that comes with the job, did you pick the right player? And everybody has an opinion. That’s the best part. But to be able to execute it, for (top pick) Roch Cholowsky to show up today and talk the way he speaks, what he believes, fortifies the decision. You understand what kind of person you’re getting.”
Cholowsky, like Thome, threw out a first pitch before Sunday’s game. His catcher was Hall of Famer Harold Baines, the No. 1 draft pick by the Sox in 1977.
“Just these moments — Jim Thome, a Hall of Famer, getting to walk in with his son and celebrate this in that room with the dedicated staff of the Chicago White Sox that worked so hard in this draft, was a magic moment,” Shirley said. “Just a great day, it was the icing on the cake today.”