At 6’7 and 239 pounds, 18-year-old White Sox prospect George Wolkow could have pursued football or basketball if he wanted to. He is big and athletic enough to play whatever sport he wants. But Wolkow chose baseball, and his decision is already paying dividends. He hit two home runs last night and is just starting to scratch the surface of his star potential.
The White Sox drafted Wolkow in the seventh round from Downers Grove North High School last year. The team has selected several local products in recent years, including Colson Montgomery and Noah Schultz, and they continued that trend by bringing Wolkow into the organization in the 2023 draft. He ended up signing for $1 million, way above slot value for a seventh-round pick, convincing him to forgo his commitment to the University of South Carolina. It was a significant expenditure for the White Sox to make to a high school player, but taking a chance on Wolkow looks like a good use of a million bucks.
Wolkow’s 2024 season has been a campaign full of ups and downs. He started the season in the Arizona Complex League and fared quite well. He had nine extra-base hits, a .561 slugging percentage, and a .994 OPS in just 15 games. Wolkow is so young that he is almost two years younger than the average Arizona Complex League player, yet he held his own. He did so well in his short stint there that the White Sox promoted him to Low-A Kannapolis in early June. An 18-year-old playing in Low-A is an aggressive promotion. However, the White Sox organization moving him up a level shows how talented Wolkow is and how much they believe in him against older, more talented competition.
Unfortunately, Wolkow’s first taste of Low-A did not go well. In his first 13 games at that level, he hit just .146 with 32 strikeouts in 54 plate appearances. Thankfully, though, he has shown signs of improvement recently. In his last seven games, Wolkow is hitting .458 with a 1.435 OPS and three home runs. Most importantly, he has struck out just six times in 27 plate appearances in that span. While the sample size is small and he has an inflated BABIP, the fact that Wolkow has already shown an ability to adjust and improve despite being significantly younger than the competition is a positive sign regarding his development and future.
Wolkow is currently only the #14 prospect in the White Sox organization per MLB.com, but he will almost certainly be ranked higher the next time the list is updated. His power is his best trait, and he has already shown it in professional game action. Just a couple of weeks ago, he hit a 457-foot home run with an exit velocity of over 114 MPH, which is an exceptionally impressive feat for an 18-year-old not even a year removed from playing high school baseball.
For comparison’s sake, Wolkow’s 114 MPH exit velo earlier this season is more than the max exit velo of players like Matt Olson, Rafael Devers, Salvador Perez, Gunnar Henderson, Bryce Harper, Freddie Freeman, and Paul Goldschmidt this season. Wolkow has MLB-caliber power even as a teenager. He has drawn comparisons to top Yankees prospect Spencer Jones because of their similarities in stature and power, which is another feather in Wolkow’s cap.
We likely will not see Wolkow in Chicago for several more years. He is very young and raw, and high school draft picks typically take years to develop in the minor leagues. However, his ceiling is enormous, and his profile as a left-handed hitter with massive power is what the White Sox need organizationally. Wolkow will have to keep the strikeouts under control, but he is trending in the right direction and is one of the more intriguing prospects in the farm system. If he keeps this up, he will shoot up prospect lists, and it is not inconceivable that he could eventually crack the MLB top 100 prospect list. Some fans have shifted to focusing on the minor leagues, considering how bad the MLB team is. George Wolkow is a name to keep an eye on if you fall into that category.
