Tim Elko Is $35,000 Well Spent For Rebuilding White Sox

Tim Elko could become the White Sox’s biggest bargain since Mark Buehrle.

The 26-year-old first baseman who bashed a three-run homer off Sandy Alcantara on Sunday was a fifth-year senior when Sox scouting director Mike Shirley selected him in the 10th round of the 2022 draft. He fits in a line of college seniors the Sox have selected in recent drafts.

The strategy is built around the lack of leverage held by guys in their final amateur seniors. They are anxious to sign, which produces modest signing bonuses that allows a franchise to spend over draft slot on high school players and highly regarded college juniors.

Elko signed for $35,000, which was $114,600 below the slot value assigned by Major League Value. He’s on pace to earn $580,212 if he remains with the White Sox all season and could become a candidate for a long-term guarantee if he hits like he has in the minor leagues.

Credit Shirley for doing a good job navigating a tight budget in the 2022 draft that included Elko. He had a total pool of only $6.29 million, the third smallest in MLB, after the Sox won 93 games in ’21 and decided against extending a Qualifying Offer to Carlos Rodon. That would have given the White Sox an a compensation pick after the second round and another $800,000 in the pool.

The Sox have been focusing on pitching in recent drafts. They used their top three picks in 2022 on pitchers, landing high school left-hander Noah Schultz (currently ranked No. 13 by MLB Pipeline) and college right-handers Payton Pallette and Jonathan Cannon.

In addition to Elko, they landed another bargain by signing UNC Wilmington senior Brooks Baldwin for $125,000. A 12th-round pick, he got to the big leagues in his second full pro season and has been a regular since he arrived, starting games at five different positions.

Baldwin was a productive hitter in the minors. But he never created the kind of excitement Elko has while hitting 61 home runs and generating an .843 OPS in 325 minor-league games.

A star for an Ole Miss team that won the 2022 College World Series, Elko was a standout in the Arizona Fall League last year and killed the ball at Triple-A Charlotte before being promoted last weekend (.348, 10 homers, 1.100 OPS in 31 games). He is also highly regarded as a clubhouse leader, creating the possibility he could become a major piece in the rebuild that has left the Sox 97 games under .500 over the last two seasons.

The challenge for Elko is to handle major-league pitching. The home run that gave the Sox a 4-2 victory over Miami on Sunday is his only hit in six at-bats to this point. He’s expected to get a long runway to prove himself, as Andrew Vaughn has disappointed since replacing Jose Abreu as the White Sox first baseman.

Vaughn, selected immediately after Adley Rutschman and Bobby Witt Jr. in the 2019 draft, has a .225 on-base percentage in 152 at-bats this season and has generated 0.2 WAR in 602 career games on the South Side. His salary is $5.85 million this season. It appears he and Elko will shuttle between first and the designated hitter spot but Vaughn is running out of rope.

The Sox play three games in Cincinnati this week before returning to Chicago to face the Cubs at Wrigley Field. The intensity of fans at the City Series may take Elko back to Omaha, where he homered twice in the College World Series.

Will Elko plut in 12 seasons with the White Sox, like Buehrle after he was selected in the 38th round of the 1998 draft? Will he play the Paul Konerko role when they get back to the postseason? That may be asking too much of a 10th-round pick with a franchise that lacks financial aggressiveness but he gives fans a new face to stir the imagination. He’s arriving at the perfect time.