Twenty-seven Cuban-born players have worn a Chicago White Sox uniform. The list divides almost exactly into three: nine arrived before 1968, three in the thirty-six years that followed, and fifteen since 2004. The middle number is the story.
Between Aurelio Monteagudo’s single inning in 1967 and José Contreras’s arrival in 2004, three Cuban-born players appeared for the White Sox — and not one of them was signed out of Cuba. All three had left the island as children and reached the majors through the American amateur draft. Cuba abolished professional baseball in 1961. What reopened the pipeline four decades later was not scouting. It was defection.
| Player | Pos | Born | White Sox seasons | With the White Sox |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| José Acosta | P | Havana | 1922 | 5 G, 0–2, 8.40 ERA |
| Luis Aloma | P | Havana | 1950–53 | 116 G, 18–3, 3.46 ERA |
| Minnie Miñoso | OF | Havana | 1951–57, 1960–61, 1964, 1976, 1980 | 1,373 G, .304, 135 HR, 808 RBI |
| Héctor Rodríguez | 3B | Alquízar | 1952 | 124 G, .265, 1 HR, 40 RBI |
| Willy Miranda | SS | Velasco | 1952 | 70 G, .220, 0 HR, 7 RBI |
| Mike Fornieles | P | Havana | 1953–56 | 86 G, 15–13, 3.83 ERA |
| Sandy Consuegra | P | Potrerillos | 1953–56 | 140 G, 30–15, 2.85 ERA |
| Rudy Arias | P | Las Villas | 1959 | 34 G, 2–0, 4.09 ERA |
| Aurelio Monteagudo | P | Caibarién | 1967 | 1 G, 0–1, 24.55 ERA |
| Leo Sutherland | OF | Santiago de Cuba | 1980–81 | 45 G, .248, 0 HR, 5 RBI |
| Nelson Santovenia | C | Pinar del Río | 1992 | 2 G, .333, 1 HR, 2 RBI |
| José Canseco | DH | Havana | 2001 | 76 G, .258, 16 HR, 49 RBI |
| José Contreras | P | Las Martinas | 2004–09 | 148 G, 55–56, 4.67 ERA |
| Orlando Hernández | P | Guají | 2005 | 24 G, 9–9, 5.13 ERA |
| Alexei Ramírez | SS | Pinar del Río | 2008–15 | 1,226 G, .273, 109 HR, 542 RBI |
| Dayan Viciedo | 3B | Remedios | 2010–14 | 483 G, .254, 66 HR, 211 RBI |
| Adrián Nieto | C | Havana | 2014 | 48 G, .236, 2 HR, 7 RBI |
| José Abreu | 1B | Cienfuegos | 2014–22 | 1,270 G, .292, 243 HR, 863 RBI |
| Yoán Moncada | 2B | Cienfuegos | 2017–24 | 739 G, .254, 93 HR, 338 RBI |
| Odrisamer Despaigne | P | Havana | 2019 | 3 G, 0–2, 9.62 ERA |
| Yonder Alonso | 1B | Havana | 2019 | 67 G, .178, 7 HR, 27 RBI |
| Luis Robert Jr. | CF | Ciego de Ávila | 2020–25 | 577 G, .259, 102 HR, 298 RBI |
| Yasmani Grandal | C | Havana | 2020–23 | 356 G, .226, 44 HR, 149 RBI |
| Oscar Colás | RF | Havana | 2023–24 | 88 G, .223, 5 HR, 23 RBI |
| Bryan Ramos | 3B | Havana | 2024–25 | 36 G, .198, 3 HR, 13 RBI |
| Miguel Vargas | 3B | Havana | 2024–26 | 313 G, .225, 47 HR, 143 RBI |
| Edgar Quero | C | Cienfuegos | 2025–26 | 176 G, .248, 8 HR, 55 RBI |
In the organisation now
Two Cuban-born players are on the major league roster, and both are young enough to be there for a while.
Miguel Vargas was named an All-Star in July 2026, the first Cuban White Sox All-Star since José Abreu in 2019, and has 29 home runs and a .854 OPS through 133 games. Edgar Quero, 23, is the catcher of record; his bat has gone backwards in his second season — .208 across 65 games — but the job is still his.
Two more are in the low minors: outfielder Osniel Castillo, born in Guisa in 2006, and infielder Alejandro Cruz, born in Havana in 2007, both with the club’s Arizona Complex League team.
The turnover above them has been fast. Luis Robert Jr. was traded to the New York Mets on 20 January 2026. Yoán Moncada signed with the Angels after 2024. Bryan Ramos is now in the Orioles system. Of the four Cubans on the 2025 roster, two are left.
From Havana to 35th Street, 1922–1967
José Acosta pitched five games for the White Sox in 1922 and then no Cuban wore the uniform for twenty-eight years. What followed was not a trickle. Eight Cubans reached Chicago in the eighteen seasons between 1950 and 1967, at a time when Havana was a routine stop on a scout’s winter itinerary and the White Sox were as willing as any club in the American League to sign from it.
José Acosta, pitcher, 1922
The first Cuban to play for the White Sox, and briefly: five appearances, fifteen innings, an 8.40 earned run average, and back to the minors. It was the last season of his major league career.
Luis Aloma, pitcher, 1950–53
A Havana-born reliever whose entire major league career was spent in Chicago: 116 games across four seasons and a record of 18–3. He never had a losing year.
Minnie Miñoso, outfielder, 1951–57, 1960–61, 1964, 1976, 1980
Chicago acquired him from Cleveland on 30 April 1951 in a three-team trade. The next afternoon, in his first plate appearance as a White Sox player, he hit a 425-foot home run off Vic Raschi of the Yankees. Mickey Mantle hit the first home run of his own career in the same game. Miñoso was the first Black player in White Sox history.
What followed is the best career any Cuban has had in Chicago and one of the best anyone has had: 1,373 games, a .304 average, 135 home runs, 808 runs batted in, 171 stolen bases. Nine All-Star selections and three Gold Gloves. He led the American League in stolen bases in 1951, 1952 and 1953, in triples in 1951, 1954 and 1956, and in doubles in 1957.
He also led the league in being hit by a pitch ten times in twelve years, which is its own kind of record and tells you how he played. He was hit 23 times in 1956 alone.
He did not win the 1951 Rookie of the Year award. He finished second to Gil McDougald by 13 votes to 11, having led the American League in both triples and stolen bases while McDougald led in nothing. It is the single clearest piece of evidence in the argument that Miñoso was undervalued in his own time — an argument the Hall of Fame did not settle until 5 December 2021, when the Golden Days Era Committee elected him six years after his death. His number 9 is retired on the South Side.
Héctor Rodríguez, third baseman, 1952
He was past thirty when he finally reached the majors, and he stayed exactly one season: 124 games at third base, a .265 average, one home run. It was his entire major league career.
Willy Miranda, shortstop, 1952
A glove-first shortstop who passed through five organisations in nine years. Chicago had him for 70 games.
Sandy Consuegra, pitcher, 1953–56
The best season any Cuban pitcher has had for the White Sox belongs to him: 16–3 with a 2.69 earned run average in 1954, an All-Star selection, and the best winning percentage in the American League. He was 30–15 across four years in Chicago.
Mike Fornieles, pitcher, 1953–56
Eighty-six games and a 15–13 record on the South Side. His best years came later, in Boston, where he made an All-Star team in 1961.
Rudy Arias, pitcher, 1959
Thirty-four appearances out of the bullpen, 2–0, in the only major league season he ever had — and it happened to be the year the Go-Go Sox won the pennant.
Aurelio Monteagudo, pitcher, 1967
One game. One and a third innings. Four earned runs. That is the whole of Aurelio Monteagudo’s White Sox career, and it closed an era: no Cuban-born player appeared for Chicago again for thirteen years, and none arrived from Cuba itself for thirty-seven.
The border closes, 1968–2003
Cuba abolished professional baseball in 1961, and the last players signed before the ban worked their way out of the American system over the decade that followed. For the next thirty-six years the White Sox employed three Cuban-born players. Each of them had left the island as a child and come to baseball through the American amateur draft. The birthplace column did not change. The route did, completely.
Leo Sutherland, outfielder, 1980–81
Born in Santiago de Cuba in 1958, raised in Garden Grove, California. The White Sox took him third overall in the secondary phase of the January 1976 draft and he spent nearly five years in their minor league system before a 45-game look across two seasons.
Nelson Santovenia, catcher, 1992
Born in Pinar del Río, raised in Miami, drafted by Montreal. His White Sox career was two games and three at-bats — one of which he hit for a home run.
José Canseco, designated hitter, 2001
Born in Havana in 1964; his family left the following year. By the time he reached Chicago he was 36 and thirteen years past his MVP season. He hit 16 home runs in 76 games, and it was the last season he played.
Ken Williams and the defection era, 2004 to now
At the 2004 trade deadline the White Sox sent Esteban Loaiza to the Yankees for José Contreras, who two years earlier had walked away from the Cuban national team’s hotel in Saltillo, Mexico. That trade is the hinge. Fifteen Cuban-born players have worn the uniform in the twenty-two seasons since — more than the franchise employed in its first hundred and three years.
José Contreras, pitcher, 2004–09
Six seasons, 148 games, 55–56. In 2005 he went 15–7 with a 3.61 earned run average, and on 16 October he threw the fourth consecutive complete game by a White Sox starter to close out the American League Championship Series and send Chicago to its first World Series since 1959. He was an All-Star in 2006.
Orlando “El Duque” Hernández, pitcher, 2005
He left Cuba by boat on Christmas Day 1997 and reached Chicago at 39 for a single season, 9–9 as a starter. What the 2005 team remembers is the division series against Boston: he came out of the bullpen in the sixth inning with the bases loaded, nobody out and a one-run lead, popped up Jason Varitek and Tony Graffanino, struck out Johnny Damon, and then pitched two more scoreless innings.
Alexei Ramírez, shortstop, 2008–15
Seven seasons with Pinar del Río in the Serie Nacional, a .332 career average there, and a league-leading 20 home runs in 2007. He did not defect: in September 2007 he left Cuba to apply for Dominican citizenship and for free agency, and he signed with the White Sox on 21 December for four years and $8 million. Eight seasons on the South Side, 1,226 games, .273, 109 home runs, 135 stolen bases, Silver Sluggers in 2010 and 2014.
Dayan Viciedo, third baseman and outfielder, 2010–14
Signed out of Villa Clara as a teenager, in the majors at 21. Five seasons, 483 games, 66 home runs, a .254 average. He has spent the years since as a productive hitter in Japan.
Adrián Nieto, catcher, 2014
Born in Havana, raised in Miami, a Rule 5 selection who stuck on the roster all season as the back-up catcher. Forty-eight games, and the only major league season he had.
José Abreu, first baseman, 2014–22
He defected in August 2013. In October the White Sox signed him for six years and $68 million, then the largest contract ever given to a Cuban player. He won American League Rookie of the Year in 2014 and Most Valuable Player in 2020, with three Silver Sluggers in between. Nine seasons, 1,270 games, .292, 243 home runs — more than any other Cuban has hit for the franchise — and 863 runs batted in.
Yonder Alonso, first baseman, 2019
Havana-born, Miami-raised, drafted seventh overall out of the University of Miami. He hit .178 in 67 games for Chicago in what turned out to be his last season in the majors.
Odrisamer Despaigne, pitcher, 2019
A Serie Nacional veteran who left Cuba in 2013 and reached the majors with San Diego. Three appearances in a White Sox uniform.
Yoán Moncada, third baseman, 2017–24
He left Cuba in June 2014 and Boston gave him a $31.5 million signing bonus in February 2015, a record for an international amateur. On 6 December 2016 he came to Chicago as the headline piece of the Chris Sale trade. Eight seasons, 739 games, 93 home runs; his 2019 — .315, 25 home runs, a .915 OPS — is the season the rest of his career was measured against.
Luis Robert Jr., centre fielder, 2020–25
He defected in November 2016 and signed on 27 May 2017 for a $26 million bonus. He won a Gold Glove in centre field as a rookie in 2020. His 2023 — .264, 38 home runs, 20 stolen bases, an All-Star selection and a Silver Slugger — is the best season a Cuban has had for the White Sox since Abreu’s MVP year. He was traded to the New York Mets on 20 January 2026.
Yasmani Grandal, catcher, 2020–23
Born in Havana, brought to Miami as a boy, drafted twelfth overall out of the University of Miami. He signed the largest free-agent contract in White Sox history to that point and gave the club four seasons, 356 games and 44 home runs at a .226 average.
Oscar Colás, right fielder, 2023–24
The most unusual route on this list. The Cuban federation sent him to the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in 2017 as a developmental player; he defected from Japan in January 2020; the White Sox signed him for $2.7 million in January 2022. Eighty-eight games in Chicago across two seasons.
Bryan Ramos, third baseman, 2024–25
Thirty-six games over two seasons. He is now in the Baltimore organisation.
Miguel Vargas, third baseman, 2024–present
His father is Lázaro Vargas, who won two Olympic gold medals with the Cuban national team and was never permitted to play in the major leagues. Miguel signed with the Dodgers as an international free agent in September 2017 and came to Chicago on 29 July 2024 in the three-team trade that sent Michael Kopech to Los Angeles. In July 2026 he was named an All-Star for the first time.
Edgar Quero, catcher, 2025–present
Signed by the Angels out of Cuba and acquired on 26 July 2023 for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López. He has caught 176 games across his first two seasons. He is one of the record 26 Cubans who have appeared in the majors in 2026.
Almost every Cuban career on this page falls into one of two clusters, and what separates them is political history rather than scouting. Lázaro Vargas won two Olympic gold medals and never had the option his son had. That is the difference between the two halves of this list, and it is the reason the list looks the way it does.
The rest of the series
Cuba Dugout keeps a page like this one for every franchise with a real Cuban history: Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins, Cincinnati Reds, New York Yankees, Miami Marlins, Detroit Tigers and Houston Astros. For the players active right now, see Cubans in MLB 2026. Every one of these lists is drawn from the Cuban Major Leaguers Database — all 403 Cuban-born major leaguers, searchable and downloadable.
Phil Selig has photographed several of the players above in the White Sox system, including Luis Robert Jr. and Yoelqui Céspedes, and covered the club’s signing of pitcher Norge Vera.
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