Age Before Beauty? Astros vs. White Sox AL Wild Card Series Preview
No one will be happier than the Houston Astros when the second game of their Wild Card Series starts. See, during the first game, they won’t have a playoff win-loss record, so the fact that they went 81-81 this year, the worst record ever to win a division title, will come up early and often. That’s such a striking fact that we’ll no doubt continue to hear about it throughout the playoffs, but in their first game, it’s going to be one of the main topics of conversation. Houston would love nothing more than to leave behind that pedestrian regular season and get back to what the team normally does in October: maraud through the American League towards the World Series.
The Chicago White Sox, on the other hand, would probably be happy to live in the 2026 regular season forever. Written off before the year even began, they started hot and kept winning. While pundits expected them to continue their slow rebuild, their youth movement bubbled over into major league success far faster than expected. They led the AL Central longer than any other team this season. They won 24 more games than they did last year, which was itself a 19-game improvement on the year before. Unless they win the World Series, the 2026 White Sox will be remembered for their miraculous regular season, not whatever goes on in the few games they play afterwards. But being remembered is for the future; right now, all that matters is avoiding going home for one more series. So while Chicago has blown away expectations and Houston has fallen short of meeting their own, none of that matters for the next two or three games.
The divergent regular season experiences of these two clubs make for an interesting setup for this clash. But that’s just the big picture storyline. The series has several points of interest on both sides that I’m excited to talk about.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
White Sox starters averaged 12.5 outs/game this year. Just over 4 IP. Easily last in the majors. Some of that is openers, but using so many openers is, in itself, a sign of a weak rotation.
The bullpen is tired because of it. They haven’t been taxed much in the last week, but over the last few months their high leverage relievers have thrown a lot of innings and I don’t think one day off is enough for them to get back into form.
On top of that Colson Montgomery and Murakami have been two of the worst hitters in baseball over the last 2 months with k% around 40, although Murakami looked a little better in the last week.
Anything can happen in 3 games, but the White Sox don’t really look built for playoff success. Pitching depth is a lot less important with more off days, but you don’t get those in the WC round and you need something out of your starters or else you will almost certainly have to roll the dice with low leverage relievers in a high leverage situation, and probably more than once.
On the other hand, the White Sox have been fighting postseason-style wars of bullpen attrition for months and months now. Is that enough to compensate for their bullpen being as taxed as any team in the league? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s not nothing either.
Also, Murakami had 1.062 OPS over his final 45 PA starting against the Tigers on 9/17. Something appears to have clicked during that game and he’s looked all the way back since.
I’m surprised no mention anywhere of the Home Field advantage – White Sox had the biggest home/away split discrepancy of any team. Very good at home. Very bad on the road. Unfortunately for them the Wild Card series is 3 games on the road.
“Written off before the year even began, they started hot and kept winning.”
Just worth noting that this isn’t true. The White Sox got blown out 14-2 on opening day and started 6-13 with a -38 RD. Then, from April 17th onwards, they went 78-65 (78-59 vs non-Boston teams, lol) with a +94 RD (+118 non-Boston division).
And honestly, they looked like they were heading for a collapse as they started September 5-10. Going 7-3 against the Tigers, Royals, and Rockies in the final three series of the season helped the White Sox change the narrative to merely falling short in a tight division race.
But all that to say, the Sox can be streaky, which is not surprising with guys like Murakami and Colson Montgomery in the heart of the lineup. I could see a scenario in which they get blown out in two games or one where they simply outslug Houston in a homer friendly park.
Yeah, that’s basically exactly what they’re going to have to do. They’re reliant on the home run ball, so they’re extremely streaky, but when it’s clicking they score in bunches (which is how they led the AL in runs). During that 10-game stretch to end the season, they averaged 6.5 runs per game, so the hope it that it carries over.
Honestly, I don’t think they’re that streaky. Longest losing streak was 4, longest winning streak was 5. They had a hot May and otherwise posted almost exactly a .500 record in every other full month. The beginning of September was the worst stretch since the very beginning of the season, but they partly offset for another ~.500 month in the final week and a half or so. Of course in a 3 game series, none of this matters too much.
basically they were good for two wins in a winnable series and then you knew they were about to post 1-2 hits on the getaway day.
I was referring to the offense.
They scored 42 more runs on 15 fewer homeruns than Houston. Homers kinda rule the postseason anyway, but I don’t think they’re particularly reliant on the homerun more than other teams. They are 4th in MLB in drawing walks and 1st in HBPs.
The thing that has impressed me most about them is their resilience. They would have a bad series or two and I would think “that’s it. Been nice. Going to lose 17 of 20.” But then they would bounce back and play better. I don’t know that it means anything, but it happened a bunch of times and I feel like Venable deserves some credit for it, although I can’t pinpoint an obvious reason why.
The White Sox lost me at G1 SP Erick Fedde. This despite the Astros not having announced any SP. Dis AL doh, smh
It’s probably going to be a bullpen game with Fedde as the bulk guy (though I could see it being Martin too since he only threw 25 pitches on Saturday). His advanced stats are not anywhere as good (4.16 FIP, 4.42 xFIP), but Fedde has a 2.87 ERA over his last 22 appearances since June 1st.
With how thin the Sox starting staff is, hoping he continues the smoke and mirrors act is as good a bet as any.
I think Burke is the only guy they trust to have a traditional start. The other games will be opener + Fedde bulk, opener + Martin bulk, and then probably a more traditional bullpen game where Sandlin and Kay can give you multiple innings depending on the lane.
Kay is so bad against RHH (5.58 ERA & 5.78 FIP vs R; 1.86 ERA & 2.40 FIP vs L) that I’d leave him off the postseason roster for the Wild Card round entirely since he started and threw 75 pitches Sunday, and thus probably can’t be used until Game 2 anyway, and/or on back-to-back days if it goes to Game 3. Schultz has looked much improved since he was called back up, and I’d rather throw him after Sandlin if that’s what they decide on.
I really wish they’d given Tanner McDougal another shot down the stretch since he has legit bat missing stuff and can go multiple innings, but alas, they didn’t.
He wasn’t missing bats in AAA. After returning from injury, his K-rate in since July in AAA was 19.1% despite pitching out of the bullpen. Compare that to 28% in the minors the year before.
Let’s be honest, most games with Fedde starting end up as a bullpen game regardless of whether it’s planned or not
Even as a Sox fan, I expect the Astros to win… but the White Sox, offensively, are a solid unit who won’t give many at bats to easy outs (the two Montgomerys being the exception though you can’t make a mistake to Colson). They’ll grind down a pitching staff.
The flip side is I have no clue how they’ll patch together 27 outs. This seems like a high scoring series, but I figure the Astros win.
Here’s how I’d describe the White Sox pitching staff: Remember when the 2024 Tigers almost made the ALCS (facing the exact same HOU-CLE path as the White Sox, mind you) with one traditional starter and every other game some sort of bullpen game?
Well, imagine trying to do that with Sean Burke replacing Tarik Skubal.
Both accurate and funny, but that Tigers team also didn’t have anyone remotely as good as Grant Taylor in their bullpen.
If this series goes three games, I expect Taylor to throw 4-5 innings in relief, and unless the Sox simply slug Houston into submission, he’ll have to for them to win it.
I’m amazed you didn’t mention (and amazed it’s true) that this is a matchup of the two best offenses in the American League by wRC+!
Is it me, or do these two teams seem kind of weak to be in the playoffs and having a shot at becoming Woorld Champions?
I was saying Woo-urns
Yea, we really should just let a computer decide who deserves to compete.
Unrelated topic: The MVP Yeti arrived today. Looks great! Thanks to the entire team.
What jumps out to me is the White Sox lineup is very left-handed (not entirely patched over by presence of Grichuk and emergence of Meidroth) and besides Hader, the Astros don’t have many good lefties to use in the pen. Some of the not-so-good ones, like Sousa have reverse splits. Starting rotation is right-handed. So that helps the Sox. Now you might see the actual splits put up by the Sox and see that they hit lefties better, especially at the end of the season; I think this is small sample size shenanigans in which a number of lefties who have long had normal splits posted reverse splits (Murakami, Teel, Peters, Antonacci). I expect them to generally hit righties better going forward.
On the flip side, as noted in the article, the Houston lineup is very right-handed. The White Sox rotation is very right-handed as well…except, as also noted, those guys aren’t very good, so maybe the benefit of platoon advantage can’t overwhelm the fact that they just haven’t been pitching all that well. The Sox bullpen has been a bit better, but it’s very left-handed. The righty Taylor is by far the best, but after that the next best trio are all lefties (Smith, Newcomb, Hudson). Hicks has been off and on from the right side, but mostly off down the stretch. Trevor Richards is not really a factor. Huascar Brazoban is not in the circle of trust be will surely pitch and seems capable of good pitching even if he’s been not very good since arriving on the South Side. Sox are using Hagen Smith to start game 1, so I guess to begin with they are thinking about just going with the best pitchers and worrying less about matchups. I’m very curious how long they go with Smith if he doesn’t get into trouble; in theory, he’s a starting pitcher who might be good for 50-60 pitches. But Venable might see him get past Yordan and tap Sandlin/Fedde to run through the pile of righties afterwards.
Sox were actually significantly better against lefties this year than they were against righties. Grichuk, Meidroth, Vargas killed lefties and C Montgomery was better against lefties than righties.
Jordan Hicks had a 43.8% K rate in September. Yes, walk rate also elevated, but xERA and xFIP were low. He gave up one run at the beginning of the month. Not sure how he’s been “mostly off down the stretch.” https://www.fangraphs.com/players/jordan-hicks/19618/game-log?position=P&gds=2026-09-01&gde=2026-10-31&season=&type=0
Starting Hagen Smith is crazy
Crazy effective
Yep! I take that one back. I was thinking I wanted to save him as a fireman, but I’ll take a starting ace!
How many times do I need to learn to lean into trusting the Getz and Venable team!
I’m no snob but this is a garbage, non-compelling matchup. Cubs-Padres is interesting, with the big O vs the big Pen.
White Sox vs Astros:
It is all very interesting.