The White Sox Are in the Midst of An Impressive Turnaround

In 2024, the White Sox set a single-season record by losing 121 games, and last year, they went 60-102 under rookie manager Will Venable — their third straight season with at least 100 losses. Yet now, more than a third of the way into the 2026 season, the White Sox are one of only five AL teams with a record of .500 or better. At 34-31, they currently occupy the second Wild Card spot and are just 1.5 games behind the Guardians in the AL Central race.

Our projection systems certainly didn’t see this turnaround coming, as the White Sox were forecast for a 67-95 record — worst in the AL by almost five full wins — with just a 1.1% chance of making the playoffs. In our preseason Positional Power Rankings, their starting pitching, all three outfield spots, and designated hitter all ranked among the majors’ bottom three. As of mid-April, the Sox appeared to be fulfilling their destiny of another forgettable season, having skidded to a 6-13 start while scoring just 3.16 runs per game and hitting a cringeworthy .195/.286/.316 (71 wRC+), worst in the majors across the board. Even newcomer Munetaka Murakami was hitting just .167/.346/.417 (111 wRC+) with five home runs and a 21.8% walk rate but not much else. However, since that point, the team has hit .260/.343/.451 (121 wRC+) with 73 homers, leading either the AL or the majors in all of those categories while going 28-18 (.609) for the league’s second-best record over that span, behind only the Yankees (29-17, .630). Unfortunately, the last eight of those games have been without Murakami, who suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain running out an infield grounder on May 29 and landed on the injured list; more on him below.

While there’s a long way to go in the 2026 season, at their current pace the White Sox could post this century’s second-largest improvement in winning percentage among the teams that lost at least 108 games two years prior:

In this case, it helps that the AL is currently incredibly weak, and that the White Sox have feasted on their Central rivals, going 12-5 against the Tigers, Twins, and Royals. (They have yet to face the Guardians.) Meanwhile, they’re 3-6 against the AL East, 9-6 against the AL West, and 10-14 in interleague play. But nitpicking whom they’ve beaten and whom they haven’t is looking a gift horse in the mouth to some extent. This has become a respectable, competitive team much more quickly than anyone would have fathomed given the shape the White Sox were in two years ago.

Murakami has been a huge part of their turnaround. The 26-year-old slugger, whom the team signed to a two-year, $34 million deal in December while paying a $6.575 million posting fee to the Yakult Swallows, had been red-hot prior to going down, homering 15 times and hitting for a 177 wRC+ in his previous 38 games. His total of 20 home runs through the team’s first 57 games put him on a 57-homer pace. Overall, he’s hitting .240/.378/.560 while ranking second in the league in homers and fifth in wRC+ (156). Although he’s striking out 32.5% of the time, so far he’s adapted well enough to major league pitching to offset the concerns about his contact rate that scared so many potential suitors away. After receiving an injection of platelet-rich plasma on June 1, he’s expected to be out until late June or early July.

Murakami has been right at home in the league’s youngest lineup (average age of 25.9 years according to Baseball Reference), one that has almost completely turned over from the dismal 2024 squad. Just three position players from that team have also played for this one, namely DH Andrew Benintendi, third baseman Miguel Vargas, and utilityman Lenyn Sosa, the last of whom was traded to the Blue Jays for Rookie-level outfielder Jordan Rich on April 13. General manager Chris Getz, who took over on August 31, 2023, has kept himself busy turning over the roster, clearing out a handful of young players who were part of Chicago’s 2021 AL Central-winning team but had largely stagnated since then, such as Eloy Jiménez (traded to the Orioles for Trey McGough on July 30, 2024), Luis Robert Jr. (traded to the Mets for Luisangel Acuña and Truman Pauley on January 20, 2026), Gavin Sheets (non-tendered on November 22, 2024), Andrew Vaughn (traded to the Brewers for Aaron Civale and cash on June 13, 2025).

The early returns on those deals haven’t been great, admittedly. Vaughn and Sheets have improved markedly with changes of scenery, while Civale and McGough are both long gone. Pauley is getting lit up in A-ball, and Acuña has struggled mightily in a part-time role, hitting just .191/.242/.209 (27 wRC+) while splitting time between center field and shortstop. Still, he’s just 24 years old and has five years of club control remaining after this, though he is out of options. Getz fared better in trading for the other half of the team’s center field platoon, acquiring lefty-swinging Tristan Peters from the Rays for cash considerations in December. The 26-year-old Peters, who went 0-for-12 in a cup of coffee last year, has hit .307/.365/.448 (129 wRC+) with outstanding defense (5 FRV, 4 DRS) while making 40 starts in center, seven in right, and one in left.

Getz also fared well in acquiring Vargas from the Dodgers as part of the July 24, 2024, three-way trade that sent Erick Fedde, Tommy Pham and cash to the Cardinals and Michael Kopech to the Dodgers. Vargas was solid last year, hitting for a 101 wRC+ with 16 homers and 1.4 WAR, while this year, the 26-year-old third baseman has broken out to hit .242/.370/.489 (140 wRC+) with 15 homers, nine steals, and 2.3 WAR. As Michael Baumann detailed last month, Vargas is swinging the bat much harder, and has improved his barrel rate (from 9.3% to 14.1%) and his xSLG (from .407 to .523) while also boosting his walk rate (from 9.8% to 15.2%).

Getz’s biggest deal to date remains the Garrett Crochet blockbuster from December 2024, which brought the team starting second baseman Chase Meidroth, catcher Kyle Teel, reliever Wikelman González, and outfielder Braden Montgomery. The 24-year-old Meidroth hit for an 87 wRC+ with 1.4 WAR as a rookie last season. Thanks to improvements in his barrel rate (from 1.6% to 5.5%) and pulled air rate (from 11.3% to 14.8%) — and some overperformance relative to his Statcast expected stats — he’s up to a 108 wRC+ (.274/.343/.392) and has already matched last year’s home run total of five. The 24-year-old Teel was very productive last year as a rookie catcher/DH (.273/.375/.411, 121 wRC+), but he’s yet to play for the White Sox this season due to injuries. He suffered a Grade 2 right hamstring strain during the World Baseball Classic, then sprained the lateral collateral ligament in his right knee while on a rehab assignment in mid-May; the hope is that he’ll be back some time later this month to upgrade what has to date been a replacement-level catching tandem of Drew Romo and Edgar Quero. Both the 24-year-old González and 23-year-old Montgomery are at Triple-A Charlotte and could help the big club at some point this season; the latter, a switch-hitting 50-FV prospect who was no. 100 on our preseason Top 100 Prospects list, should get his chance given that right field has been the weakest link in the lineup, with its denizens combining for a 62 wRC+ and -0.7 WAR. [Update: Montgomery was called up today!]

The lineup does still bear some of the fingerprints of Getz’s predecessor, Rick Hahn. It was Hahn who signed Benintendi to a five-year, $75 million deal — remarkably, still the team’s largest ever — ahead of the 2023 season. The 31-year-old Benintendi has been reworking his approach to pull more balls in the air, as Ryan Blake noted. It’s paid off to a point, as his 33.3% pulled air rate is in the 98th percentile, but he’s offset that with a huge spike in his strikeout rate (from 17.4% to 28.0%), and he has just six homers to go with a .237/.296/.403 (93 wRC+) line. He does appear to be finding some equilibrium, though, as he experienced what Ryan called “a strikeout bonanza” in the season’s first two weeks but has regressed to the mean since then. Meanwhile, Benintendi has three home runs in the last eight games and a 130 wRC+ over his past 99 plate appearances.

Hahn — and perhaps more importantly Mike Shirley, who has remained the team’s director of amateur scouting — also oversaw the drafting of several players on this roster, with shortstop/third baseman Colson Montgomery, the team’s 2021 first-round pick (no. 22 overall out of an Indiana high school) the biggest contributor to this year’s lineup. In that same draft, the Sox also selected righty Sean Burke, currently their second-best starter. The 24-year-old Montgomery was very good as a rookie, hitting for a 129 wRC+ with 21 homers and 2.7 WAR last year. This season, he’s batting .225/.322/.479 (121 wRC+) while ranking second on the team in homers (16) and first in WAR (2.5). A pair of 2023 draftees, Jacob Gonzalez (first round) and Rikuu Nishida (11th round) have recently gotten their feet wet, with the former filling in at first base for Murakami (and hitting .300/.391/.450 through his first 23 plate appearances) and the latter (who lists at just 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds) platooning in right field with waiver wire pickup Randal Grichuk. From the 2024 draft, fifth-rounder Sam Antonacci, a 23-year-old who hadn’t played above Double-A or in the outfield prior to this season, was called up after just 14 games at Charlotte and is now the team’s starting left fielder and leadoff hitter, batting .286/.386/.379 (123 wRC+) with eight steals.

Grichuk, whom the Yankees released on May 1, is the oldest White Sox player at 34. He’s shown there’s still life in his bat, hitting a sizzling .315/.339/.685 (181 wRC+) with six home runs in 56 plate appearances since being picked up while spotting at both outfield corners and DH. He’s a handy equalizer on a roster that’s not only stacked with lefties, particularly in the outfield, but has two righty-swinging outfielders on the injured list in Austin Hays (who’s out for at least another couple of weeks due to a recurrent left calf strain) and Everson Pereira (who just began a rehab assignment after straining a pectoral muscle in late April).

Despite their early offensive woes, the White Sox are second in the AL in scoring (4.77 runs per game), home runs (89), and slugging percentage (.414), and third in wRC+ (107). They’ve been less successful on the run prevention side, allowing 4.65 runs per game, the league’s sixth-highest rate. Their rotation ranks ninth in the AL in ERA (4.25) and 12th in both FIP (4.25) and strikeout rate (20.8%), though those numbers are a bit fuzzy because the team has used openers in front of Burke, Fedde (who’s back in the fold after passing through the Cardinals, Braves, and Brewers), and Anthony Kay, or gone with straight bullpen games 11 times, more than any other AL club. The White Sox were the league’s most frequent purveyors of the strategy last year, as well; they’ve gone from having the majors’ fourth-largest wOBA-allowed tilt toward righties — that is, pitching more effectively against them — to having the largest tilt toward lefties:

The rotation is headed up by a couple of Hahn-era draft picks, the aforementioned Burke (third round in 2021 out of Maryland) and Davis Martin (14th round in 2018 out of Texas Tech). Martin, a 29-year-old righty whose development was slowed by the pandemic and 2023 Tommy John surgery, is now in the midst of a belated breakout. He ranks second in the league in FIP (2.46) and WAR (2.6) and fourth in ERA (2.61). Key to that has been his development of a couple of quality breaking balls that are generating whiff rates greater than 43% and wOBAs below .200, with a kick change that’s been similarly stifling. The 26-year-old Burke has taken a step forward from last year, his first full one in the majors. Adding a cutter and increasing his use of a sinker has helped him trim his walk rate, limit hard contact, and close up a reverse platoon split en route to a 3.88 ERA and a 3.70 FIP.

Alas, even with the occasional opener, Fedde (4.94 ERA, 6.11 FIP) and Kay (4.40 ERA, 5.49 FIP) have been more or less replacement level this year, walking too many hitters, yielding too many homers, and not missing enough bats. Rookie Noah Schultz, a 6-foot-10, 24-year-old southpaw, hasn’t fared much better. The team’s first-round pick in 2022 and the no. 36 prospect in our Top 100, he was lit for a 5.82 ERA and a 4.76 FIP before landing on the IL due to patellar tendinitis in his right knee — an issue that hampered him last season, too, compromising his command and quality of stuff. Also sidelined is Shane Smith, a 2024 Rule 5 pick from the Brewers who was the team’s best starter and lone All-Star last season, pitching to a 3.81 ERA and a 4.10 FIP. After being lit for a 10.80 ERA and lasting just 8 1/3 innings in his first three starts, he was optioned to Triple-A and continued to scuffle before straining his rotator cuff in early May.

Schultz’s spot in the rotation has been filled by 25-year-old rookie David Sandlin, a power-arm righty acquired from the Red Sox along with Jordan Hicks and cash in late February. Sandlin debuted by holding the Twins to one hit — a solo homer by Byron Buxton on his second pitch in the majors — over six innings in a 15-2 rout on May 27, but he’s since been lit for 11 runs in 7 1/3 innings in one start and one bulk appearance.

As for the bullpen — which thanks to the use of openers has a fair bit of cross-pollination with the starters — its 4.44 ERA and 4.46 FIP are nothing to write home about. Closer Seranthony Domínguez has pitched to a 3.91 ERA and a 5.24 FIP, and allowed as many homers in 23 innings this year as he did in 62 2/3 innings last year (five); he’s converted 11 out of 14 save chances. Righty Grant Taylor (1.93 ERA, 1.27 FIP) and lefty Bryan Hudson (2.40 ERA, 2.84 FIP) have been effective in higher-leverage roles while also accounting for seven opener-type starts. Lefty Sean Newcomb (2.35 ERA, 2.72 FIP) has also been effective, but the other righties Venable has called upon most often — Hicks (currently out with a lat strain), Tyler Davis, Jordan Leasure, and Trevor Richards — have largely been knocked around; all have ERAs of 4.43 or higher, and only Davis has a FIP below 5.00.

Suffice it to say that if the White Sox are going to remain in contention, they’ll need a significant infusion of pitching. For as impressive as this turnaround has been, these White Sox remain a work in progress, and our Playoff Odds remain skeptical, giving them just a 17.9% chance of reaching the postseason. Still, after three seasons with at least 100 losses, with some historical ignominy thrown in, that progress is most welcome.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly credited Rick Hahn for the Miguel Vargas trade when, in fact, Chris Getz was the White Sox GM who made that trade in July 2024. This article has been updated to correct the error.