The 2026 Chicago White Sox May Accomplish Something No MLB Team Has Ever Done Before
There have been nearly 3,000 MLB seasons played by every team, past and present. None of them have ever done this.
Photo via Getty Images, Daniel Bartel Splinter baseball
In the past 150 years since the 1876 founding of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs kicked off the existence of Major League Baseball, some 120 different franchises past and present have taken to the field in pursuit of championship glory. Together, those 120 teams of varying eras have played an estimated total of around 3,000 individual seasons. Which is to say, on 3,000 separate occasions in the last century and a half, the marathon that is baseball season began for a club in the spring with hopes that maybe this is our year. And with such a huge total of long, grueling seasons in the history books, a perennial truth about baseball is that there’s always relatively little that is new under the sun. Practically everything that can happen, in terms of how bad or good a team can be, has happened, and happened repeatedly over the course of 150 years.
That’s why the following is so cool: With more than 70% of the current season now complete, the 2026 Chicago White Sox are on pace to do something that no other team has ever done before. Ever! If the White Sox, currently leading their division in the American League Central by 2.5 games, are able to win this division, they’ll have accomplished something that none of those other 3,000 seasons has ever been able to match: The biggest year-to-year comeback or improvement in baseball history. The ultimate bad-to-good turnaround.
Pope Leo XIV, after AJ Pierzynski told him that the White Sox were in first place
“Oh, I’m watching and paying attention, don’t worry.”
Per Ken Rosenthal
#WhiteSox
— Carter Lowe (@carter1owe.bsky.social) 9:47 PM · Jun 25, 2026
Specifically, no team in baseball history has ever had a season where they lost 100 or more games, and then gone on to win their division the very next year. And plenty of teams have had the ignominious honor of losing that many: In the expansion era since 1961, there have been at least 97 seasons where a team lost 100 or more games. Of those 97 teams, only 13 of them have finished the following season immediately after 100 losses with a winning record above .500 (more wins than losses). Only two of those teams (three if you count the COVID-shortened 2020 season) have ever made the playoffs in any fashion following a 100-loss season; the 2017 Minnesota Twins and the 2024 Kansas City Royals. And not a single one has ever won their division.
The 2026 Chicago White Sox are threatening to do exactly that. And two years ago, they were the worst MLB team in modern history.
The 2023-2025 Chicago White Sux
I can’t stress enough just how terrible Chicago’s secondary baseball team (after the monolithic, attention-grabbing Cubs), the team that I grew up rooting for, has been in the three seasons immediately preceding this one. In fact, of the aforementioned 97 teams that had 100-loss seasons since 1961, the 2023, 2024 and 2025 White Sox account for three of them. Three in a row! That’s only happened 12 times in baseball history, FYI.
Believe it or not, the epic losing streak began during what was meant to be a “World Series contention window” for the hapless South Siders. The White Sox had spent a few years tanking and rebuilding from 2016-2019, and in the process had built a new core of highly touted prospects and veteran centerpieces, including the likes of Yoan Moncada, Luis Robert Jr., Eloy Jimenez, Jose Abreu, Yasmani Grandal, Andrew Vaughn and the newly retired former batting champion Tim Anderson. This squad made the playoffs in 2021, looking like new, perennial contenders, but then they immediately began to flame out. Some of the key pieces, like Moncada, Robert Jr. and Jimenez perpetually struggled to stay on the field, battling a seemingly never-ending array of soft tissue injuries. Others, like Abreu and Grandal, seemed to suddenly hit age-related walls. Prospects like Vaughn failed to live up to the hype of where they were drafted, and other in-house draft picks failed to develop and supplement them, while ownership refused to pony up contract cash for premium free agent reinforcements. Perfectly emblematic of the whole era was the rise and fall of charismatic shortstop Tim Anderson, anointed as the face of the franchise and then a shell of his former self only two years later after a combination of injuries and off-the-field drama and theatrics seemingly robbed him of the bat-to-ball skills that had made him a star. Not one member of the 2021 squad still remains in the organization today.
Hey #Mets – if you’re going to suck this badly, at least take some lessons from the 2024 White Sox admin and own it! #LGM #MetsSky
— Paul S. (@vakeel1961.bsky.social) 6:27 AM · Jul 5, 2026
Things completely bottomed out, meanwhile, in the epically terrible 2024 season, where a historically ineffectual offense in particular led the Chicago White Sox to a record of 41-121, with those 121 losses setting a new record for baseball’s “modern era,” loosely defined as the period since 1900. This season included, among other things, a 21-game losing streak lasting nearly a month at one point, which tied the all-time American League mark. The team finished the year having scored only 507 total runs, a total that was almost 100 fewer than the next lowest scoring team in baseball, the Tampa Bay Rays. Here in 2026, meanwhile, the White Sox as of Aug. 13 have now scored 574 runs, while still having 42 more games to go. Within two years, they managed to go from being what was literally one of the very worst run-scoring teams in history, to being a top 10 MLB offense.
The 2026 White Sox: In Pursuit of History
Sometimes, when an MLB team commits to a full-on rebuild, the pieces come together a little sooner than management expects them to, and people say that the team has “arrived early.” The 2026 Chicago White Sox are one of the most extreme cases of this expression that anyone has seen in recent memory; they have less “arrived early” for the party than shown up the day before the party, leaving the hosts deeply confused. As recently as this spring, even the most optimistic White Sox fans would have told you that the team was at least a year, or probably two years, away from really contending to win the division, much less make a World Series run. After a 2025 season that barely felt like an improvement from the horrors of 2024, sporting a record of 60 wins and 102 losses, a 70 or 75-win season probably would have been seen by most fans as a positive movement in the right direction. A .500 season? That felt like pie-in-the-sky dreaming. So how do they now find themselves in first place by 2.5 games?
As you might expect, a whole lot has gone right for the ChiSox all at once when it comes to player development. Former top prospect Miguel Vargas, one of the worst hitters in baseball back in 2024, has blossomed into a well-rounded, heart of the order slugger, who was the only person to hit a home run at this year’s All-Star Game. Shortstop Colson Montgomery has hit 44 home runs over the course of his first 162 games as a big-leaguer, despite contact issues. A modest gamble on the prospects of Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami, a player the entire league severely doubted could make a successful transition to MLB baseball, paid off massively as he hit 20 homers in his first two months stateside. And even the role players have all stepped up: Guys like second baseman Chase Meidroth, who has put up 3 wins above replacement (WAR) via scrappy defense and increased pop.
Former Dodger Miguel Vargas — in the midst of a breakout season with the White Sox — blasts a 433-foot home run against current Dodger Justin Wrobleski.
AL is up 4-0.
— Brent Maguire (@bmags94.bsky.social) 10:46 PM · Jul 14, 2026
They were joined, meanwhile, by an absolute flood of newly promoted minor league talent, on a level that you basically never see on a team that is currently enjoying a winning season. Sam Antonacci arrived looking like a fully formed lead-off hitter from 25 years ago, willing to do literally whatever it takes to get on base–he now leads the AL in hit-by-pitch at bats, despite the fact that he has fewer at bats than anyone else near the top of the list. Top outfield prospect Braden Montgomery has managed to hold his own at the age of 23, providing a steadying presence in right field that has been absent for this team for not just years but decades. Center fielder Tristan Peters walked onto the team in spring training as a complete unknown, a former Savannah Bananas player who caught fire in the first half and somehow ended up making the 2026 All-Star team. All told, the White Sox have promoted no fewer than 15 players to make their major league debuts in 2026. That simply doesn’t happen on a team that is trying to win its division; it happens with teams that are rebuilding and trying to determine which of their minor leaguers can make a legitimate contribution in the future. The Sox have somehow done both of those things simultaneously.
Oh, and they also chose the #1 pick in the 2026 MLB draft, selecting (hopefully) future perennial All-Star shortstop Roch Cholowsky. Even the first American-born Pope is a Chicagoan and avowed White Sox fan who actually attended a game during their last World Series win in 2005. So yeah, things are looking up on the South Side!
Pope Hat Night at the White Sox game
— Jomboy Media (Unofficial) (@jomboymedia-mirror.bsky.social) 7:17 PM · Aug 11, 2026
With all that said, success and history are still anything but assured. The 2026 White Sox have benefited deeply by playing in what is perennially one the weakest divisions in baseball in the form of the AL Central: If they were in the AL East or NL West with the same record, they’d be in 4th place and we wouldn’t be talking about any opportunity for the team to make history. Nor are the Central’s other teams about to roll over, as the Cleveland Guardians have the pitching to be dangerous in any stretch run, and the Detroit Tigers are currently one of the hottest teams in baseball, having won seven of their last 10 while sporting what is actually by no small margin the best run differential in the division. In fact, the Guardians, Tigers and Twins are all within 4 games of the ChiSox in the standings, with a month and a half left to play in the season. Every game right now carries an inordinate degree of pressure, but even after their worst losses, the 2026 version of the White Sox have consistently found a way to rebound, to regather themselves and move one step closer to doing something that, I might remind you, no team has done at any point in the last 150 years. If they can actually win this division, they’ll be making themselves into a Jeopardy! answer for decades to come.
Not bad, for a team that was the laughingstock of professional baseball less than two years ago. There’s “arriving early,” and then there’s this, which is something else entirely.
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