The Chicago White Sox just did something no franchise in major league history has ever pulled off, and I keep turning the sentence over like it might reverse itself if I stare long enough. Three straight 100-loss seasons. A modern-era record 121 losses in 2024. Another 102-loss slog in 2025. Then, on a Thursday afternoon in Kansas City, a 9-1 thrashing of the Royals that locked them into October.
Eighty-two and seventy-seven. A winning record. A playoff berth. The first team ever to climb out of that exact hole. I am not above calling it a full-blown soap-opera resurrection.
They scored six runs in the first two innings, knocked Randy Dobnak out before he could find a rhythm, and rode rookie David Sandlin through six innings of one-run, seven-strikeout calm. The final out was a ground ball. The celebration waited for the clubhouse. Plastic on the lockers. Moët. The whole bit. For a fan base that spent three summers watching baseball get played like a hostage situation, that scene lands differently.
The Death March Actually Ended
Prior to this three-year free fall, the White Sox had never even strung together two 100-loss seasons. They set the bar, then cleared it three times. Only three other clubs in the modern era made the playoffs the year after a single 100-loss campaign. Nobody had ever done it after three. Sarah Langs and the tracking nerds already filed the paperwork. This one is historic on arrival.
Miguel Vargas felt it in real time. “We’ve been chasing this moment for a long time. It’s special for us, it’s special for the organization. It’s a special group of guys. It’s the most fun you can have,” he said after the clincher. Vargas went for 33 homers and 92 RBIs this year, and he is not wrong about the chase. This group started 6-13. They held first place in the AL Central for 82 games. They watched Cleveland snatch the lead in mid-September and still punched the ticket on the road.
Will Venable, in his second year managing this rebuild, put the core of it in plain English. “They have belief in themselves, belief in each other. That can carry you a long way. It gets you through a lot of different situations.” Belief is cheap talk in April. Belief after 121 losses is a different currency. Venable also made clear the party has an expiration date: important games left, fun plane ride, back to business. The Guardians sit a half-game up. The White Sox own the season-series tiebreaker at 7-6. Three home dates against Colorado remain. The division is still on the table.
Power Is the Entire Identity
I am not dressing this roster up as a complete machine. They rank among the league leaders in runs and home runs, sit 25th in batting average, and punch out at a high clip. What they do own is the long ball, and October has always been a power tax. Colson Montgomery (31 homers), Vargas (33), and Munetaka Murakami (33) give them three 30-homer bats in the same lineup. That has happened only three other times in White Sox history: 2004, 2006, and 2008. Randal Grichuk, grabbed off the scrap heap in May, is slugging over .600 in limited duty. Chase Meidroth, Tristan Peters, Andrew Benintendi can all go deep on a given night.
The rotation is the soft spot. Everyone around the club knows it. The counter is the back end of the bullpen. Grant Taylor has been filthy — 2.31 ERA, 103 strikeouts in 82 innings, stranded 20 of 26 inherited runners. Bryan Hudson gives them a lefty who can open or bridge. Rookie Hagen Smith, the fifth overall pick in 2024, has posted a 1.32 ERA with swing-and-miss stuff in a small sample. If the starters can hand a lead to that group, the White Sox suddenly look like a problem in a short series.
Chris Getz built this through the Crochet trade haul and the Vargas deal, then let Venable run a clubhouse that refused to internalize the previous three years. The last White Sox playoff berth came in 2021. The last playoff series win is still the 2005 World Series team. That drought is real. So is the climb out of it.
I keep landing on the same stubborn fact: no team had ever done this. Not after two 100-loss seasons. Certainly not after three. The White Sox just did. They have three games left to decide whether they play a Wild Card series on the road or wait with a bye. Either way, the funeral years are over. October is back on the South Side, and the franchise that set the modern loss record is the one holding the champagne.
