The Chicago White Sox lost 100-plus games in each of the last three seasons. Now they’re in the American League Division Series, opening Saturday at 1 p.m. ET in Cleveland after sweeping the Houston Astros in the Wild Card round, as Forbes’ Bernie Pleskoff breaks down.
Chicago finished 84-78, second in the AL Central behind the 85-77 Guardians, per MLB.com. And this team started 6-13 in April before the young bats woke up.
Built on the Long Ball
Per Forbes, the Sox hit 211 home runs this year. Three guys carried the load:
- Munetaka Murakami: 35 HR, 77 RBI
- Miguel Vargas: 33 HR, 93 RBI, 106 runs
- Colson Montgomery: 31 HR, 87 RBI
On the mound, Jordan Hicks came up big in both Wild Card games, and Chicago held Yordan Alvarez, a 42-homer guy in the regular season, to one single in the series. The fans noticed, too: home attendance jumped to 1,986,425 from 1,445,758 in 2025.
The IAHHM Take
This is the most fun story of the October bracket. Manager Will Venable took a roster nobody trusted and turned it into a lineup that can change a game with one swing. And the sweep of Houston was the franchise’s first postseason series win since the 2005 World Series title. If you were here for Murakami’s postgame celebration, you know the vibes are right.
Cleveland won’t make it easy. The Guardians went 24-11 down the stretch to take the division and start lefty Parker Messick in Game 1, per MLB.com. Guardians manager Stephen Vogt summed up the threat: “They’ve got a lot of power and they match up really well with us pitching-wise.”
Game 1 airs on TBS and streams on HBO Max. So, real question: is this White Sox run a one-year heater, or the start of something on the South Side? Sox in five, or Guardians end it early?
Source: Forbes | Additional reporting: MLB.com, CBS Chicago
