For White Sox, mediocrity is better than what came before

There are two problems with a 121-loss season. The first problem is the 121 losses and the manifold organizational deficiencies such a total reflects. The second problem is that it warps the scale for progress, so much so that a 102-loss season can still be seen as a springboard. When it's the third consecutive 100-loss season, fatigue creates an even greater impulse to see things that might not be there.

At the risk of committing that very mistake, the label "102-loss season" feels a little misleading. The White Sox played .431 ball after the All-Star break, which is a 70-win pace over 162 games, and it came with a positive run differential (+3). More specific to the feeling that they might have actually turned one corner -- a minimum of two corners are necessary to reverse a freefall -- is that they're the first White Sox team since 2018 to play better in the second half of a season, although neither this year's club nor that Rick Renteria-led outfit could avoid a September skid that sent them plunging through the 100-loss line.

So what did we just watch? Maybe I can repurpose an old device to help us out.

Every year at the 81-game mark, we run a post where I double the numbers from the first half. It barely earns the "analysis" category under which it's filed, but given that we use various 162-game counting stats for shorthand references to successful seasons, I find that it's a useful way to contextualize a half-sample. When I ran those numbers this year, the White Sox were on pace to go 52-110 thanks to an offense that improved its plate discipline, only to give back those gains with less punch, which seemed improbable.

I've never bothered to double the numbers from a season's final 81 games because everybody just accrued the 162-game (or 187-day) sample we'd been seeking the whole time, and also because never before had the entire team changed the conversation over the second half, at least not for the better. Since this unit experienced a jump into respectability, let's take a look at doubling what the main offensive contributors posted after June 25.

On the whole, that's a roughly league-average performance in the batter's box from a lineup featuring a lot of young players, which is where the optimism lies. At second glance, however, you see the reasons why Chris Getz pumped the brakes on any talks about a big winter push. The impact of the actual hitting is muted by the league's lowest baserunning score and subpar defense, positions outside of catcher and shortstop aren't yet locked down even for 2026, and the pitching staff is somehow more unsettled on a spot-for-spot basis. It's hard to know exactly where to add when you're not sure which incumbents aren't going to lose ground.

For most teams, that would be depressing. For the White Sox, it's an improvement. A decade ago, mediocrity was the unacceptable status quo. Then the organization deteriorated to the point where mediocrity represented an upward trajectory. Last decade's miring is this decade's aspiring.

In that regard, we can say the White Sox are back, and while that backhanded compliment is barely veiling a forehanded insult about their present state, their immediate future is starting to get interesting. Individual wins and losses haven't yet mattered, but the White Sox have reached a point where individual roster decisions might. Last year, they could overhaul half the 40-man roster without feeling a thing. Now there's actual evaluation and development involved. At this juncture, it will probably manifest itself less in the form of noteworthy additions, and more in the form of self-scouting, intuiting which positions will inevitably require upgrading, and which ones have players capable of upgrading themselves. The fact that the White Sox opened the offseason by dismissing most of the coaches Will Venable inherited is probably just delayed closure for firing Pedro Grifol halfway through his contract, similar to dead money for Leury García finally coming off the books, but feel free to treat it like a renewed sense of purpose.

If the 2025 White Sox continue following the 2018 White Sox's path beyond the second-half upswing, everybody is in for one more consolidation season before major additions are considered. However, if Chris Getz's front office achieves the dream of emulating a team like the Brewers instead of iterating on their old unsuccessful strategies, past White Sox teams will be an increasingly irrelevant reference point.

⚙️⚙️⚙️

As we shift from regular season to offseason programming at Sox Machine, I'd like to take a moment to thank everybody who read, listened and watched our coverage over the course of a third consecutive 100-loss season. We're especially appreciative of everybody who subscribes and participates, especially as we migrated the operation from one platform to another. In such an uncertain economy, both in terms of media and otherwise, we're not in a position to take your financial support for granted. We also take a lot of pride in the fact that "never read the comments" doesn't apply to the discussions underneath our posts.

If you haven't yet subscribed to Sox Machine, now's as good time as ever to join, even though there won't be games for another six months. To usher in the start of the offseason, between now and Sunday, we're running a sale on annual subscriptions. The standard annual subscription includes one free month, but sign up by Sunday, and you'll get two free months. Every subscription helps at any time, but they're particularly valuable at this point in the calendar year, because it gives us a head start in figuring out the amount of in-person spring training reporting we can take on.

If this is your first season following our coverage, there's no reason to break any daily habits you've formed. We'll still be writing about the White Sox or baseball at large on a daily basis, first by reviewing the various elements of the 2025 season and the recapping the performances of minor league affiliates, followed by the Offseason Plan Project. We'll then be sending James to the GM meetings in November, and we'll be represented at the winter meetings in December. Whenever the White Sox make news, we'll smother it. When they don't make news, we'll find things to write and talk about. We always do.