The signature White Sox losses of 2025

While the White Sox won enough games in 2025 -- and with a better sense of who's going to responsible for better baseball in the future -- to warrant a year-end list of their most meaningful victories, their triumphs were still vastly outnumbered by the losses, many of which neatly reflected the professionalism deficit they've struggled to put a dent in for three-straight years.

Lest we warp future recollections of this season by presenting only one side of the coin, here's a selection of noteworthy losses we witnessed over the last six months. They're not ranked in any particular order, but they are sorted in particular categories whose ranks will need to be reduced if the White Sox ever want to approach .500 again in our lifetimes.

Central Classics

The White Sox went 18-34 against the AL Central, which somehow is an eight-game improvement over the thumping they received from their division foes in 2024, yet still accounts for their most acutely felt losses of the year, mostly because the format is so familiar.

• May 6: Royals 4, White Sox 3
• Aug. 17: Royals 6, White Sox 2
• Aug. 26: Royals 5, White Sox 4

The White Sox lost 10 of 13 games against the Kansas City Royals in 2025, including all seven games at Kauffman Stadium. The season series wasn't as lopsided as it seemed, which might've made it all the more humiliating. The White Sox led all three of these games through at least six innings, but somehow lost them all. The ball off Chase Meidroth's head seemed to have set the tone.

• Aug. 27: Royals 12, White Sox 1

The Royals occasionally routed the White Sox, but even this one was weird. The Sox led 1-0 through four, and the game was tied at 1 with two outs in the fifth. Before Aaron Civale or Tyler Gilbert could record the third out, the White Sox were losing by seven. Korey Lee ended up pitching the last two innings, setting the bar for the season's position-player-pitching escapades.

• April 8: Guardians 1, White Sox 0

The White Sox fared even worse against Cleveland, going 2-11, with four of those losses by one run. This one kicked off the season series, and you may remember it as the one where Mike Clevinger -- nominally the closer at the start of the season -- opened the inning by failing to secure what would've been a 3-4-1 putout at first base, then walking the next three hitters to end it.

• April 22: Twins 4, White Sox 2

Byron Buxton played in 126 games for the Twins, which is the second-healthiest season of his career, so he was guaranteed to extinguish the White Sox's hopes in at least one game this year. It happened when he laid out for a diving catch with two outs in the ninth inning that deprived Andrew Benintendi of a game-tying two-run double off Jhoan Duran. At least the White Sox were able to avenge this heartbreak with a four-game sweep of the Twins at Target Field later in the season.

Seismic collapse

Look at it this way: At least the plural wasn't necessary.

• Aug. 19: Braves 11, White Sox 10

Entering this game, the White Sox were 23-0 when scoring at least seven runs, and considering they led 10-4 with three innings to play, they should've been 24-0. But the Braves, who narrowed a nine-run deficit within a slam the night before, picked up where they left off in battering the White Sox bullpen to the extent that they didn't even need to come to the plate in the ninth.

Honorable mention: White Sox 10, Nationals 9 on Sept. 26, which featured the White Sox turning a seven-run lead into a one-run deficit before Colson Montgomery saved the day.

Growing pains

These games weren't necessarily the biggest gut-punches in terms of pregame odds or WPA charts, but youth, inexperience or talent gaps revealed themselves in ... unique fashions.

• July 3: Dodgers 5, White Sox 4

The White Sox spent the year short at least one high-leverage reliever, which became especially apparent in games like this one, where Will Venable asked Grant Taylor to record a two-inning save for a second consecutive outing (with three games in between; he's not a monster). The eighth inning went according to plan, but Taylor lost steam in the ninth inning, and eventually the game. Afterward, Venable said he probably wouldn't go to that well again unless he absolutely had to, and he stuck to his word.

• Aug. 22: Twins 9, White Sox 7

With a roster short of big talent, the White Sox made a big deal about secondary leads and extra bases, but aggression can backfire when it's a necessary for competing with more talented teams, rather than a value-added sort of thing. Anyway, the White Sox had a chance to erase an 8-4 deficit against Minnesota, but Miguel Vargas unsuccessfully attempted to score on a pop-up behind third base, even though Luis Robert Jr. was on deck against a lefty.

• July 27: Cubs 5, White Sox 4

The White Sox didn't go winless against their crosstown rivals like they did in 2024 but they finished as many games under .500 (1-5, vs. 0-4). They undermined their best chance to take a second game with a cluster of mistakes, including a botched rundown that resulted in a run-scoring interference call, and Lenyn Sosa short-circuiting a potential rally by getting thrown out trying to advance on the infield fly rule, supposedly because he didn't see the call being made.

• May 25: Rangers 5, White Sox 4

While Sosa cleaned up his mistakes over the course of the final two months, there was a stretch over months where every play that involved him risked malfunction. Here, he compounded Miguel Vargas' unclean exchange on what could've been a contact play at home by not standing on first base when Vargas went across the diamond to salvage at least one out, which helped the Rangers score an insurance run they needed.

Literal pains

It wouldn't be a White Sox season without soft-issue disasters on the basepaths, but the costliest ones were localized to one person and one specific leg leg.

• April 9: Guardians 3, White Sox 2
• June 19: Cardinals 8, White Sox 6 (10 innings)

On two separate occasions, Mike Tauchman's right leg barked at him (the hamstring in April, the groin in June) gave out on him between third and home when attempting to score a tying or game-winning run in the ninth inning. He went under the knife for a right meniscus tear at the close of the season, which ideally represents an attack on the root problem.

Tyler Alexander-related misfortune

• June 14: Rangers 5, White Sox 4 (11 innings)
• Aug. 3: Angels 8, White Sox 5

Tyler Alexander pitched in 31 games after coming over to the White Sox from the Brewers via same-day Uber in early June, but he made up for lost time. His 61⅓ innings ranked fourth among White Sox relievers, and he factored into a whopping 11 decisions, which tied for the bullpen lead.

Unfortunately, nine of those decisions were losses. He was on the mound when Taylor Ward capped off the Angels' comeback from a 5-0 deficit with a three-run walk-off homer to help Los Angeles stave off being swept at home. Before then, in his second game as a White Sox, he had to hit for himself with two outs in the 10th inning after injury and a frenzy of Venable substitutions emptied the bench. Matt Albers he wasn't.

Though Alexander grounded out, he rebounded with a scoreless bottom of the 10th, his second ful inning of work. Then the White Sox failed to score in the top of the 11th, and Alexander gave up the game-winning single with two outs to finally bring the evening to a close. It was probably better that he didn't push it to a 12th inning, because he might've had to hit again.