Technically, six guys on the 2026 White Sox were members of the 2024 team that lost a record-setting 121 games, but only four White Sox were required to be on hand for the grisly end, as Erick Fedde and Tommy Pham were traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in the same deal at the deadline.
That leaves four players who were there at the end of the season, but three of them weren't even around for half the year. Davis Martin was recalled from Triple-A Charlotte shortly before the trade deadline, which is when Miguel Vargas came aboard via the three-team deal that involved Fedde and Pham. Sean Burke showed up in September and pitched remarkably well, and if he was sad to see the season end, he probably couldn't say so out loud.
That leaves Andrew Benintendi as the only White Sox who was not only on hand for historic achievements of both kinds, but lived the entire arc. He was in the mix every day when the White Sox set the single-season record for losses in a modern MLB season, and he was in the middle of lineups when they became the first team to reach the postseason after three consecutive 100-loss seasons.
That's not a testament to his staying power as much as it was the pointlessness of trying to move his five-year, $75 million contract. Other teams wouldn't see a purpose in paying so much money for a limited player, and it wasn't particularly pressing for the White Sox to ship out an average left-handed bat for the sake of savings when they were barely paying for the rest of the roster.
But it does speak to the way Benintendi didn't get in the way when a new administration had new ideas for him. He accepted the White Sox reducing his defensive responsibilities, and he didn't object to or obstruct being platooned and pinch-hit for as a DH. The contract was still on the books, but his amenability allowed the Sox multiple cracks at solving two positions where they were expected to be under water, and to bends-inducing degrees.
He opened the season in a left field platoon with Austin Hays, but once Hays suffered the first of two leg injuries that wrecked any semblance of a successful stay, the White Sox pivoted to Sam Antonacci. And once Antonacci proved game enough to handle left field, even if his defensive effectiveness was roughly a more frenzied equivalent of Benintendi's work, Benintendi was relegated to DH the rest of the season, playing just one inning of outfield after April 28.
And shortly Randal Grichuk came aboard on May 4, three days after the Yankees cut him loose, Benintendi couldn't even be considered a full-time DH. As Grichuk proved his effectiveness, the White Sox made it a pure platoon. Benintendi has made 106 starts at DH, but he was replaced for one reason or another in 48 of them, while making 26 appearances as a pinch hitter.
Viewed through an individual prism, this drawdown of playing time made Benintendi an even poorer use of the largest financial commitment in White Sox history. But in the context of the team, these concessions helped the Sox turn massive negative projections into big-time positives, at least when viewing them through FanGraphs' preseason power rankings against their current value estimations.
Left field
Designated hitter
Nobody should downplay the luck that went into the White Sox salvaging both these positions, because the entire premise relies on Grichuk having a terrible April with the Yankees. Run the season over again from Opening Day, and it's entirely possible that Grichuk is spraying champagne in the Bronx while the White Sox accepted a mediocre performance from Everson Pereira a valid use of playing time during their last year of pre-contending, and Benintendi is just hanging around, more or less.
But the White Sox made some of that luck, and Benintendi allowed the White Sox to make it with his pliability. He's helped where he could, but even more importantly, he's accepted where he can't really help and let the Sox figure out other ways to go about it. His name is the about the only thing that's ties the White Sox's on-field product to what they rolled out in the first half of 2024. His role and the clubhouse he inhabits have evolved into utterly unrecognizable forms, and everybody is better off for it.
