Depending on what happens in what is now a completely inconsequential 162nd game, it's entirely possible that, after the White Sox left Cleveland trailing by one game, they could end up winning all three remaining series and somehow end up further behind. Such is the importance of controlling one's destiny, and the Guardians lived up to their name by protecting their margin with almost perfect baseball down the stretch.
That the White Sox were up by 4½ games as late as Aug. 29 makes the wild card seed a bitter pill to swallow. Zoom out, and it still remains hard to fathom that the White Sox struck such a delicate balance for such a long time. They're one of three teams that avoided losing five games in a row all year, and they didn't mask small losing streaks within awful months. They had precisely two unwelcome runs -- the 6-13 start to their season, and the 5-12 stretch that began at the end of August and carried through the Cleveland series.
The timing of the second one could have been better, but it also could've been worse. As much as it sucked for the White Sox to lose their division lead to their direct rivals at Progressive Field, they could've just as well started the year 11-25, because that actually would've been a one-game improvement over their 36-game record the year before. By putting four months in between their toughest stretches, they learned something about winning, they boosted attendance and TV ratings, they added at the trade deadline, and they made friends along the way.
The more you think about it, and the more you look at where the White Sox are on certain leaderboards, the more remarkable it is that they never slipped into one of those fatal spells. Only the Athletics and Rockies will finish with fewer quality starts than the White Sox, who will either have 34 or 35. Whichever number will set the franchise record for fewest quality starts, and for the fourth straight season:
- 2023: 51
- 2024: 49
- 2025: 41
- 2026: 34
It surprised me to find out that these White Sox were that far behind the 2024 team that set the single-season record for losses in a modern MLB season, but it also surprised me to learn that 34 quality starts is not the lowest number of a team that made the postseason. These White Sox are tied for the second-lowest with the 2019 Milwaukee Brewers, and both of them finished one behind the 2021 Tampa Bay Rays, who went 100-62 while throwing just 33 quality starts.
Those are two organizations the White Sox have tried to emulate, and have hired personnel from, although it's too early to say it's worked. Those orgs' patterns of success were more deeply established, as both were in Year 3 of runs that still exist to this day, whereas the White Sox lost at least 100 games the previous three seasons, and happened to be decent in a year where one of the division winners won't have a winning record.
That said, when isolating the conversation to individual seasons, the 2026 White Sox are like the 2019 Brewers or 2021 Rays in the sense that they managed disorder exceptionally well. That mostly involves being mindful of platoons on both sides of the ball, whether it's guarding a vulnerable rotation with proactive reliever usage, or having distinct lineups against righties and lefties, and a plan to start swapping as soon as the bullpen gets involved.
That the Rays and Brewers have only reached one World Series between them during this stretch shows that this approach might have some limitations in closing the last mile. The White Sox have run into one of them with an exhausted bullpen by September, and Chris Getz will probably want to find more innings thrown by starters to insure the White Sox against reliever fatigue bills coming due next April.
For the time being, the hope is that while the White Sox wobbled in September, it merely means that the pressures of postseason baseball won't seem all that alien. They've spent six months scrambling, improvising and putting out fires. What's (at least) two games more?
