The White Sox entered the 2026 season with remote chances of making the postseason, whether you judged them by ZiPS (6.6 percent) or PECOTA (1.5 percent), and the most educational part of the six-month viewing experience was seeing all the big and little things that went in to actualizing those single-digits probabilities.
It took a lot of individual victories at a lot of positions, as well as a fair amount of help from an American League that wasn't nearly as strong as originally predicted, and one of the easiest ways to see it after the fact is by comparing the White Sox's standings in FanGraphs' Positional Power Rankings against their actual production.
There's only one position where the 2026 White Sox came in significantly under their projected production, and that was offset by a slew of positions where the White Sox crushed the over. You can debate how much of the improvement was player development versus luck, but in terms of a 2026 season that's firmly in the books, it all counts the same.
Let's take a trip through the rankings, which happens to get the lone laggard out of the way at the start.
Catcher
- FanGraphs: 26 (2.3)
- Actual: 28 (0.0)
Back in March, this looked like the easiest position for overachievement, as the projections might've been a little slow in plotting out trajectories for Kyle Teel and Edgar Quero after encouraging MLB debuts. Instead, Teel got hurt multiple times, Quero's profile collapsed, and the Sox ended up using six catchers to eke out replacement-level production. The FanGraphs projection only included three catchers, and one of them was Korey Lee, who did not appear in a game for the 2026 White Sox.
First base
- FanGraphs: 18 (1.8)
- Actual: 12 (3.2)
Munetaka Murakami handily beat the projections, but before he got hurt in late May, he was providing the fourth-best production in the league at first base. From May 30 onward, the White Sox were in their originally estimated neighborhood at No. 17. It's safe to say Murakami and the Sox beat their projections, but still perhaps a little early to say they got the players or situations wrong.
Second base
- FanGraphs: 20 (2.4)
- Actual: 6 (4.5)
The White Sox weren't in terrible shape before the season, because Chase Meidroth was projected to be an average player (1.9 WAR over 497 PA) at the top of the depth chart, and that's better than most positions could say. The projections just didn't forecast any secondary contributors to boost the overall output.
That latter part played out, just not in the way FanGraphs envisioned. Meidroth ended up playing 89 percent of the innings at second base, so no other White Sox logged enough time to contribute their value at second base. But that happened because Meidroth took the next steps both offensively and defensively, with his glove making him an easy play even against right-handed pitching. Add it all up, and he ended up being the most valuable second baseman in the American League.
Third base
- FanGraphs: 19 (2.4)
- Actual: 4 (5.3)
What happened at second base happened more so at third base, where Miguel Vargas went from an average player to a great player, and didn't need anybody picking up the slack. Colson Montgomery ended up logging the second-most time at third base, but FanGraphs didn't have him among the five backup options.
Shortstop
- FanGraphs: 21 (2.9)
- Actual: 22 (2.5)
Speaking of Colson Montgomery, he ended up leading the shortstop position to the most accurate forecast of all the units, albeit in the most frustrating way. Before missing a couple games with back tightness in early June -- which is what looks to me like his season's line of demarcation -- the White Sox ranked 11th in shortstop production. Over the rest of the season, they ranked 23rd. Luisangel Acuña didn't help.
Left field
- FanGraphs: 30 (0.9)
- Actual: 4 (3.8)
The White Sox made the single biggest positional triumph happen by going completely off the board. FanGraphs projected the league's worst output from left field thanks to a mix of Andrew Benintendi, Austin Hays, Everson Pereira, Derek Hill, Jarred Kelenic and Brooks Baldwin.
As it actually unfolded, those six players covered a total of 156 left field innings, with Benintendi and Hays effectively out of circulation by April's end. In their place, Sam Antonacci and Randal Grichuk handled 76 percent of the total playing time out there, and both played better than most could have imagined.
Center field
- FanGraphs: 29 (1.8)
- Actual: 11 (3.5)
Tristan Peters was in the organization, but at the time of FanGraphs' Positional Power Rankings, he was only projected to receive seven total plate appearances as a center fielder, bringing up the rear of a group that was led by Acuña and Baldwin, with help from Hill, Pereira and Braden Montgomery.
Peters ended up taking over the position and making the GD All-Star team. Had the Sox known how the alternative options struggled to remain playable, they probably would've kept Hill to add even more to this total.
Right field
- FanGraphs: 30 (0.9)
- Actual: 22 (0.9)
Part of the reason the White Sox overachieved as a team is because the American League as a whole met them halfway. That's best depicted by right field, where the White Sox hit their exact projection through their expected preseason options, just with Braden Montgomery leading the way instead of Hays and Pereira.
It was expected to be the worst assortment of right fielders in the American League, but four AL teams finished with les production, and two others were in the neighborhood. As weak links go, the White Sox have had weaker ones.
Designated hitter
- FanGraphs: 28 (0.4)
- Actual: 14 (1.5)
Grichuk similarly juiced the White Sox's DH production from out of nowhere, which helped augment Andrew Benintendi's average-bat production, which makes for replacement-level DH work.
Starting pitching
- FanGraphs: 29 (8.5)
- Actual: 23 (8.0)
Entering the season, only the Rockies had less projected production from their starting pitchers. It wasn't entirely unfounded, as the White Sox ended up coming in under their projected fWAR total.
However, the exact effectiveness of the rotation can be debated, because the calculations are complicated both technically and philosophically. Erick Fedde is at the center of both arguments. His 141 innings were divided nearly evenly between starting and relief because the White Sox used an opener for him roughly half the time, and statistical repositories can't yet divine intent from a starting appearance that only lasts an inning. But even if his innings were almost entirely categorized as starting, he wouldn't have made much of an impact in terms of fWAR because his 5.01 FIP dragged him to replacement level (-0.1). Baseball-Reference.com's WAR has him at 2 WAR because he allowed a below-average rate of runs, which feels a lot closer to his actual contributions.
Either way, the overachievement of Fedde and Sean Burke is canceled out by Shane Smith's no-show 2026 and a lack of impact from the White Sox's prospect corps, so the debate has a limited amount of utility.
Relief pitching
- FanGraphs: 13 (3.0)
- Actual: 11 (4.9)
The strongest facet of the White Sox as viewed in the preseason held up, even over a far greater amount of innings. Again, the White Sox's increased usage of bulk boys complicates matters, but even when you distill the exercise to the true relievers, the disappointing displays from Seranthony Domínguez and Jordan Leasure were overwritten by heaping helpings of Grant Taylor and Sean Newcomb, as well as surprising showings from Jordan Hicks and Bryan Hudson.
For all the quality the White Sox bullpen produced, it's important that Chris Getz and the front office figures out a way to reduce the quantity. They led the league with 766 relief innings, with the Nationals (730⅔) being the only other team with more than 700. The White Sox had an above-average bullpen, while the Nationals had the league's worst unit, and while some of the White Sox's deployment was by design, it's still probably a pretty thin line separating pitching chaos from pitching madness.
