White Sox Playoff Berth Seals a Turnaround Nobody Saw Coming

The Chicago White Sox are going back to the playoffs. After three straight hundred-loss seasons, the South Siders routed the Kansas City Royals by nine runs to one on Thursday night to clinch a White Sox playoff berth for the first time since twenty twenty-one. No team in major league history had ever followed back-to-back hundred-loss seasons with a postseason appearance, let alone three in a row. The White Sox just did it, and the players handled it like it was the plan all along.

Instead of spilling over the dugout railing and celebrating wildly on the field at Kauffman Stadium, the White Sox matter-of-factly formed a handshake line after the final out, reported by the Associated Press. They were saving the party for the clubhouse. Once they got there, the plastic tarps went up in the visiting locker room, the bottles of Moët started stacking, and a team that was supposed to finish last in the AL Central spent the evening relishing the most improbable postseason run in recent memory.

How a historically bad team got good fast

The turnaround was fast. Just two years ago, the White Sox lost one hundred twenty-one games, a post-nineteen-hundred record, and a White Sox playoff berth seemed almost unthinkable that spring. Last year they lost one hundred two. Back in April they started six and thirteen and looked exactly like the perennial loser everyone expected. Then the young core started hitting, and the wins started piling up.

Miguel Vargas led the way on Thursday with two hits and two runs batted in, part of a season that has put him in Most Valuable Player conversations. He has hit thirty-three home runs and driven in ninety-two runs. Munetaka Murakami, the Japanese slugger who signed a two-year, thirty-four-million-dollar deal in December, added to his own thirty-three homers and seventy-four runs batted in. Even Colson Montgomery, who tied Mark Reynolds' single-season record of two hundred twenty-three strikeouts, masked the whiffs with thirty-one homers and eighty-seven runs batted in.

The December twenty twenty-four trade that sent left-handed ace Garrett Crochet to the Boston Red Sox has also paid long-term dividends, as the AP noted. Three players the White Sox landed in that deal were in Thursday's lineup and all helped clinch the franchise's twelfth postseason appearance. Kyle Teel homered, reached base five times, and scored three runs. Chase Meidroth had a couple of hits to extend his on-base streak to fifteen games. Batting last in the order, Braden Montgomery had a hit and scored during a three-run second inning that broke the game open.

Vargas told the Associated Press the moment meant a lot to the players and the whole organization, calling the roster a special group of guys. Murakami was beaming in the celebration, Vargas was drenched, and the message from the clubhouse was simple. Murakami, beaming in the celebration according to the AP, said the run was just getting started.

An all-Chicago October is taking shape

It was a charmed all-around day for the city of Chicago. Just as the White Sox were securing their postseason pass, the Cubs were tying up a two-to-one win over the Miami Marlins to clinch a wild-card spot of their own in the National League playoffs. Both Chicago teams reached the postseason for the fourth time, after nineteen-oh-six, two thousand eight, and twenty twenty, according to AP reporting. The Cubs made it last year too, when the White Sox were busy losing one hundred two games and had little reason to hope.

The American League playoff race is far from settled, and the White Sox have their sights on more than a wild card. With the rout in Kansas City, Chicago clinched no worse than one of the three AL wild-card spots, but the team also entered the final weekend just one game behind the AL Central-leading Cleveland Guardians and holds the head-to-head tiebreaker over them, as Reuters reported. If Cleveland stumbles, the division is still in play. For comparison on the National League side, the Padres sealed their own berth by beating the Dodgers, and the Yankees' October hopes took a hit when Aaron Judge hurt his calf.

Why the celebration waited for the clubhouse

The White Sox could still use a little help from the Royals this weekend, and manager Will Venable framed the berth as an expectation rather than a surprise. Venable told the Associated Press the team would enjoy the plane ride and get back to business the next day.

The loose part happened in private. Montgomery summed up the mood in the middle of the pandemonium, champagne and beer dripping from his goggles. "W's are all that matters," Montgomery told the AP. "You see this? This is all that matters." Andrew Benintendi echoed the sentiment, according to Reuters. Benintendi told Reuters the team would enjoy the night, adding that there was still work left to do but the celebration was deserved.

The final regular-season weekend sets up kindly. Chicago heads home for three games against last-place Colorado, reported by the Associated Press via TSN. The Rockies have the worst record in baseball and this week became the fifth club in major league history, and the first since the nineteen sixty-two to nineteen sixty-five New York Mets, to lose one hundred games in four consecutive seasons. As Reuters noted, the White Sox will aim to channel the same work ethic that spurred their turnaround. Vargas told Reuters ahead of the weekend series: Vargas told Reuters the team never gives up, and would play nine innings every day and keep battling because that is the club's identity.