Chicago White Sox vice president and general manager Chris Getz arrived for spring training back in March with a miserable ledger under his belt. He oversaw a 41-121 season back in 2024, the club’s worst campaign in its 125-year history. He would follow that up with a third straight 100-loss campaign in 2025, and projection systems pegging his team for 67 wins and roughly a 1 percent shot at reaching the postseason.
Three years of triple-digit losses can break something in a fanbase. Getz had to wonder if his rebuild had simply stalled out in plain sight, another one of those “trust the process” stories that never actually arrives anywhere. But look at what he’d actually built underneath the losing.
White Sox Rewarded for Trusting the Process
Instead of chasing a marquee free-agent class Chicago couldn’t afford anyway, Getz bet on finding value in places no one else was looking: a Pacific Rim import in Munetaka Murakami, who landed on a two-year, $34 million deal after the nine-figure contract everyone assumed he’d command never materialized; a cash-considerations pickup in Tristan Peters, plucked off Tampa Bay’s scrap heap after the Rays designated him for assignment; and a quiet bet on Miguel Vargas, the return piece from a 2024 trade who was still finding his footing.
Manager Will Venable overhauled his coaching staff and leaned into an aggressive, athletic style of baseball — steal bases, pressure defenses, make the other team pay for mistakes — while a holdover like Andrew Benintendi, one of just three players still around from the 121-loss roster, gave the young room something to steady itself against. Then, in late May, the White Sox got their just desserts for all of their patience and their trusting of the process.
Sitting at 27-27 after a 5-3 defeat on May 26th, Chicago would proceed to reel off five straight wins, crossing .500 for the first time in years and finding itself a game and a half behind Cleveland with a Wild Card spot in hand. Fast forward to September, and a team projected for 95 losses in March is suddenly somehow still relevant. And don’t take our word for it; take that of online betting sites.
The latest MLB odds currently make the White Sox a -375 favorite to win the AL Central for the first time in five years. And with each of the Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins, and Kansas City Royals seemingly already out of the running, the door could be open for one of MLB’s great modern comeback stories. So, can they go on and seal the deal? Or will someone spoil the party?
Divisional Crown Within Touching Distance
Whatever else changed, the margins told the real story. In the winter, Seranthony Dominguez signed for two years and $20 million to close games. Sean Newcomb got $4.5 million and became a steal. Jordan Hicks arrived as a salary-dump throw-in from Boston. None of it screamed contender. Then Peters — the guy who went hitless in his big-league debut and was basically given away — turned into a middle-of-the-order weapon and an All-Star. Getz flipped Dominguez to Seattle at the deadline for rotation anchor Luis Castillo, betting the roster’s ceiling was higher than anyone outside the building believed.
Is there a cleaner illustration of how tight this race has gotten than Chicago’s division odds swinging from 21.7 percent in early July to 80 percent by late August? A 3-7 stretch nearly erased a five-and-a-half-game cushion. Then came the night of September 14th in Cleveland. Peters fouled off pitch after pitch — 12 in all, 18 total, the third-longest at-bat in the majors since 2000 — and by the time it ended with a walk, the Progressive Field crowd could feel exactly what was coming.
Six runs crossed in the sixth. Chicago held on, 7-3, pushing the lead to a game and a half and locking up the season-series tiebreaker at 7-4. This remains a roster without a true ace, built on defense and legs instead of front-line arms. A deep October run would be an upset even if they get there — but so was all of this.
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Will Cleveland Throw a Spanner in the Works?
The defending AL Central champion Cleveland Guardians are the only team within the division that can realistically spoil Chicago’s party. They won their third division title in four years last term, riding a 20-7 September to bury Detroit, and responded by cutting payroll by roughly $30 million.
The winter’s biggest additions were Austin Hedges re-signing for $4 million and a minor-league flier on Rhys Hoskins that happened to stick. The offense never got fixed — Cleveland finished 2025 at 3.97 runs per game, 28th in baseball — and even Jose Ramirez, working back from hamate surgery that cost him five weeks, has had a quieter year by his own standard. Gavin Williams and Parker Messick have carried the rotation almost by necessity.
Consider what it means for Cleveland’s chances that Monday’s series-opening loss left the Guardians trailing by a game and a half with only nine games to go. They need to win the final two games of this Cleveland set — with Messick lined up for the finale — just to have a realistic path, and even a series win wouldn’t erase Chicago’s tiebreaker advantage. A division title is still alive here, but a lineup still searching for consistent thump means any deep October run would demand the rotation carry an outsized load.
