How did the White Sox go from 121 losses to the playoffs?

The history they wrote this time

For three years the White Sox made history the wrong way. This season they made it the right way. MLB.com's Scott Merkin reported that Chicago became the first team to reach the playoffs after losing 100 or more games in at least two straight seasons, and only the third to reach the playoffs in a full season after losing 100 the year before. The Chicago Sun-Times framed it even more starkly: no team had ever made the postseason immediately after three consecutive 100-loss years.

Both framings hold up against the records. Baseball-Reference lists the 2023, 2024 and 2025 teams at 101, 121 and 102 losses. Through September 25, 2026, this club had already won 83 games, which is 42 more than the 2024 team managed.

Where the lineup actually came from

The part I find most satisfying is that the core of this team was assembled during the losing, not after it. Look at how the regulars arrived.

Vargas is the quiet hinge. He came over from the Dodgers in the three-team deal that sent Kopech to Los Angeles, hit .150 over the rest of 2024, and was one of only two position players from that 121-loss roster still with the team at the clinch, according to MLB.com. On September 4 at Rate Field he and Colson Montgomery each hit their 30th home run in the same game, the first White Sox teammates ever to reach 30 on the same night. Vargas also joined Robin Ventura and Joe Crede as the only primary third basemen in club history with 30 homers and 30 doubles in a season.

Murakami was the loud addition. MLB.com noted that he won back-to-back MVP awards in Japan and hit 56 home runs in 2022, breaking Sadaharu Oh's single-season record for a Japanese-born player in Nippon Professional Baseball. In Chicago he homered in each of his first three games, which Wikipedia's summary of his career says no White Sox player had done before. He also went 14 home runs into his big-league career before hitting a double. That is a very specific kind of hitter.

The Crochet deal deserves its own page, and it has one: what Chicago got for its ace, and what became of all four prospects. The short version is that trading the franchise's best pitcher in December 2024 is a big reason the 2026 infield exists.

The belief part, which sounds soft and was not

Chicago hired Will Venable on October 31, 2024, straight from a job as associate manager with the Texas Rangers. His first team lost 102. His second team kept winning games it had no business winning. The Sun-Times counted 11 walk-off victories and 35 come-from-behind wins by the day of the clinch, plus 31 games that started with an opener instead of a traditional starter.

I would normally roll my eyes at a manager crediting belief. Here the numbers back him up. A team that trails often and wins anyway 35 times is not just lucky in one-run games. Designated hitter Andrew Benintendi, one of the few veterans who lived through 2024, gave the version I liked best: "We are dumb enough to think we can win it. So, why not?"

My favorite prophet, though, is catcher Edgar Quero. Before the 2025 season, fresh off 121 losses, he told MLB.com the club would improve on youthful energy alone. His own season went sideways, and MLB.com wrote that he had slipped from co-starter to off the playoff roster. He still hit the walk-off home run that won the Crosstown Series against the Cubs on May 27, which is a decent consolation prize for a prophet.

The pitcher who never pitched

Every turnaround story needs something slightly ridiculous, and this one has a $20 plastic wand. Reliever Mike Vasil tore his elbow ligament in spring training, stayed with the team while he rehabbed, and started waving the wand and wearing a wizard hat whenever someone homered. The club eventually gave away 20,000 copies. It sounds like a sideshow. Inside the clubhouse it was not, and the full story of the White Sox wand is the most charming thing I read while working on this package.

What the season has not proven yet

The finish was wobbly, and I would be doing you a disservice to skip it. Chicago led the AL Central from July 4 until September 16, then went 11-13 in September. On Saturday, September 26, the Sox lost 9-6 at home to the Rockies while Cleveland beat Kansas City 11-5 to clinch its third straight division title. Colson Montgomery, for all his power, set a new single-season strikeout record, and Murakami's batting average sat at .209 through September 25.

So the White Sox go into October as a wild card. Under the format MLB published on August 10, the four Wild Card Series are best of three, begin Tuesday, September 29, and are played entirely at the higher seed's park, with Game 3 if needed on October 1. The winners move on to Division Series starting October 3. Nobody can tell you yet how this group handles a short series. Its best hitters are in their mid-20s, though, and Murakami's deal runs through 2027.

General manager Chris Getz put the season in a phrase I keep coming back to. "We felt like we've been playing with house money," he told the Sun-Times during the series in Cleveland that decided the division. That is the honest shape of it: a team that was supposed to be rebuilding for one more year spent the summer in first place instead.

Two years ago the question around this franchise was how bad it could get. Before the clinch, Benintendi told the Sun-Times he had not popped bottles in a while and never knew when the chance would come again. It came in Kansas City, the same ballpark where, the Sun-Times noted, the Sox had only snapped a 14-game losing streak this April.