White Sox Continue Their Stunning Turnaround

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There have been so many great stories in baseball this season, but one of the best, and certainly one of the most unlikely, has been the ascension of the heretofore moribund Chicago White Sox.

Friday night they defeated the dynastic two-time defending World Series champion Dodgers 8-2 thanks to a seven-run eruption off Roki Sasaki in the fifth inning and thus remained in first place by a half-game over the Guardians in the AL Central. What?

This is a franchise that in the previous three years lost 102, 121 and 101 games. And you’ll remember that historic 2024 season set the modern day MLB futility record for losses and winning percentage (.248), breaking the old records set by the 1962 New York Mets in their inaugural season. The White Sox were outscored by 306 runs that year, had separate losing streaks of 21, 14 and 12 games, and finished 51.5 games behind division winner Cleveland.

Last year was obviously better, if you really want to celebrate a record of 60-102, but no one could have envisioned that the Chicago would already have 37 victories on June 13. The 2024 team won its 37th game on Sept. 24.

And it wasn’t looking too promising this year when Chicago started 1-5 and 6-13, but the turnaround has been as impressive as it is surprising and suddenly, people have begun taking second-year manager Will Venable’s team seriously.

“Being a part of ‘24 and ‘25, you just realize how hard it is to come to the park on some of those teams,” starting pitcher Davis Martin told reporters. “But every day when you come through the parking lot and you have a chance to win a game, it really just fires you up. It makes all the days worth it, makes the long road trips worth it. We’re just having a great time, and you can’t do it without this type of clubhouse. We have a bunch of entertainers, we have a bunch of guys that make each other laugh, and it's just like you’re super excited to come to the yard every day.”

Before sneaking past the Guardians Wednesday night, the White Sox had not been in first place in the division since winning it in 2021 with a record of 93-69. That is the only full season in which Chicago has made the postseason since 2008 (it also qualified for the MLB postseason tournament in the 2020 Covid year).

What is driving this course reversal? An overhaul of the roster, for one thing. Among the 11 position players who had at least 200 plate appearances on the 2024 team, only Andrew Benintendi - who homered Friday night off Sasaki - remains. That’s a good thing since that team had a league-worst .278 on-base percentage and 133 home runs. This year’s club is seventh on on-base at .329, and it’s fourth in home runs with 92 which is just six fewer than the No. 1 Yankees if you can believe that.

Twenty of those homers were hit by Japanese free agent signee Munetaka Murakami, yet even with the first baseman sidelined since May 29, the White Sox have actually gone 7-4 without him. Shortstop Colson Montgomery is a star in the making and he has 16 homers; third baseman Miguel Vargas also has 16 which matches his career-best total set last year in 138 games, plus he leads the team with 44 RBI; and rookie outfielder Sam Antonacci has a team-best on-base of .387 in the 50 games he has played since being called up.

Oh, and one of their top prospects, outfielder Braden Montgomery, hit a walk-off homer in his MLB debut Tuesday night and looks like he’ll be sticking around, possibly for a long time.

On the pitching side, Martin leads MLB with nine wins and for good reason - his ERA is 2.41, his WHIP is 1.098, he has a 4.65 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and he has allowed just three home runs in 78.1 innings. Relievers Sean Newcomb, Grant Taylor and Bryan Hudson all have ERA’s of 2.29 or lower, and closer Seranthony Dominguez has 11 saves and is averaging 10.4 whiffs per nine innings.

Imagine how sweet Friday was for Vargas. He was with the Dodgers in 2024 until a three-team trade deadline deal sent him from the eventual world champions to what became the worst team in MLB history.

“He’s thriving, and with young players it takes time,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Vargas Friday. “Miggy’s a baseball player, always had the ability to hit, the defense has gotten a lot better, he’s in good shape. I’m very happy for Vargy.”

⚾ SP Jacob Misiorowski, Brewers: Wow, what a performance by Milwaukee’s ace in a 6-0 victory over the Phillies. On the one-year anniversary of his MLB debut, he pitched one of the greatest games in history, a complete-game one-hit shutout with no walks and 15 strikeouts, and he needed just 95 pitches to do so. He became the only pitcher in the modern era to throw a shutout with that stat line while facing the minimum 27 batters. And he is now the fourth pitcher to allow just one earned run in an eight-start span since ERA became an official stat, joining Walter Johnson, Guy Bush and Fernando Valenzuela. Here’s the difference from those guys: Misiorowski touched 104.5 mph on the gun, the fastest pitch ever thrown by a starter since Statcast began tracking mph in 2008. He threw 58 pitches at 100 mph or faster. Simply incredible.

⚾ DH Jordan Alvarez, Astros: If Aaron Judge isn’t the best hitter in MLB, Alvarez is. Friday in Kansas City the Astros scored nine runs in the first inning with Alvarez hitting a two-run homer and then a grand slam. Good thing, too, because the Royals answered with five in the bottom of the first before things settled down and Houston won 10-8. Alvarez became the third Astro to homer twice in an inning, Jeff Bagwell and Lee May being the others. He’s now tied for the MLB lead with 24 homers and he leads with 54 RBI and a 1.092 OPS. “Incredible what he can do,” Astros manager Joe Espada said. “He can change the landscape of the game with a swing of the bat, and he did that. Just incredible how he’s able to get big hits, big moments. He’s just an amazing player.”

⚾ SS Gunnar Henderson, Orioles: Baltimore beat San Diego 7-3 for its third straight win and Henderson hit the 100th homer of his career. At 25 years old he is one of only five Orioles to reach that number by that age, the others being Boog Powell (127), Manny Machado (121), Eddie Murray (111) and Cal Ripken (100). This has been a tough season for Henderson as the homer broke a 14-game drought, and he’s slashing just .226/.293/.421 with an OPS of .714, numbers way below any other season he’s had.

⚾ 1B Trey Mancini, Angels: What a great feel-good story. Mancini hit a two-run triple to get the Angels started on their way to a 4-3 victory over the Rays, continuing his amazing comeback. One year after hitting 35 homers for the Orioles in 2019, Mancini’s career was interrupted by colon cancer in 2020, but he returned in 2021 and won AL comeback player of the year. He then bounced to the Astros and won a World Series in 2022, then went to the Cubs but since being released in August 2023, he had not been in the majors until last Monday when he was called up from Triple-A and had three hits in a loss to Houston. He now has four hits and four RBI in four games.

⚾ SP Spencer Strider, Braves: Atlanta lost 7-5 to the Mets, and while it still has the best record in MLB (45-24), problems are arising. OF Ronald Acuna went on the IL last week, and Friday, Strider’s velocity was way down and for good reason as he had to leave his start midway through the fourth with elbow soreness. That could be big trouble for a pitcher who has already had two elbow surgeries. He led MLB with 20 wins and 281 strikeouts in 2023, but he missed all of 2024 and part of 2025 and now 2026 in jeopardy for one of the most talented, but most frail pitchers in MLB.

🔼 Marlins (35-35): They got back to .500 by winning their sixth straight, 8-3 over the Pirates. Sandy Alcantara went eight strong innings and recorded the 1,000th strikeout of his career, and he’s now the fifth active Dominican-born pitcher to reach that mark (Luis Castillo, Freddy Peralta, Luis Severino, and Framber Valdez are the others) and 26th all-time.

🔼 Blue Jays (34-36): They have been spinning their wheels all season, but all they need is to see the Yankees and all is well. I swear, I don’t think there’s a team in MLB that enjoys torturing the Yankees more than Toronto (well, maybe Tampa Bay, too), especially at Rogers Centre where New York has now lost nine of its last 10 counting the playoffs. George Springer has sucked all year, but of course he hit a two-run homer and walked three times which finally got his on-base percentage over .300 this season.

🔼 Red Sox (28-39): Hey, they won a game at Fenway, and not only did they win for just the 11th time in 32 home games, they blew out the Rangers 10-1. It was a season-high output at home as they ripped nine extra-base hits including homers by Ceddane Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu and Willson Contreras. They now have a chance this weekend to win their first home series since early April. Obviously, we Yankee fans hope they fail.

🔽 Nationals (35-35): They got pummeled 10-2 by the Mariners, and clearly, they were still in a fog over what happened in their previous game Wednesday in San Francisco. They led the terrible Giants 9-1 after seven, then gave up five runs in the eighth, scored once in the ninth for a 10-6 lead, and then gave up five more runs in the ninth and lost on a walk-off grand slam by rookie Bryce Eldridge. Yeah, not even a long flight home plus a day off Thursday could deodorize that stink.

🔽 Reds (32-36): They lost 5-2 to the Diamondbacks and their slump deepened as they have now dropped 11 of their last 14. The bullpen has been a major issue as it has a 5.06 ERA, third-worst in MLB. But this time it wasn’t to blame. Brock Burke walked two men (one intentionally) in the ninth but with two outs he got Geraldo Perdomo to hit a line drive to left. It should have stayed 2-2 and inning over, but Blake Dunn dropped the ball and the go-ahead run scored. Then, a rattled Burke gave up a two-run single to Jordan Lawlar.

🔽 Cardinals (37-30): Trying to stay close to the Brewers in the NL Central, they lost ground because they blew a 7-4 lead to the lowly Twins and fell 9-8. After a six-game winning streak ended Thursday against the Mets, St. Louis took the lead in the seventh when Jordan Walker continued his amazing season with a three-run double. But the bullpen gave it up as Ryne Stanek served up a three-run homer to Kody Clemens in the seventh, and after the Cards went back ahead 8-7, Stanek got tagged for solo homers by Royce Lewis and Brooks Lee in the eighth. Ouch.

🎤 Brewers manager Pat Murphy on Misiorowski: “For me, personally, that was as good as it gets. In the Major Leagues, to pitch a game like that against an offense like that, with all of those All-Stars over there, incredible. Amazing young man, he really is. Forrest Gump-like, you know what I mean? He’s amazingly real, naive to a lot of things, and it’s beautiful. He goes out and lets it eat.”

🎤 Tigers manager AJ Hinch on Tarik Skubal’s return on Saturday: “We’re adding the best pitcher in baseball back to our mix. It’s hard to describe what that boost will be. I don’t know how long [the start] will be. I don’t know if it’ll be a normal start or we abbreviate it. But just getting him back into the routine, into the fold, is a tremendous boost for this team and this rotation and our organization.”

🎤 Mets 2B Bo Bichette, who has slumped all year, on hitting two homers with six RBI Friday: “I think I’m good enough that my season could look how I want it to look in a week. But I also think that I’m good enough to where we look up in a couple of months and I’m like, ‘Oh, dang, he made it to where he wants to be.’”

Love him or hate him, Roger Clemens was one hell of a pitcher, and he gave the Yankees six pretty damn good years. He went 83-42 with a 4.01 ERA in 174 starts, and he also helped them win four AL pennants and two World Series by going 7-4 with a 3.24 ERA in 17 postseason appearances.

And during his tenure, he enjoyed a pretty momentous afternoon on this day as he hit two major career milestones during a 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. Clemens became the 21st pitcher to earn 300 victories, plus became just the third man in history to record at least 4,000 strikeouts.

“We just talked about it for so long and for it to happen now is just a thrill - especially in front of all these people,’’ Clemens said. “It’s just a lot of hard work that’s paid off for me. There’s so many people who helped me get here along the way. I can’t even put it into words.”

Clemens had been sitting on 299 wins since May 21 when he beat the Red Sox, but then he got shelled by Boston, was hit hard and got a no-decision against the Tigers, and lost to the Cubs. With help from home runs by Raul Mondesi, Hideki Matsui and Ruben Sierra, he finally crossed the threshold by going 6.2 innings and striking out 10 Cardinals.

The history-making whiff came in the second inning when Edgar Renteria swung and missed on a 3-2 count.

When Joe Torre took Clemens out in the seventh and the Yankees ahead 3-2, the manager was booed by the Yankee Stadium crowd of 55,214.

“I expected it,” Torre said. “I told Roger, ‘I used to be popular around here until you started this 300 thing.’ I would have booed, too, if I had been sitting in the stands. They wanted Roger to pitch the complete game, but that wasn’t going to happen where his pitch count (120) was.”