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29. Chicago White Sox (42-70, third-order 45-67, fifth in AL Central, 0.0% playoff odds)
Added: Curtis Mead
Subtracted: Adrian Houser, Austin Slater, Tristan Gray
In a pattern we’ll see repeated, the White Sox didn’t sell aggressively. They didn’t have much talent on offer and their top trade chip, Luis Robert Jr., is controlled past 2025 and wasn’t playing very well. They turned a free Adrian Houser into some filler, with a chance that Curtis Mead is the Miguel Vargas who was promised. I confess that I am a little surprised Mike Tauchman is still here; he’s 34, a pending free agent, and has a .363 OBP in three seasons since returning from the KBO. With even good teams starved for OBP, he should have had a market.
Like the Marlins, the White Sox are starting to look more like a baseball team. I mentioned pulled-flyball rate, a measure of how often teams hit the most productive type of batted balls. The Sox have jumped from 16.6% to 18.5% this year, sixth-best improvement in the majors.
Modernizing the Offense (gains in pulled-flyball rate, 2024-25)
Cubs +4.61%
Marlins +3.27%
Tigers +2.76%
Yankees +2.51%
Rockies +2.03%
White Sox +1.95%
The Sox are walking more and striking out less, too. Their 2024 offense was one of the worst in the expansion era. This one is just conventionally bad. The new catching duo of Edgar Quero and Kyle Teel has been very good. Long-awaited rookie Colson Montgomery has hit the ground running. Holdovers Lenyn Sosa, Andrew Benintendi, and Vargas have been around average. This is still a pretty bad defensive team, and it’s not clear how much the younger players will help that, but again, baby steps.
The team has assembled a competitive starting rotation, one surprisingly homegrown -- the top-four Sox starters were drafted by the team, three in the Rule 4 draft and one in last year’s Rule 5 draft. Chris Getz augmented that with a free Adrian Houser and mostly free Aaron Civale, though Andrew Vaughn’s miracle summer has taken the shine off that move. Vaughn’s success with the Brewers, which is still just a few weeks of good hitting, does introduce the question of how well the Sox coach their own guys. We don’t know whether they can do that yet, though the starts of the three up-the-middle rookies are data points in their favor. The Sox are better now, and they aren’t that far from being relevant in a weak AL Central.
Why Watch? On days when both catchers are in the lineup, the White Sox can start as many as seven players 25 or younger, counting the starting pitcher. That’s a lot of fun to watch, even if not all of that young talent is clicking yet. When the Sox are up 1-0 in the 2027 AL Division Series, you can say you knew them when.
