From 121 Losses to the ALDS: The White Sox Just Pulled Off the Comeback Nobody Saw Coming

Two summers ago, the Chicago White Sox were a punchline. They lost 121 games in 2024, the most by any team in baseball’s modern era, and by August the national conversation was less about whether they would be bad and more about how historically bad they would get.

On Wednesday night in Houston, that same franchise celebrated in a visiting clubhouse after finishing a two-game sweep of the Astros. The White Sox won Game 2 of the AL Wild Card Series 7-3, a night after taking Game 1 6-3, and moved on to the American League Division Series.

“I’m proud of the guys and certainly happy for them as they’re probably the only ones in this country that believed that they could be in this spot,” manager Will Venable said afterward, according to theScore.

He is not exaggerating. Almost nobody else did.

How Bad It Really Was

It is easy to say “121 losses” and move on. Sit with it for a second. The 2024 White Sox finished 41-121. That is a team that lost three out of every four games over six months. They endured long losing streaks, constant roster churn, and a fan base that had every reason to stop showing up.

And 2024 was not a one-year accident. The Sox lost 101 games in 2023 and 102 in 2025. That is three straight seasons of 100 or more losses. In the long history of Major League Baseball, no team had ever made the playoffs immediately after consecutive 100-loss seasons. CBS Chicago noted the White Sox are now the only team to pull that off.

In 2026, they went 84-78, finished one game behind Cleveland in the AL Central, and claimed the No. 6 seed in the American League, per MLB.com. That is a 43-win improvement in two years.

The Wild Card Sweep, Inning by Inning

Houston was favored at home, and on paper it made sense. The Astros have been October regulars for a decade. The White Sox were a young team that had never played a postseason game together.

Game 1 on Tuesday set the tone with a 6-3 Chicago win. Game 2 on Wednesday was over almost before it started. The Sox scored four runs in the first inning, chasing Astros starter Hunter Brown after he recorded only two outs, according to CBS Chicago.

Houston fought back the only way it could, with power. Sox starter Sean Burke gave up three solo home runs but kept Chicago in front. Jose Altuve’s homer was the 28th of his postseason career, second all-time behind Manny Ramirez’s 29. Then came the sixth inning.

Chase Meidroth, the second baseman who hit .276 with 16 home runs this season, stepped in with two men on and drove a three-run homer to left. “I was looking for something middle up,” Meidroth said. “He’s had my number all year, really good fastball, so I got something middle up and I was able to cash in for the team.”

From there, Anthony Kay and Erick Fedde handled the last stretch of outs, as the Chicago Sun-Times detailed. Houston slugger Yordan Alvarez, an MVP favorite, managed one single and two strikeouts in eight at-bats across the two games.

The 2005 Echo

There is a nice piece of symmetry here for Sox fans. The last time this franchise won a postseason series was the 2005 World Series, when Chicago swept, of all teams, the Houston Astros. Twenty-one years later, the opponent was the same and so was the result: Houston did not win a game.

The Astros finished this regular season at 81-81, and the loss extended a run of nine straight home playoff defeats. For a franchise that defined the American League for much of the last decade, it was a quiet exit.

Who Built This Team

A turnaround this fast is not luck. It is a series of decisions that mostly went right at the same time. A few of the biggest pieces:

• Miguel Vargas, third base. Acquired from the Dodgers at the 2024 trade deadline, Vargas broke out with 33 home runs and 22 stolen bases.
• Colson Montgomery, shortstop. The homegrown infielder hit 31 home runs. He also struck out a record 227 times, which tells you this is still a young team learning on the job.
• Munetaka Murakami, designated hitter and first base. The Japanese slugger had an All-Star first half in his MLB rookie season, slumped in the middle, then finished hot with a 1.062 OPS over his final 10 games.
• Chase Meidroth, second base. The steady contact hitter who delivered the biggest swing of the season.
• The rotation. Anthony Kay, Davis Martin and Sean Burke gave the Sox enough reliable innings to survive a 162-game grind.

General manager Chris Getz has been candid that even he did not see it coming this soon. “I didn’t expect it to happen this quickly,” he said. Owner Jerry Reinsdorf, according to the Sun-Times, had circled 2027 as the year he expected the club to contend.

That honesty matters. Rebuilds are usually sold with confident timelines that rarely hold up. This one got ahead of its own schedule, which is rare enough that it deserves credit and a little caution at the same time.

The Manager Who Kept Them Believing

Will Venable, a former big-league outfielder, inherited a clubhouse that was coming off the worst season in modern baseball. His message has been simple. “We show up no matter who we’re playing,” he said after the sweep.

That kind of line sounds like a cliché until you watch a team actually play that way. Young teams that have been embarrassed tend to either tighten up or let go. This group seems to have let go. They won the season series against Cleveland 7-6, and they walked into Houston without looking scared.

There is a lesson in that for anybody who has had a brutal year at work or at home. Comebacks rarely start with a dramatic speech. They start with people showing up, doing the job in front of them, and stacking enough small wins that the big ones become possible. We see the same thing in stories like the veteran who almost walked out of his first Wheelchair Games and became a Paralympian.

What the Sox Got Right About Rebuilding

Every losing franchise says it is rebuilding. Very few actually come out the other side this fast. Looking at how this roster came together, a few patterns stand out.

They traded for upside, not just names. Vargas was a former top prospect who had not stuck in Los Angeles. Chicago gave him everyday at-bats and let him play through mistakes. Two years later, he is a 30-homer, 20-steal third baseman.

They let young players fail in public. Montgomery’s strikeout record is not a badge of honor, but a contender in a hurry would have benched or demoted him. The Sox let him keep swinging, and he gave them 31 home runs in return. The same patience applied to catcher Kyle Teel, who was limited to 39 games by injury but remains part of the long-term core.

They added a proven bat from overseas. Murakami arrived as one of the most famous hitters in Japan. His first MLB season had real ups and downs, and the organization stuck with him through a midsummer slump instead of panicking.

They found pitching that was good enough. Not dominant, not famous. Just good enough to give a young lineup a chance most nights. Kay, Martin and Burke are not household names, but they kept the Sox in games, and in a long season that is half the battle.

None of that is a secret formula. It is patience plus a handful of bets that paid off. The lesson for other bad teams, and honestly for any organization in a slump, is that the climb out usually looks boring until suddenly it does not.

It also helps to have a center fielder like Tristan Peters, who put together an All-Star season and gave the Sox speed and defense up the middle. Strong defense up the middle is not glamorous, but it turns hard-hit balls into outs and keeps a young pitching staff from unraveling.

The Case for Caution

To be fair, there are real questions heading into the next round. The Guardians won the division, and Cleveland’s pitching is built for October. The Sox strike out a lot, and their stars are young. A two-game series is also a small sample. Baseball’s postseason has a long history of hot underdogs who cooled off the moment the opponent got tougher.

There is also the business side. Chicago’s South Side fans have watched this ownership group make questionable decisions before, and one good October will not erase that history for everybody. Skeptics will want to see whether the front office builds on this season or treats it as a bonus.

All of that is fair. None of it changes what this team already accomplished.

What Comes Next

The ALDS against Cleveland begins Saturday at Progressive Field. It is an all-AL Central matchup between two teams that know each other well. The Sox will need their pitching to hold up and their lineup to keep doing what it did in Houston: punish mistakes early and do not let the game drift.

It was not a great week for the whole city. Across town, the Cubs were eliminated by the San Diego Padres in their own wild-card series, so the White Sox now carry Chicago’s October hopes alone. That alone would have sounded like a joke in 2024.

Award season will eventually turn attention to the game’s biggest individual stars, as it did when Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal won their first Cy Young Awards. But this October, one of the best stories in the sport is a team that nobody thought belonged here.

Bottom Line

The 2026 White Sox are proof that “rock bottom” is a location, not a life sentence. Two years ago they were the worst team in modern baseball. Today they are one of eight teams still standing.

Whatever happens against Cleveland, that climb already counts. And for every fan who kept buying a ticket during 121 losses, it finally paid off.