White Sox assemble: How '26 South Siders came together so quickly

CHICAGO -- Guardians players were bracing themselves. They’re walking into a buzzsaw of booing Wednesday at Rate Field, where Game 3 of the American League Division Series will be the first postseason home game after three straight 100-plus-loss seasons for the White Sox, who are up 2-0 in this best-of-five.

“Philly,” one player said, referring to the notoriously brutal environment for visiting players at the homes of the Phillies, Eagles, 76ers and Flyers, “has nothing on Chicago.”

Told of this remark, a member of the Sox laughed.

“We know,” he said, “because it used to be directed at us!”

Indeed, it was no easy thing to endure the amount of losing the Sox did in recent seasons -- most notably, of course, in the losingest season in modern history in 2024.

Even harder is to turn things around as quickly as the Sox, who are just a win away from their first AL Championship Series appearance since 2005, have.

And even harder than that is to do it not necessarily with a horde of consensus Top 100 prospects but, actually, a lot of trade, signing and developmental stories that would have been more difficult to forecast.

It’s interesting to look back now and note that, as that brutal 2024 season was winding down, MLB Pipeline had the Sox ranked as the No. 11 farm system in MLB -- a solid but unspectacular rating for a rebuilding ballclub. The rank rose to No. 6 by the start of the 2025 season, then fell to 17 about a year ago, when some graduations to the big leagues had thinned the ranks a bit.

The point is not to assess the inexact science of such rankings but rather to point out that it’s not like the Sox were bursting at the seams with a system widely expected to usher in contention this quickly.

“When you look at the identity of our club, it's really an underdog mentality,” manager Will Venable said. “You’ve got a lot of guys who weren’t top picks and really have kind of a chip on their shoulder. They want to go out and prove that they not only belong in this league but that they're good players. So that really feeds into our team identity.”

The White Sox did well on the kind of veteran-for-prospect trades that a team must ace in order to climb out of the cellar.

They got Miguel Vargas, a Cuban defector who had become a Top 100 prospect in the Dodgers’ system, in the mid-2024 deal that sent Michael Kopech to L.A. They got catcher Kyle Teel and outfielder Braden Montgomery, both of whom were Top 100 prospects, in the blockbuster that sent Garrett Crochet to Boston in December of that year.

Interestingly, though, Chase Meidroth, who was not the prospect headliner in that package (he was ranked No. 11 in Boston’s system), has been the most productive big leaguer so far. This year, he posted a 4.5 fWAR with greatly improved power, a reduced ground-ball rate and more success against lefties.

That’s a story about developing at the big league level that has turned a 2022 fourth-round Draft pick in Boston into arguably the best second baseman in the AL with Chicago.

On the much-lower-profile end of the trade spectrum, the Sox made a cash deal with the Rays last winter for outfielder Tristan Peters, who went on to have an All-Star season in center field.

As far as the Draft is concerned, while Colson Montgomery (No. 22 overall, 2021) is the mainstay at shortstop, Hagen Smith (No. 5 overall, 2024) has made an instant impression since his August arrival and Noah Schultz (No. 26, 2022) also cracked the postseason roster in his debut season. The Sox have just as many success stories from later rounds.

Fiery left fielder Sam Antonacci’s impressive debut season came just two years after the Sox plucked him out of Coastal Carolina University in the fifth round. And Chicago’s top three pitchers by fWAR this season were Sean Burke (third round, 2021), Davis Martin (14th round, 2018) and Grant Taylor (second round, 2023).

“I'd be lying if I said I thought it was going to happen this fast,” assistant general manager Josh Barfield said. “But it’s a credit to the players. We’ve got an unbelievable group. They believe, they buy in. It’s been fun building this all together with good people. You look at some of the trades, the Drafts, they've helped accelerate some of this, and these guys have come up, and it's like the moment's not too big for them.”

Within this framework, it’s fitting that the Sox’s splashiest free-agent signing was Munetaka Murakami, a Japanese superstar who, for all intents and purposes, fell to them when the forecasted market for his services did not materialize. Where other, more obvious team fits shied away because of Murakami’s swing and miss, the rebuilding Sox swooped in and wound up with a massive power boost.

So you could say he was undervalued, as well.

Ultimately, a lot of undervalued pieces congealed at the same time, turning a team that was given only a 1.1% preseason chance of making the playoffs, per FanGraphs, into a club that is getting close to an AL pennant.

“Once you get your foot in the door, you go for it and excel,” Taylor said. “We've kind of done that the whole year, you know? Now we’ve got our foot in the door in the postseason, and we're trying to make the most of it and go win the World Series.”

They’ll open their doors Wednesday to a fan base clamoring for exactly that. A contender assembled relatively quietly is bringing the noise now.