This story was excerpted from Scott Merkin’s White Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
CHICAGO -- The 2026 White Sox sit atop the American League Central with 28 games remaining and hold the AL’s No. 2 playoff seed, making them one of the season’s true feel-good stories.
No team has made the playoffs following two straight 100-loss seasons, let alone three straight for the South Siders. Their 121-loss campaign in 2024 sits just two years removed.
Yet, FanGraphs has them with an 85.8 percent chance to make the playoffs and a 70.3 percent chance to win the division. Improvement was expected for these White Sox, but this level of success, following 102 losses? To be perfectly honest, not quite so much back in Spring Training.
“Anybody that tells you that they saw this coming is a liar,” White Sox assistant general manager Josh Barfield told me in an interview during this last homestand. “We knew that the team was going to be better; we knew we had more talent. We felt good about our processes. We felt really good about the preparation that went into the offseason. We felt like we had a really good spring. The guys were as ready as possible.
“Baseball is unpredictable. It’s hard. It’s really hard to go from 60 wins last year to a chance to make the playoffs, let alone be in contention to win a division.”
One of the many positives general manager Chris Getz has put in place since taking over on Aug. 31, 2023, is setting realistic expectations for the organization as a whole, according to Barfield. This season quickly became the first of Getz’s GM tenure when some level of results-based success was on the agenda.
Not losing 100 games for a fourth straight season is one thing. Getting close to .500 is another step forward. Winning the division still seemed a bit of a stretch.
“You always want to try to exceed those, but not putting pressure on anybody, whether it’s a number or, ‘We’ve got to do this,’” Barfield said. “Let’s just keep doing the right things and keep stacking those, and let’s see where we are.
“I think nobody saw in March us being here. … We got off to that slow start [6-13]. We were not getting the wins yet on the field, but it felt like there were a lot of wins happening throughout the organization. So that was the validation you need when you are not necessarily getting the W's on the board.”
There might have been a few questions or side-eye glances for Barfield when he left the front office of an Arizona team that was in the '23 World Series for a White Sox squad embarking on yet another rebuild. Barfield spoke with Getz and chairman Jerry Reinsdorf before taking the job in late September '23, and felt pretty good about the vision, the path to get there and the ability to execute this vision.
When Barfield left Arizona, he remembers front-office personnel telling him, "Man, if somehow you are ever able to figure it out there, it will be awesome."
“Just feeling like a competitor -- if someone tells you, you can’t do something, Getzie has that in him too. The feeling of like, ‘Man, if we get this right, it’s going to be something really special,’” Barfield said. “We still have a long way to go, but it’s been pretty cool to just see it start to come together and see how the fans and the city have responded.”
Imagine the response if the White Sox finished off the AL Central or won the AL pennant or … won the World Series? There’s now nothing unexpected for this team’s ceiling as September approaches, but there’s no time for victory laps as the plan really gets going.
“This game, it will humble you so quickly,” Barfield said. “Knowing that, being a former player and having been humbled many, many times, it’s the same on this side. Nobody is popping champagne or beating their chest right now. We have a long way to go. It sounds corny, but we are just worrying about whatever series is in front of us, whatever game, and try to get through that day.
“Just keep stacking those days. That’s been the mantra the whole year, and that’s what the players and staff have done. You can’t start patting yourself on the back because you will get passed up really fast. We’ve seen that all around the league. Plenty of examples, so we are not falling into that trap.”