CHICAGO – Jacob Gonzalez has never had a walk-off hit at any level of his career, including Little League.
“Nope,” Gonzalez said. “It’s crazy.”
There have been walk-off groundouts for Gonzalez, walk-off sacrifice flies and, after thinking for a moment, Gonzalez even recalled one walk-off walk.
That walk-off ledger changed on Saturday, as Gonzalez’s one-out, bases-loaded single in the ninth made the White Sox a 2-1 winner over the Royals at Rate Field. Gonzalez’s grounder with a 102.3 mph exit velocity, according to Statcast, ran past the usually spectacular Bobby Witt Jr., who was part of a five-man infield alignment.
The White Sox walked away with their 10th straight home series victory, setting a new franchise record. They improved to 24-5 in the last 29 games at home, 4-1 on this American League Central homestand against Cleveland and Kansas City and 28-13 overall at Rate Field.
This victory marked the seventh walk-off of the season for the White Sox, by seven different players, including four rookies. Gonzalez joined Tristan Peters, Sam Antonacci and Braden Montgomery in the rookie crew, with Miguel Vargas, Colson Montgomery and Edgar Quero completing the lucky seven.
Saturday’s performance completed the first half of the 2026 season at 43-38 for the South Siders, who reside in first place in the AL Central. This previous sentence is surprising for some. This previous sentence is utterly stunning for others.
As for the White Sox, it’s what they expected since January.
“I don’t think the clubhouse is very surprised,” said White Sox right-hander Grant Taylor, who improved to 3-1 courtesy of Gonzalez’s hit. “We kind of knew what we had coming into spring and as we worked together, especially with additions like Mune [Murakami] and some other guys, we were all pretty excited to get out here and play. We knew we had a lot to put out there.”
"We are probably the least surprised about this,” White Sox starter Davis Martin said. “Everybody else can be surprised. We've had the talent. We have the people in the locker room and we have the people in the coaching staff and the support staff. Now we're just putting it all together. We're playing good baseball.”
Martin pitched in and out of trouble with three strikeouts over 5 1/3 scoreless innings. Sean Newcomb relieved the top White Sox starter and allowed one run over 1 2/3 innings, but his defense saved a bigger seventh.
With one out and runners on first and third, Nick Loftin laid down a safety squeeze right back to the mound. Newcomb grabbed the ball with his glove and flipped to catcher Drew Romo to nail Tyler Tolbert at the plate.
Carter Jensen followed with a bases-loaded single to right fielder Braden Montgomery with two outs to score the game’s first run. But Loftin broke for home after initially stopping at third on Jensen’s hard hit connection and was thrown out trying to go back to third.
“Yeah, definitely a different type of game, but we've been in those situations before,” said White Sox manager Will Venable, referring to his team’s 22-run output on Friday. “We talked about these close games, and on the heels of the Cleveland series, we just knew that these types of games were how it's going to be in our division.”
Taylor threw his first 16 pitches for strikes and 18 of 19 overall, striking out four over two perfect innings. His work set up the ninth-inning finale.
Colson Montgomery started with a single to left, followed by Chase Meidroth’s ground-ball single to left. Braden Montgomery loaded the bases with nobody out on a bunt single. Junior Perez swung threw a 3-2 pitch from John Schreiber for the first out, but Gonzalez connected on his own 3-2 offering to make personal history.
Earlier in that at-bat, Gonzalez motioned for Meidroth to move off second but not for a bigger lead.
“Their pitcher has a low arm slot, so he was letting go of the ball right in Chase’s uniform,” Gonzalez said. “I needed him to move one way or the other because I couldn’t see the first two pitches. It helped for sure.”
Prior to the game, the White Sox honored 18 members from their 1983 American League West champions. The Winning Ugly crew won 99 games, so the ’26 team has some work to reach that point. But they have the same playoff goal in mind.
“We're only halfway, still a lot of baseball to go,” Martin said. “So continue to do what we need to do."
“We want to be playing in October and we want to play as long as we possibly can,” Taylor said. “We enjoy playing together, it’s a fun clubhouse.”