The team that lost 121 games in 2024, then lost 102 more in 2025, sits atop or tied atop the American League Central at the 2026 All-Star break. The Chicago White Sox. That team.
The consensus is unanimous, which is rare for anything in baseball. Yahoo Sports called them the most surprising team of 2026. ESPN's midseason report cards handed them an A+, no team received a higher grade, while noting they were coming off three straight 100-loss seasons. When outlets that agree on almost nothing all point at the same clubhouse, you stop calling it a hot take and start calling it a fact.
Just how far they've climbed
To appreciate the surprise, you have to sit with the baseline. In 2024, the White Sox set a single-season record by losing 121 games. Last year they went 60-102 under rookie manager Will Venable. Preseason projection systems didn't blink: FanGraphs noted the models forecast a 67-95 record, worst in the AL by nearly five wins, with roughly a one-percent chance of reaching the playoffs. Nobody expected this team to just struggle. They were projected to be historically bad, again.
For a couple weeks, the forecast looked safe: they opened 0-3, then 1-5, then 6-13. Then something turned. Starting with a heartbreaking extra-inning loss on April 18, Chicago reeled off a stretch that, as of early to mid-June, stood at 29-17, tied for the best mark in the American League over that span and topped only by the Braves in all of baseball.
The climb has been a slow, verifiable staircase rather than one lucky week. They were 34-31 in early June, sitting in a Wild Card spot. They were 36-31 by mid-June, on pace for 87 wins. They closed June at 43-39 and in first place. By July 9 they were 47-44. Entering the break, they stood at 50-45, tied with the Guardians for the AL Central lead, a number worth reading as "atop or tied atop" as of roughly mid-July, because a game either way flips a tie into sole possession or a half-game deficit, and this race is genuinely that tight.
The engine: two M's and a V
The surprise runs through the infield. Munetaka Murakami arrived from Japan on a two-year, $34 million deal that drew less of a free-agency frenzy than expected, a bottom-feeder's bargain that has looked like a coup. Before a hamstring injury sent him to the injured list around May 29, he'd hit 20 home runs in 60 games with 42 RBI, and he only returned to the lineup around July 11. Colson Montgomery entered the break with 23 home runs. Miguel Vargas, acquired in the 2024 three-team trade that shipped Tommy Edman to the Dodgers, a deal that once looked like nothing, has, per Sun-Times reporting, climbed to 20 home runs of his own by the break.
That trio did something the franchise hadn't done since 2006, the Dye-Thome-Konerko days: give the White Sox three 20-home-run hitters before the All-Star break. ESPN noted Chicago was the only team with three 20-homer players, remarkable given that one of them, Murakami, missed roughly six weeks.
And it isn't only the sluggers. Right-hander Davis Martin arrived at the break with nine wins and a team-high WAR. Rookie center fielder Tristan Peters, a former seventh-round pick claimed from Tampa Bay for cash, hit for the cycle and made himself an unlikely All-Star. The Sox sent three players to the Midsummer Classic (Murakami, Vargas, Peters); they hadn't sent even two since 2022.
So is it real, or a mirage?
This is where I'd push back on the reflexive skepticism. Mirages tend to be built on things that don't repeat: a bullpen catching every break, a lineup living on empty-bases singles, a schedule that softens on inspection. This doesn't look like that. It looks like a rebuild that arrived a year early.
GM Chris Getz, who took over in August 2023, tore the thing down to the studs. Only three position players from that 121-loss 2024 club are still here (Andrew Benintendi, Vargas, and Lenyn Sosa), with former names like Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert Jr. shipped out. The team improved by 19 wins from 2024 to 2025, and has carried that momentum into a legitimate division race. Power that comes from three distinct middle-of-the-order bats, plus a homegrown rotation arm, is about as solid a foundation as good baseball gets.
That's the bull case, and I largely buy it: this is a real, functioning big-league team, not a two-month accident. But "real" and "October lock" are different claims, and the sober columnist in me won't collapse them. A 50-45 team is a good team, not a juggernaut. The pace has hovered around the mid-80s in wins, which is exactly the zone where a division can still slip away. Murakami has only just returned from a long absence, and a lineup that leans this heavily on the long ball can go quiet in a way that pitching-and-defense contenders don't. The August 3 trade deadline is still ahead, and it will tell you what the front office actually believes: buy in, and this turns into a real playoff push; sell, and the magic gets a firm expiration date.
My call: the White Sox are real, and they're the best story in baseball as of mid-July. Whether they're a playoff team by late September is the honest coin flip, but even asking the question about this franchise, two summers after the worst season in modern history, is its own kind of miracle.