Two Years After Losing 121 Games, the White Sox Lead the AL Central in September

In 2024 the Chicago White Sox lost 121 games, the most in the modern history of the sport. In 2025 they lost 102. On the morning of September 9, 2026, they are 75-69 and in first place in the American League Central, two games ahead of Cleveland, and they have been in first for most of the summer. Whatever happens in the next three weeks, that sentence is the baseball story of the year.

The turnaround did not start well. Chicago was 6-13 in mid-April. From April 18 to the middle of June they went 29-17, the best stretch in the American League, took the division lead, and have not let go of it since, through a July in which the schedule stiffened and an August in which they dropped series to the Cubs and Red Sox and still held on because nobody behind them could put a run together either.

The lineup is the reason. Munetaka Murakami, Colson Montgomery and Miguel Vargas were all on pace for close to 40 home runs at midseason, and the Sox have spent the year near the top of the league in homers and slugging. Braden Montgomery hit a walk-off home run in his major league debut, which is the kind of thing that happens to teams having this kind of year. Davis Martin, 9-2 with a 2.41 ERA in June, has pitched like an ace, with Sean Burke, Erick Fedde and Anthony Kay behind him and Will Venable running the bullpen by committee.

Now the hard part. Cleveland has the easiest remaining schedule in baseball and has won the division in three of the last five years. The Guardians also hold the last AL wild card by a single game over Toronto, which means the division race and the wild card race are the same race, and the loser may go home. Detroit, seven back at the end of August, has the third-best run differential in the American League and is the team the numbers keep pointing to. Minnesota has been playing division opponents for two weeks straight and will keep doing it.

Chicago's edge is that it has already beaten all three of them. The Sox hold winning season records against Cleveland, Detroit and Minnesota, so every tiebreaker breaks their way. In a race this close, that is worth a game the standings do not show.

Elsewhere in the American League, Tampa Bay leads New York by four in the East and Houston leads Texas by two in the West. In the National League, Milwaukee's 90-56 is the best record in baseball, Los Angeles and Atlanta are comfortable, Philadelphia and the Cubs are jockeying for the top wild card, and Arizona and San Diego are fighting for the last one.

But the South Side is the place to watch. A franchise that was a punchline two Octobers ago is three weeks from a division title, and the team chasing it has the schedule and the pitching. Baseball does not usually give you a script this clean.