HEAR ME OUT: Three Things to Watch in 2026 for the Chicago White Sox
Early spring in the Midwest is a wild time.
It was only a few days ago that I was nearly late to work because I was scraping layers of ice and snow off my car. But today, I sat in my living room enjoying a mild breeze that danced through my opened windows. Outside, I could hear my children playing as dust danced in the late afternoon light.
I love this time of year – it’s profoundly sweet and hopeful. The long, cold winter is over. Birds start singing. Daffodils pop up through the frost in earnest. And I begin to collect the broken shards of my White Sox fandom and piece them back together.
We made it, friends.
Welcome to Opening Week 2026.
And listen, I know that I just waxed poetic about the start of White Sox baseball, which I know is weird and probably more than a little delusional. I get that. But I promise that I haven’t completely lost my mind. I think there could be some legitimately interesting things for White Sox fans to watch this season.
I’m not saying they’re going to be good, but... they’re going to be better. At this point, I’ll take what I can get.
1. DINGERS! DINGERS!
The power on the South Side was severely lacking in 2025. White Sox hitters collectively slugged for .373, which was good enough to tie for second-worst in all of baseball. But in 2026, I’m looking for that slugging percentage to go up. Off-season free agent pick up Munetaka Murakami will probably see to that all by himself. Lenyn Sosa, who led the team with 22 home runs last season, will be cobbling together a good amount of plate appearances as he hops around between several defensive positions and DH. Colson Montgomery, who hit just one home run fewer than Sosa in half as many games, returns for his sophomore year. There are at least five or six guys in that lineup who can hit more than 20 home runs this season.
It won’t be anything earth-shattering, but it’ll be an improvement, and I’m all for that.
As Ed Farmer would say, light it up.
2. DEBUTS AND DRAFTS
Last week, the club officially announced their starting rotation: Shane Smith, Sean Burke, Anthony Kay, Davis Martin, and Erick Fedde.
But that’s not the story. The stories have already been assigned to the Charlotte. Top pitching prospects Noah Schultz, Hagen Smith, and Tanner McDougal could all make their MLB debuts in 2026. And with Mike Vasil facing a 12-18 month recovery after undergoing Tommy John surgery, their services might be required sooner rather than later.
It won’t be pretty, as major league debuts rarely are, but it will be new. It will be exciting. And it will, at the very least, give us some stats that we can analyze and obsess over for months.
Couple that with the White Sox announcing their number one overall pick at the MLB Draft in July (which had better be Roch Cholowsky, because if the White Sox use the first overall spot to draft another pitcher, so help me) and there’s going to be a lot of excitement for the youth movement on the South Side.
3. HEY, IT COULD HAPPEN
Conventional wisdom (and every offseason projection in existence) seems to indicate that the White Sox will once again find themselves at the bottom of the division in 2026. But while the AL Central may seem toothless, it is a chaotic place where wins come at you slow and life comes at you fast.
PECOTA projects that the White Sox will win 68 games. First of all, just having fewer than 100 losses in a season would be a treat and something that the team hasn’t accomplished since 2022. But the White Sox aren’t the only ones in the Central with some organizational dysfunction. I think if the Sox can white-knuckle their way to 70+ wins and the wheels somehow come off for a team like the Twins, it might be enough to pull them out of the basement.
Fourth place? I think that’s what Brooks Boyer would call “momentum.”
Of course, none of these things might happen. The bats could remain quiet, the debuts and drafts could faceplant, and the Sox could spend a fourth-straight season in last place while losing more than 100 games.
But what fun would there be in thinking that on March 22?