White Sox manager Will Venable jokingly lamented on Saturday that it seems as though the Cleveland Guardians are always winning. True to form, they walked off the Detroit Tigers a couple of hours before first pitch between the Sox and Twins Sunday night. Winners of three out of four in Detroit, the Guardians are the biggest threat to Sox’ hopes of winning the division at just 2.5 games back.
They’ll face each other three times in Cleveland in a little over a week, but in the meantime, the White Sox have to make sure they’re winning at least as often as the Guardians are.
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The White Sox did just that against the Twins on Sunday, winning 10-1 while showcasing much of why they are the American League Central frontrunners and why they will be a dangerous team to face in the postseason. In a planned bullpen game, the group of Bryan Hudson, Jordan Hicks, Hagen Smith, Grant Taylor, and Tyler Davis combined to allow just one run while striking out 15 Minnesota batters and walking only one.
“The plan worked,” Venable said. “Everyone did a great job. They came out, they executed, got the outs we needed. The line for the bullpen speaks for itself.”
There was really only one hiccup, when Grant Taylor gave up a leadoff homer to Brooks Lee and then walked Ryan Jeffers in the seventh inning, but even he went on to assert his dominance. After those two batters, he retired the next three in the seventh and struck out the side in the eighth inning.
A big part of why Venable’s bullpen game worked was Smith’s performance. Bridging the middle innings after Hudson and Hicks, Smith threw three perfect innings while striking out four.
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“It was probably the best I’ve ever seen him throw, and it’s just kind of him saying, ‘Here’s all my stuff, and just go hit it,'” Sam Antonacci said.
Given that playoff games tend to shorten outings for starting pitchers, it’s easy to start to picture how that cadre of relievers could come in and make scoring very difficult for opposing teams. The White Sox might have a bit of an Achilles’ Heel looming over them with the starting rotation, though.
Sox starters rank 26th in baseball in ERA, and more troublingly, they have struggled to go deep in games. They rank at the bottom of baseball in innings pitched — by almost 30 innings — which is going to put a lot of pressure on the bullpen come October.
That said, when you look at a night like the Sox relievers had on Sunday, it’s easy to start envisioning what that group could do in a playoff series. In those games, starters are often only asked throw about four innings, which could play into the Sox’ pitching strengths nicely.
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“Nights like this really show what we’re capable of. As a pitching staff and as a team,” Kyle Teel said.
Offensively, the Sox showed off another reason they will be dangerous in October. On a night when their three guys with 30 home runs — Miguel Vargas, Munetaka Murakami, and Colson Montgomery — were mostly quiet at the plate, the Sox still scored 10 runs.
That was fueled by Antonacci’s three doubles from the leadoff spot, a 3-for-5 night from Tristan Peters, and eighth inning home runs from Teel and Randal Grichuk.
“[I’m] just excited and happy to produce for my team,” Antonacci said. “Felt like I haven’t done that in a while, so to be able to help them out and ultimately come out on top tonight is September baseball. It doesn’t matter how you get it done as long as you’re winning, and every game’s a playoff game from here on out.”
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With three weeks left in the regular season and those three games in Cleveland waiting in the near future, the Sox are in a very good position to win their division. But at the same time, that will depend in part on their ability to keep pushing out the outside distractions and resist the temptation to get caught up in how close the Guardians are in the standings.
On that front, though the White Sox are a young team, they have the right veteran presence to help guide the rookies through the next few weeks. Among those veterans is Jake Rogers, who joined the Sox just over a month ago and has seen both of the ways a tight September race can go.
“It’s so hard to just like not look at it, and I try to just stay away from it as much as possible because there’s always someone behind you chasing you,” Rogers told CHGO. “I mean, that was the story of the Detroit Tigers in 2024. We were chasing someone, and we caught up. And then in 2025, someone was chasing us, and they caught up to us. So you kind of just never know. And baseball is just such a funny game.”
Rogers was with the Tigers from 2019 to the beginning of this season, and he saw in 2024 and 2025 how wonky the playoffs can get.
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“Catching and calling a game in the playoffs is like taking the ACT every night because it’s very strenuous,” Rogers said, quoting a line he said he picked up from Rangers catcher Jonah Heim. “Guys throw books out the window, and guys are trying to get you out no matter what, and the hitters they’re thinking differently than they thought, you know, a week ago in the middle of September, you know, end of September.
“It’s a totally totally different game. It’s kind of crazy, you know. You’re in the moment, and everyone is just doing every little thing to win.”
No doubt the next 19 games and then the playoffs will put a lot of the Sox players through a difficult test. They have built their regular season success in part on avoiding any prolonged losing streaks, so there is little reason to worry about a sudden skid in the final stretch of the season.
That strength, along with the kind of pitching and offensive production the Sox should against Minnesota on Sunday, is why they are holding onto a division lead and well-suited to making a deep playoff run.
