As promised, White Sox manager Will Venable handled Saturday night at Rate Field like a playoff game, even though his club clinched a playoff two days prior.
When starting pitcher Davis Martin’s outing went off the rails early, with three first-inning runs kickstarted by his own fielding error, he pulled the longest-tenured player on the team after just two outs recorded. Despite spending his pregame session lamenting the risk that lay in playing team sparkplug Chase Meidroth through his sore left hamstring strain, Venable brought him out for a pinch-hit double to open a would-be rally in the eighth.
Nevertheless, it all fell well short.
The Sox dropped a must-win game at home against the worst-in-MLB Rockies, 9-6. And over in Kansas City, Royals ace Michael Wacha was shelled by a Guardians team that clinched the American League Central title with a decisive 11-5 victory.
On balance, a battle-tested Guardians club that has won the division now in three consecutive seasons, showed their experience with yet another September surge. Cleveland went 16-8 in September, while the Sox dropped to 11-13 to ensure their first losing month since a 1-4 showing in March.
And at first glance, the finish to the American League Central race resembles a young White Sox team getting tight late in the season as the pressure mounts. They went 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position on Saturday, with Colson Montgomery–dogged by his unwelcome place in strikeout history–punching out with the tying runs aboard in the sixth, before extinguishing an eighth-inning rally by grounding into a double play.
Still, a team that should feel tremendously proud of their year, would argue that part of the season dominated by their inexperience has already taken place.
“We had a stretch there where I think we were really pressing too much, before falling into second place and trying to hang on,” hitting coach Derek Shomon told the Sun-Times. “We were at our best when we were chasing, and we had a ‘[bleep] it’ mentality, and that's the direct message that we shared with the group in our meeting: we’ve got to get back to ‘[bleep] it.’”
In the final stretch, that mentality has stretched over to a pitching staff that is only leaning further into the patchwork manner the White Sox have pieced together all year and will carry into the playoffs.
Anthony Kay, second on the team in innings, has been available out of the bullpen on his throw days between starts. Noah Schultz, not even five months removed from being the top starter prospect in the organization, rushed in for 3 ⅓ innings of relief work on Saturday night after Martin’s outing immediately went off the rails, though he allowed a crucial pair of solo shots himself.
“The end result is really all that matters, winning games, at this point,” Schultz said. “If I need to go a couple days in a row, I’m being available for it and open to whatever.”
A four-run Rockies ninth, highlighted by Hunter Goodman’s three-run blast–his second homer of the game–off Tyler Davis turned a spirited battle into a score too lopsided to make Andrew Benintendi’s own three-run shot in the ninth relevant. And the Guardians’ dominant finish will make a division race that was controlled by the Sox from July 4 until Sept. 16 look like it always belonged to the traditional divisional power.
“We felt like we've been playing with house money,” said general manager Chris Getz, in the middle of a series loss in Cleveland that put the Guardians up in the standings for good. “What a credit to this group that they didn't really care what anyone thought. The biggest lesson is they love to play with each other. They love to compete. They've got a high level of fearlessness that has carried us to where we are.”
Where the Sox are is still the postseason, with a chance to write a whole new finish to their 2026 campaign. But when it comes to the division, a team that’s been ahead of schedule all year, still hasn’t fully arrived.
