I have been a Chicago White Sox fan for my entire life. I watched the 2024 season. All of it. The 41-121 record — the worst in modern MLB history — burned something into my brain that I’m not sure ever fully heals.
So when the White Sox went 5-1 the week of April 27 through May 3, scoring 32 runs and giving up 17, my first instinct wasn’t joy. It was suspicion. Deep, trauma-brained suspicion. The team’s own account said it best:
your @MLB home run leader, Munetaka Murakami: https://t.co/foDmf0qmBi pic.twitter.com/aFKGIPpQF0
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) April 28, 2026
They’re 17-19. Sitting in third place in an AL Central so tightly packed that all five teams are within 1.5 games of each other. They had a 13-13 April — their first non-losing calendar month since June 2023. I don’t know what to do with any of this.
Munetaka Murakami is leading MLB with 14 home runs, tied with Aaron Judge, at a 170 wRC+. That last number means he’s producing 70% more offensive value than the average MLB hitter. He’s not on a hot streak. He’s playing at a level that legitimately warrants a conversation about whether a White Sox bat could challenge for the home run crown. I have typed that sentence and I still don’t fully believe it. We already called Murakami’s emergence a potential franchise-altering development and so far he is not making us look stupid.
Davis Martin has a 1.64 ERA. Miguel Vargas said — out loud, to reporters — “The lineup is so deep.”
A White Sox player said the lineup is deep.
I need a minute.
Now, the honest part, because this fanbase has earned honesty: the run differential is still -24. The bullpen is bottom-5 in WHIP. The team batting average is .226, which ranks 29th in baseball. None of that screams “we’ve arrived.” What it screams is “we are a team that wins in bursts and will also randomly give up eight runs in the sixth inning on a Tuesday.” The 2025 season went 60-102, and the Crochet trade fallout we’d been tracking is still part of the larger story of how this roster got built. The rebuild is not done. It is merely… producing something identifiable as baseball.
Over on r/whitesox the vibe is cautious optimism wrapped in full-body PTSD. The phrase “I don’t know how to feel good about this team” keeps appearing. That is the most accurate description of being a White Sox fan in May 2026 that I have encountered.
Is this a turning point? I genuinely don’t know. The math says “probably not a playoff team.” The vibe says “but maybe watch anyway.” Those two things coexisting is not something I was trained for after the last two years.
They might lose four in a row this weekend. They might win five straight. Both feel equally possible and I have made peace with that, sort of, in the way you make peace with a recurring lower-back injury — you know it’s there, you’ve just stopped being surprised by it.
Anyway. 17-19. Let’s keep going.