47-44. First place in the AL Central. Two years removed from an MLB-record 121 losses.
One All-Star.
Miguel Vargas. Who deserves it, by the way. The man is hitting .248/.359/.495 with 20 home runs and 55 RBI, and the Chicago Sun-Times confirmed he’s the first White Sox third baseman to make the All-Star Game since Joe Crede in 2008. Eighteen years. He earned it.
But one. They got one.
Davis Martin is 9-3 with a 3.08 ERA, a 1.26 WHIP, and 3.2 WAR across 96.1 innings. He’s 7th among qualified AL pitchers in ERA and his ERA+ is 139 — 39 percent better than league average. He’s anchoring the rotation of a first-place team and baseball looked right at him and said no thanks.
Davis Martin on the bump pic.twitter.com/O07fZc8Qw1
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) May 16, 2026
The guy who got the commissioner’s pick instead? Michael Wacha. 5-6. 3.45 ERA. Pitching for the Kansas City Royals, who are 37-54 and in last place. The Royals got Bobby Witt Jr. on the fan vote AND Wacha through the commissioner’s office.
Last-place Kansas City has two All-Stars. First-place Chicago has one.
That is the sentence. That is the whole article right there.
Here’s what the selection process actually rewards: names, markets, and years of accumulated goodwill from voters who weren’t paying attention when the White Sox were historically bad and aren’t paying attention now that they’re historically good. The commissioner’s pick isn’t a merit badge — it’s a recognition trophy, and Davis Martin doesn’t have the résumé yet for the people doing the recognizing. Wacha has 114 innings. Martin has 96. Wacha’s WAR edges Martin’s, 3.7 to 3.2. That’s the whole case for Wacha, and it’s thin. Martin has him in ERA, ERA+, record, and the thing that matters most right now: he’s on the team in first place. The sport’s selection apparatus doesn’t care about first place when it conflicts with familiarity.
Martin’s response to all of this was the most Davis Martin thing possible.
“I think anybody would be lying if they said they weren’t upset,” he told reporters. “I gave myself a day to be upset about it, and now it’s just, ‘All right, what can we do next?'”
A day. He gave himself a day.
Meanwhile, Colson Montgomery leads all qualified AL shortstops in home runs (23), RBI (50), and slugging (.492). He didn’t even crack a conversation. He’s been holding things together without their best hitter all summer, and Munetaka Murakami — who had 20 homers in just 57 games before his hamstring gave out in May — wasn’t even in the picture.
Manager Will Venable said it plainly: “It’s disappointing, as well as our team has performed to just have one guy.”
The White Sox went from 121 losses to first place and the sport gave them a participation ribbon. The question isn’t whether the front office should be aggressive at the deadline — it’s whether the people running this sport will ever actually look at the South Side until October forces them to.
Davis Martin’s home ERA is 0.88. At Rate Field, he’s been something close to unhittable. He had a rough July 2 start in Cleveland two days before the roster dropped — that probably didn’t help. Fine. That’s a real counterargument. His road ERA (4.72) is a real number. But ESPN still named him the second-biggest All-Star snub in baseball — which means the sport knew exactly what it was doing when it said no.
He said he’d be ready to go if they needed a replacement. Of course he would be.
The White Sox are the best story in baseball. They’ve been the best story in baseball for three months. The sport will figure that out eventually. Probably around October.
