The Chicago White Sox just swept a playoff series.
Swept the Houston Astros 3-0, capped by a 7-3 clincher in Houston behind a three-run bomb from Chase Meidroth that should already be framed and hanging somewhere at Rate Field. Jeff Passan of ESPN summed it up about as cleanly as anyone could: they went down to Houston and ran the Astros right out of their own building.
Twenty-one years since the last time this organization won a playoff series.
Now let’s get to the part of this story that isn’t even about baseball, because there’s no version of this week where we skip it.
Pope Leo XIV (Chicago guy, lifelong Sox fan, the literal Pope) sent the team a letter before the Wild Card Series even started.
Earlier today, a letter from Pope Leo XIV arrived at Rate Field. Go White Sox! pic.twitter.com/7qPKXPrDyz
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) September 29, 2026
The man asked the Almighty directly for “abundant blessings” on this roster. Three days later they’re in the ALDS. Nobody’s claiming causation. We’re just saying it’s weird that it worked, and we’re not mad about it.
Strip away the viral stuff and this is still the part that should bother every team left in October: a club that lost 121 games two years ago just became the first team in the modern era to make the playoffs the year after back-to-back 100-loss seasons, and then it went out and swept a club that had lost three straight playoff series and hadn’t won a home playoff game in nine tries. Anyone who watched this roster in March and wants you to believe they called a sweep of the Astros is lying, and they know it. Mike Vasil told The Score Chicago after the clincher: “Our dugout is truly a free-for-all… it’s one of our superpowers — the ability to have a professional team that is so naive but also absolutely insane.” That’s a confession dressed up as a scouting report. The White Sox also just beat a real team in a win-or-go-home series.
Three weeks ago this team was barely hanging onto a playoff spot while most of the sport had moved on to teams it found more interesting. Now Cleveland is next.
ALDS Game 1 is Saturday at Progressive Field, and the Guardians will be the popular pick in just about every room outside the South Side, mostly because they won the AL Central and the White Sox spent the summer as nobody’s idea of a contender. The odds haven’t caught up yet either. White Sox were sitting at +135 for Game 1 and +125 to win the series, underdog money for a team that just won on the road with its season on the line. Funny thing about that number: Chicago beat Cleveland 7 times out of 13 this year. They’ve already done this once.
Nobody outside Chicago is taking Will Venable’s team seriously, after a summer where baseball was ignoring the best story of the year. That’s the whole advantage. Let them keep sleeping on it until Sunday.