From 121 Losses to a Playoff Win — but the White Sox Turnaround Faces Its Real Test Wednesday

The Chicago White Sox won a playoff game Tuesday night. Read that sentence against where this franchise was two years ago and it stops sounding ordinary.

Chicago beat Houston 6-3 in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card Series at Daikin Park, the club's first postseason victory since 2021. Left-hander Hagen Smith and a parade of relievers held an Astros lineup that finished the regular season scoring 4.52 runs per game, and the White Sox jumped out early to take a 1-0 series lead on the road.

The context is what makes it remarkable. The 2024 White Sox lost 121 games, a single-season record. The 2025 club lost 102 more. Add the season before and you get 324 losses across three consecutive 100-loss campaigns — a stretch during which the franchise was, by its own front office's admission, a punchline. This year's team finished 85-78 with a plus-59 run differential and the third AL wild card. No team in MLB history had followed consecutive 100-loss seasons with a playoff berth.

Game 1 was won the way the season was

The opener strategy worked. Smith's slider — his best pitch all year — generated swings and misses, and the bullpen did the rest. Both clubs emptied their relief corps; the two teams combined to use 13 pitchers. Houston's staff was already the more fragile unit entering the series, and Tuesday's workload only sharpened that edge for Chicago.

That matters more than one game. Houston's Wild Card roster carries 12 pitchers and 14 position players, with 13 players making their postseason debut. The Astros are also without Carlos Correa and three center fielders — Brice Matthews, Jake Meyers and Daulton Varsho — thinning an outfield group in a park where range still counts.

Wednesday is a different problem entirely

Game 2 hands the ball to two traditional starters, and the shape of the matchup flips.

Sean Burke has been Chicago's most dependable arm: 11-7, a 3.34 ERA, a 1.20 WHIP and 172 1/3 innings across 27 starts, with 185 strikeouts against 62 walks. He is a volume pitcher — roughly 6.4 innings per outing — and he already beat Houston 5-1 on Sept. 1. His slider is the soft spot (.299 average, .504 slugging against), and Houston's best hitters know it.

Hunter Brown counters with better raw stuff and a worse command profile. His 3.19 ERA and .208 batting average against are backed by expected numbers in the 90th percentile, and his curveball misses bats at a 36.1 percent clip. But Brown has walked 55 hitters in 107 1/3 innings — a 4.61 walks-per-nine rate in the ninth percentile — and he averages just 5.4 innings per start. After Houston burned through its bullpen in Game 1, Brown is being asked to provide length he rarely delivers.

Earl's model grades this as essentially a coin flip, with Houston a slim favorite at home. The market agrees on the closeness: DraftKings opened the Astros at -153 and has drifted to -147, with the total sitting at 7.5 and the run line at -1.5. That is not a price that implies a rout — it implies a game decided late.

What a Game 2 win would mean

For Chicago, advancing would validate a rebuild that moved faster than any projection system allowed. FanGraphs had this team forecast for 67 wins and a 1.1 percent playoff chance in the preseason. The White Sox are now 80-76 against a slightly negative schedule by the site's own power rating, ranked eighth overall, with the market having largely caught up to them.

A series win also buys the young core something no amount of regular-season improvement can: October reps. The developmental value of a Game 3 — or a Division Series — compounds into next season.

The turnaround is already the story of the 2026 season. Wednesday determines whether it stays a story, or becomes a run.