There\u2019s something mathematically beautiful about a baseball season. Three strikes, three outs, nine innings and 162 games. All are easily divisible by three or nine.<\/p>\n
If you measure the season in such symmetry, you get 18 nine-game blocks. (Hey, it beats 10-game samples that don\u2019t complete baseball math in this exercise.)<\/p>\n
And after the first nine-game block of 2026, in purely mathematical terms, the White Sox are .\u2009.\u2009. mediocre.<\/p>\n
Stop. The. Presses.<\/p>\n
Well, almost mediocre after they completed a sweep of the Blue Jays \u2014 the defending American League champs, you know \u2014 with an impressive 3-0 victory Sunday at Rate Field. It\u2019s the first time since 2004 the Sox have started 3-0 at home.<\/p>\n
A sweep of the Blue Jays in Chicago? That hadn\u2019t happened since 1995.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s gigantic,\u2019\u2019 said winning pitcher Davis Martin, who held the Jays to four hits in six impressive innings. \u2018\u2018To win a series is great, but a sweep is even better. You have to continue to trust our way of playing baseball and, going forward, having fun.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Trusting the Sox way of baseball hasn\u2019t been a recipe for success in recent seasons. And the way things started made 2026 look an awful lot like 2025.<\/p>\n
And 2024.<\/p>\n
And 2023.<\/p>\n
But these same Sox, who were off to a 1-5 start and staring squarely in the eyes of 100 losses, are suddenly 4-5 and feeling a little full of themselves.<\/p>\n
It just took a perfectly timed rainout of the scheduled home opener and a jarring talk from manager Will Venable to wake up his team.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018The rain[out], off-day kind of came at the perfect time,\u2019\u2019 said Martin, who struck out six and walked two. \u2018\u2018It gave everybody a day to collect their thoughts at home, settle into Chicago and come to the field excited, ready to go for this homestand.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
This brush with mediocrity becomes a news flash because the Sox haven\u2019t been mediocre since an 81-81 trudge to second place in the American League Central in 2022. Each season since, they have finished with triple-digit losses (101 in 2023, 121 in 2024 and 102 last season).<\/p>\n
This has to be the season a century mark of losses ceases, right?<\/p>\n
Right?<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I mean, we are a good team,\u2019\u2019 Venable said. \u2018\u2018We are finding different ways to win, getting contributions from everybody. With the way our group is set up, that\u2019s how we are going to have to win games. It\u2019s going to have to be with defense, with different guys on offense and, obviously, with the pitching staff.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Martin provided solid starting pitching. The offense rallied enough in the first, third and fourth innings to provide a cushion, and left-hander Chris Murphy pitched a flawless ninth for his first save.<\/p>\n
Shortstop Tanner Murray, making his MLB debut, provided the defense with an acrobatic, inning-ending play up the middle in the second to kill the Jays\u2019 only rally.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018You look at the turning point of that game,\u2019\u2019 Martin said. \u2018\u2018[Murray] solidified that win for us.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
There are some red flags. The Sox entered play Sunday with MLB\u2019s worst team ERA at 7.01. The Nationals were the closest at 6.04. The Sox\u2019 eight errors put them at 27th among 30 teams.<\/p>\n
There is plenty of work for this always-rebuilding team to do.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018You look at what we did [after the All-Star break last season] \u2014 some of the teams we beat, some of the series we won, in the places that we played \u2014 that young group matured, and it\u2019s only going to get better,\u2019\u2019 Martin said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018There are still going to be growing pains. I don\u2019t think anybody is going to have it figured out. But if we are just continuing to push this group and continue to get better every day, I think we can be in a really good spot later in the year.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s something mathematically beautiful about a baseball season. Three strikes, three outs, nine innings and 162 games. All…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[5,377,2554,4,282,70,2553],"class_list":{"0":"post-665590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blue-jays","10":"tag-bluejays","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","14":"tag-torontobluejays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116355135414778573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}