The White Sox just swept a real playoff team to win their first postseason series in 21 years, and if you filed that under “cute underdog story,” delete the file.
Two games, win-or-go-home pressure both nights, exactly the pressure built into the wild card round, and the White Sox didn’t blink. Two years ago this roster lost 121 games, a modern MLB record, then followed it with a third straight 100-loss season in 2025. No team in history had ever made the playoffs after back-to-back 100-loss years, and Chicago just did it coming off three straight, two years removed from 121 losses and without gutting the roster to get here.
Patience worked.
I’m a Yankees-Jets-Knicks-Rangers guy who holds grudges on principle, and the Astros have been near the top of my list since the trash can years, so watching them get eliminated by anybody is a nice Tuesday. Watching them get swept by the same franchise that swept them in the 2005 World Series, as news4jax pointed out, is a symmetry you can’t script.
Game 1 was a 6-3 win Tuesday in Houston, and Colson Montgomery supplied the signature moment: a 432-foot homer to center in the fourth, his first career postseason blast, in a season where he also set the single-season strikeout record with 227 whiffs. Those two stat lines don’t usually belong to the same guy.
Game 2 got uglier before it got better. The Sun-Times detailed how the Astros clawed back to 4-3 on three straight solo homers, from Jeremy Pena, Cam Smith, and Jose Altuve, who was busy climbing the all-time postseason leaderboard in real time. Here’s Jesse Rogers watching it happen live:
https://twitter.com/JesseRogersESPN/status/2105426057386188850
That blast was Altuve’s 28th career postseason homer, one behind Manny Ramirez for the record, and it’s deeply annoying to watch the archenemy pull that off in an elimination game. Chase Meidroth made sure it didn’t matter.
Two innings later, Meidroth turned on a Bryan Abreu pitch and sent it 390 feet into the left-center seats for a three-run homer, turning a one-run game into a 7-3 final and finishing the sweep. Afterward, he credited the road crowd that had been hammering his team all series: “They have been incredible all year.”
Even the people who run the team sound surprised their own patience paid off. Jerry Reinsdorf admitted, “I didn’t think it would come to fruition this fast. I really thought 2027 was the year that we would contend.” GM Chris Getz wasn’t much more confident, saying, “Did I expect it to happen this quickly and be where we’re at in this journey? No, I didn’t.” Manager Will Venable put it simpler, saying he’s “proud of the guys and certainly happy for them as they’re probably the only ones in this country that believed.”
Nobody saw this coming, including the guys who built it.
That doesn’t mean the hard part’s over. Two wins against a shaky Astros pitching staff isn’t the same evidence as beating the Guardians in a five-game series, and Cleveland’s rotation is built for exactly this test. The easy round, if there was one, just ended.
I don’t care. The Astros are sitting at home in October and the White Sox are still playing baseball, and I’m going to enjoy that for at least the rest of the week.
