3 Bold Predictions for the White Sox in 2026

Shane Smith takes the mound this afternoon in Milwaukee — facing the organization that gave up on him — and the White Sox officially start a season that nobody outside the clubhouse expects much from. Caesars set the over/under at 65.5 wins. FanGraphs says 68.6. PECOTA says 69. Every projection system has them finishing last in the AL Central for a fourth straight year.

I've spent the last two weeks laying out where this roster stands and whether .500 is realistic. Today I'm going further. Here are three bold predictions for the 2026 White Sox — the kind the projection systems can't make, but the roster construction supports.

1. Colson Montgomery Hits 30 Home Runs and Makes the All-Star Team

Start with what already happened. Montgomery was called up on July 4 last year and hit 21 home runs in 71 games. That's a home run every 12 plate appearances — a rate that, over a full season of at-bats, would put him in the top 15 in baseball. He finished fifth in AL Rookie of the Year voting. MLB Network noted in early September that only Kyle Schwarber had hit more homers than Montgomery since his first career long ball on July 22. This wasn't a two-week hot streak. It was a 71-game sustained sample.

The underlying numbers support it being real. Statcast had Montgomery at a 14.5% barrel rate with a max exit velocity of 114.5 mph — the same as Rafael Devers. His similar batters list reads like a lineup you'd want to be on: Zach Neto, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Austin Riley. THE BAT X projects 27 home runs in a full season. I'm going over.

Here's why: Montgomery now has lineup protection he didn't have last year. Murakami batting cleanup behind him means pitchers can't just throw around the No. 2 hitter anymore — they have to challenge him. He's had an entire offseason to prepare as a big leaguer instead of grinding through a Triple-A slump and an emergency complex-league reset. And the mechanical adjustment he made with hitting director Ryan Fuller last May — the one that transformed him from a .218 hitter at Charlotte to a .239/.529 slugger in the majors — has had months to solidify. Montgomery turns 24 next month. Thirty home runs and an All-Star nod isn't a fantasy. It's what the data says he was already doing, projected over a full season with better support around him.

2. The September White Sox Will Be a Fundamentally Different Team Than the Opening Day White Sox

This is the prediction the projection systems can't capture, because they model the Opening Day roster. But the Opening Day roster is the worst version of this team we'll see all year — and the White Sox have built their entire 2026 plan around mid-season reinforcements arriving on a schedule.

The timeline is already mapped out. Kyle Teel returns from his WBC hamstring strain by mid-April, adding a bat that posted a 125 wRC+ in 78 games as a rookie. Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith — the two left-handed pitching prospects the entire organization is building around — start the year at Triple-A Charlotte with an explicit mandate from Chris Getz that they'll contribute at the big league level this year. Braden Montgomery, the team's No. 1 prospect, could arrive in September. Drew Thorpe and Ky Bush are working their way back from Tommy John. Sam Antonacci, who slashed .308/.500/1.346 in spring and then raked for Team Italy at the WBC, is on an accelerated timeline.

We saw exactly this movie last year. The first-half Sox went 32-65 — a historically bad .330 clip. Then the prospect wave hit: Montgomery, Teel, Quero, Meidroth, Grant Taylor. The second-half Sox went 28-37. That's a 70-win pace over a full season. At one point in August and September, their record matched the Tigers' and was better than the Dodgers', Mets', and Astros'. All of those young players are back with a full year of experience, and the next wave is deeper. The bold prediction: the second-half White Sox will post a winning record after the All-Star break and finish with a top-five second-half mark in the American League.

3. The White Sox Finish Ahead of the Minnesota Twins

Every outlet has the Sox finishing last in the Central. Every one. But finishing last requires that every team above you stays above you — and the Twins are falling apart.

Minnesota lost Pablo López to Tommy John surgery in late February — their No. 2 starter, a guy who posted a 2.74 ERA last year, gone for the entire season and likely into 2027. They fired manager Rocco Baldelli. Top baseball executive Derek Falvey departed in a January shake-up after a change in ownership. The new front office, led by Falvey's former deputy Jeremy Zoll, has been almost entirely inactive — their biggest additions were Josh Bell, Victor Caratini, and Taylor Rogers on short-term, low-risk deals. The Twins went 70-92 last year, sold hard at the trade deadline (moving 10 players off the active roster), and could easily sell again this summer if Joe Ryan is still available and the team is out of the race by July. The projections still have Minnesota finishing eight or nine wins ahead of the Sox — but those projections were built before López's surgery, and the gap narrows fast when you subtract an ace and add nothing to replace him.

Meanwhile, the White Sox went 8-5 against the Twins last year with a materially worse roster. The trend lines are converging — Minnesota went from 87 wins to 70; the Sox went from 41 to 60. Those trajectories don't have to cross at exactly the same point for the Sox to leapfrog a declining team that lost its ace, fired its manager, and isn't spending. If Predictions 1 and 2 hit — Montgomery breaks out, the roster transforms mid-season — fourth place in the AL Central is very much in play.

The Bottom Line

These three predictions aren't independent — they build on each other. Montgomery's breakout anchors the lineup. The mid-season prospect arrivals transform the pitching staff and deepen the bench. And a soft division with a declining Twins team gives the Sox a real chance to finish somewhere nobody expects. This isn't a playoff prediction. It's a "this rebuild is further along than anyone thinks" prediction — and for a fanbase that just lived through 41-121 and three straight years of 100-loss baseball, that matters.

First pitch in Milwaukee is at 1:10 CT. Baseball is back on the South Side. Let's see what this team is made of.