White Sox All-Star outfielder Tristan Peters said a funny thing a few hours before hitting a home run for the fifth consecutive game Wednesday night, matching a franchise record.
“I’m staying on my backside a little more,” Peters said. “Staying back, just letting the ball travel a little longer, letting me recognize pitches better.”
Normally this is the talk of a hitter who is trying to spank singles to the opposite field, a la Tony Gwynn.
Instead, for the fifth time in as many nights, Peters whacked a pitch over the fence to the pull side, this time a hanging slider from Rangers reliever Robby Ahlstrom. The fifth-inning blast and the streak put Peters in rare air in terms of White Sox history, occupied only by the likes of Frank Thomas (twice), Paul Konerko, A.J. Pierzynski, Carlos Lee, Greg Luzinski, Ron Kittle and–earlier this year–Munetaka Murakami.
For a 26-year-old rookie acquired for cash after being designated for assignment by the Rays last December, Peters’ breakout 2026 season is defined by wild pivots. But his latest one might still be his greatest. After suffering through a 4-for-48 slump in July that allowed speculation that there were some fluky elements to his first half, Peters’ prodigious slugging while he works to track breaking balls better and chase less, are representative of a hitter who is sacrificing nothing, and hitting everything.
“When you hear things like that with guys, for me it sounds like he just trusts where he’s at,” said manager Will Venable. “He trusts his swing, he’s letting the ball travel. He’s not feeling like he needs to rush or cheat to things and kind of expedite the decision part of it. Because he just has a nice move that he has confidence in and he trusts his swing. That’s the best spot to be in as a hitter.”
Rather than receding, Peters is having the best offensive month of his major league career right as the White Sox offense is enduring slumps from Murakami and Colson Montgomery. He entered Wednesday hitting .322/.420/.661 in August, before singling, doubling and homering, as the Sox broke open a big lead in the rubber match against a playoff hopeful Texas team that entered the night tied for first place in the American League West.
On top of hitting for the cycle on July 10th against the Athletics, Peters has now fallen a triple short of repeating the feat in each of the past two nights. The second home run of this streak was Sunday’s walk-off blast against the Mets; Peters’ third walk-off plate appearance of the season.
With Sean Burke exiting after three innings and a career-high eight walks Wednesday night, giving way to a bullpen exhausted by 16 games in 16 days, and the Cleveland Guardians bearing down on them with a seven-game winning streak, this surprising young Sox team is being tested as much as ever.
To their rescue has come Peters, who is even surprising those closest to him with his latest surge.
“She’s seen me through my whole minor-league career and yeah, I’ve never done that before,” Peters said of his wife, Erin. “She was surprised.”
As recently as the last week of spring training, Tristan and Erin thought they could be living in Charlotte this year, uncertain if Peters would break camp with the major league club or be assigned to Triple-A. Now, Peters knows that slumps, or any notion that he’s anything less than an impact player on an AL Central-leading White Sox team, are just temporary.
“Those stretches are always frustrating and tough, because you think all these thoughts that aren’t true about yourself,” Peters told the Sun-Times. “But I’ve done it before, and I can do it again.”