KANSAS CITY, Mo. – In a season with 11 walk-off victories, 35 come-from-behind wins, 31 usages of an opener, and countless defied expectations, the White Sox clinched their first playoff berth in five years on Thursday with a drama-free 9-1 blowout of the last-place Royals.
After a week full of pondering season-series tiebreakers and which stragglers in the American League Wild Card race needed to lose to enable the Sox to clinch, they entered Thursday afternoon with a much clearer mandate: win, and they would be in. Even with the division race against the Cleveland Guardians going down to the wire, guaranteeing postseason baseball of any stripe was plenty of incentive.
“I haven’t popped bottles or anything in a while and you never know when you’re going to have a chance to do it again,” outfielder Andrew Benintendi told the Sun-Times before driving in a pair of runs on Thursday. “Obviously we want to win the division. Hopefully we can pop twice in the next four days.”
And with that, the Sox offense jumped all over Royals starter Randy Dobnak for six runs in the first two innings of a game that never was in doubt. The mildly eyebrow-raising decision to start rookie David Sandlin without an opener produced six innings of one-run ball with a career-high seven strikeouts.
It was only this April that the Sox snapped a 14-game losing streak at Kauffman Stadium, yet the mistakes that historically marked their struggles in Kansas City were occurring on the other side.
After Sam Antonacci led off the game with a single, Dobnak’s throw on a Kyle Teel bunt attempt dragged first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino off the bag, helping to key a three-run first. The same story played out an inning later. Antonacci followed a Braden Montgomery leadoff single with a walk, and Dobnak compounded the problem with a quick pickoff move to first, only to find that Pasquantino wasn’t holding the runner nor expecting a throw. Montgomery scored all the way from second as the ball rattled around in foul territory, kickstarting another three-run frame. When longtime Sox villain Salvador Perez lined a solo home run in the fourth, it only made it a 8-1 game.
Each of the top-three hitters in the Sox lineup reached base at least three times. Antonacci scored thrice on the afternoon, Teel blasted his fifth homer of the year out to center in the fourth, and reigning AL Player of the Week Miguel Vargas both scored and drove in a pair of runs.
No team in MLB history has ever made the playoffs immediately after three consecutive years of 100 losses or more, until these 2026 White Sox pulled it off with three games to spare. That means there’s plenty of work to be done, as Thursday’s win pulls the Sox within a half-game of the Guardians in the AL Central standings. But there’s also plenty to celebrate.
“Obviously, we’ll continue to do our jobs,” said Davis Martin, the longest-tenured player on the team. “But it means the world today.”