Objectively, the aim is to win every series, but the players on both the White Sox and Cubs are open about the fact that the crosstown series comes with at least a little more incentive to win. All the more so this year because for the first time in 18 seasons, the two teams entered this weekend’s series with winning records. On top of that, the White Sox were riding a five-game winning streak and looking to establish something about themselves against a team like the Cubs.

Crosstown rivalry aside, they’re in first place in a very tough National League Central and have one of the best records in the National League as a whole. Considering that, the Sox came into the weekend with a vision of proving something about themselves.

“That’s how you kind of gauge yourself and how you’re playing and how offense is going and how your pitching is going against a really good team like the Cubs,” Colson Montgomery said. “From one to nine, those guys they can hit, they can get on base and things like that. We have a really good idea of what we need to do every single day. We’ve played some good teams this year and we’ve beat some good teams this year.”

After Friday night’s 10-5 loss, the Sox made plain to not only the baseball fans in Chicago that they are good in their own right, but they should also be getting the attention of the rest of the league.

With Sunday’s win, they’re 10-5 so far in May and have won two thirds of their games going back to April 17. The Sox trail Cleveland in the division only because the Guardians have played two more games than the Sox and won them both. It’s too early for postseason projections, but if you like the “if the season ended today” game, the Sox currently hold the second wild card spot in the American League.

Sunday’s 9-8, ten-inning win that sealed the series victory took some resilience. The Sox trailed going into the fifth inning, when they managed to tie the Cubs on a Miguel Vargas double. They took a 7-4 lead in the eighth on Tristan Peters’ first career home run, a three-run shot to right field.

But that still wasn’t enough; the Cubs knotted the game again when Michael Conforto hit a three-run homer of his own in the top of the ninth. And in extras, the north siders went up by a run, leaving the Sox in danger of dropping the game and the series. Instead, Edgar Quero played the final hero.

If this was a measuring stick series for the White Sox, then they at least believe people should start taking note, and not just the fans in Chicago.

“I know obviously the rivalry is a big thing,” Peters said. “We know that they’re a good team, but we also believe that we’re a really good team too. And we just proved that.”

A big part of why the Sox are doing so well is the offense. The combination of developmental steps forward for players like Colson Montgomery, Vargas, and Chase Meidroth and the addition of Munetaka Murakami has helped yield a team that trails only the Yankees in home runs and sits just outside of the top third in baseball in runs scored.

The Sox won’t, of course, keep winning games at a .667 pace like they have for the past month, but if they are going to stay above .500 for the season — something they haven’t done since 2021 — and truly contend for a wild card spot, there are issues that will have to be addressed.

Namely, the bullpen as evidenced in Friday’s loss and Sunday’s near-loss. Closer Seranthony Dominguez struggled with his command on Sunday, which created the opportunity for Conforto’s game-tying blast, and as a group they went into Sunday’s game with a 4.65 ERA, which was the sixth-worst in baseball.

But the season is long, and there is a lot of it left, which means that thinking too far ahead and dreaming about playoff spots and worrying over whether the bullpen is good enough is not worth the effort just yet. Right now, the important thing is that not only did the Sox take down their crosstown rivals, they rose to two games above .500 for the first time since the middle of the 2022 season.

And in so doing, the Sox are thus far surpassing preseason expectations and showing that they have enough fight in them to make things interesting in the American League Central this summer. Even if it’s taken until the third week of May for anyone outside of Chicago’s south side to take notice, the guys in the Sox clubhouse have had confidence in themselves for much longer.

“Man, I [said] in spring training, we have a really good team. Really good young players,. And we are playing really good baseball. We play hard,” Quero said.

So yes, there was some extra juice to the first three games of this season’s crosstown series, largely because both teams are playing good baseball. Time will tell if the Sox and Cubs are both still playing well when they meet again at Wrigley Field in mid-August. In this weekend’s series, Sox manager Will Venable was understated about the significant of it being the Cubs, focusing instead on continuing to accumulate series wins, no matter the opponent.

“It’s a series win, and that’s what we’re trying to do. Just stack those up. We were able to complete that objective on this one,” he said.

What means a little more to Venable is the way his guys are playing. They scored runs all the way through the ninth inning in Friday’s loss and did the same to come out on top in Sunday’s back-and-forth battle. That’s the kind of baseball that will keep the Sox in the hunt for a playoff spot.

“They’ve just continued to play all nine innings, every single pitch,” Venable said. “It’s something [hitting coach Derek] Shomon talks about in the hitters’ meetings, just competing nine innings from start to finish. So those guys continue to do it, they have the energy for it and they just continue to put out a lot of energy on a daily basis.”