Approaching 2025 midpoint, are White Sox moving in right direction?

The White Sox opened this week’s homestand with a 10-0 loss to the Diamondbacks. It came right after a come-from-behind victory over the Blue Jays in Toronto on Sunday. That speaks a little to where the Sox are right now, as they approach the mathematical midpoint of the season.

By the time they finish this week’s series against the Diamondbacks, the Sox will have completed half of the games in the 2025 season. There are a lot of questions about what the second half will look like, such as how general manager Chris Getz will approach the trade deadline, but the biggest question is how much progress the Sox have made in their rebuild. Like the whiplash going from Sunday’s game to Monday’s, there are some good things happening, but still a lot of bad. Are they actually getting better?

You would have to squint pretty hard to say yes. They have four more wins on June 23 than they did on the same date a year ago. That’s objectively better, but it could also be the baseball equivalent of a rounding error. Across a full season, a few ground balls or hits in the air placed just a little bit differently can give or take four wins from a team.

“When you look at a record like we have, you are not too happy about it by any stretch,” general manager Chris Getz said before Monday’s loss. “But there are some positives that we can hang our hat on and continue to move forward.”

Those positives, according to Getz, are the emergence of a small cadre of young players who might be solid pieces of a future Sox team that’s competitive. Maybe even stars. He cited Miguel Vargas and Chase Meidroth in particular, and also pointed out starting pitcher Shane Smith.

Vargas and Meidroth both came over via trade — Vargas in the three-team deadline deal last July and Meidroth in the Garrett Crochet trade with the Red Sox — and Smith was a Rule 5 Draft pickup from the Brewers. Vargas has gone from hitting a paltry .104 during his short stint with the White Sox last season to batting third in manager Will Venable’s lineup and looking like he belongs there. Meidroth was called up a few weeks into this season and has established himself already as a top-of-the-order hitter. As for Smith, it is looking like the league is adjusting to him after he was mostly dominant in his first 13 starts, so he will have to adjust back. After a tough start against the Cardinals last week, Smith lasted only two innings against the Diamondbacks on Monday, giving up five runs on four hits and two walks.

That kind of thing is a normal part of a rookie navigating his first major league season, but Smith will have to demonstrate that he can bounce back from a couple of wobbly outings. The good news is, as the Sox rotation currently looks, Smith is in little danger of losing his spot.

“He’s in a good spot physically, mentally,” Venable said. “I think it’s just a long season and a guy who’s continuing to battle through his first major league season. He’s not going to be perfect every outing. It’s on him to figure out how to get through some of these starts without his best stuff.”

Stepping back and looking at the team as a whole, there are some broad strokes improvements worth noting. Getz cites things like the Sox chase rate getting better year over year. Going into Monday’s game, the Sox had a 30.8% chase rate, as defined by Fangraphs, which puts them at 21st in baseball. That isn’t great, but it is better than last year; in 2024, the White Sox finished the season with a 33.8% chase rate, good for the fourth-highest in baseball.

“There are a lot of things to highlight. There are other areas that need to be continued to developed, worked on, we are focused on doing that,” Getz said. “We had objectives coming in we really wanted to focus on with our Major League staff, and they have done a pretty good job in executing that. We know there’s more that needs to happen for us to turn the corner and accelerate some things.”

The next step to improving is the July trade deadline. Like last year, Getz still has a few trade pieces who can fetch prospect returns for the Sox, but the biggest one remains Luis Robert, Jr. Getz didn’t shut down the possibility of keeping Robert, Jr. in Chicago, but the reality is that doing so means picking up his $20 million option for 2026, and given his offensive performance the past two seasons, there’s little reason to do that. Still, Getz asserts that he is not out shopping the centerfielder.

“We’ve never been out there making phone calls about Luis Robert,” Getz said. “It’s teams calling us and we have conversations and we stick to the plan that we’ve been working by so far in which if we feel like we can help the long term health of the organization, so be it. We like having Luis Robert and I enjoy having him in the lineup on a nightly basis.”

But again, holding on to Robert, Jr. past this July’s trade deadline makes little sense, both financially and for the long term future of the White Sox. Even with a modest return or being forced to eat some of the money the Sox still owe him, Getz is wisest dealing Robert, Jr. a month from now.

Beyond that, the logical next step is to start building around the young core of players the Sox front office has acquired — and will keep acquiring at this deadline — by adding veteran free agents with established track records. And not just guys who are nice around the margins or good supplement pieces, but real impact players. As Justin Ishbia moves to take majority control of the ballclub, that would seem to mean Getz will have more spending money than he has thus far. But just not yet, according to the general manager.

“He’s buying up more shares in the club, it’s really about supporting the long term vision of the organization,” Getz said of Ishbia. “We feel like if there’s talent out there that we feel like can really help us, then we’ll go out and do that. In the meantime, it’s been a foundational approach. We are sticking to what it takes to improve all areas of the organization and not just relying on free agent spending.

“That time will come without question. We are much more focused on developing the crew we have up here and developing the players in the Minor Leagues.”

Getz emphasized that the time to spend “will come” but remains vague on when. Until that time does arrive, the Sox are likely left to keep treading water. They can continue stockpiling prospects and developing them into players like Vargas, Meidroth, and Smith, but without more than that, the Sox will remain a team like the 2024 and 2025 iterations.