With the American League Central lining up to be a photo finish this last week of the regular season, every White Sox win is crucial. The team’s mentality all season has been to take things one game at a time and hope enough wins stack up that they’ll be a playoff team come September. Whether or not that comes true might take until the final day.

Saturday’s 3-1 win over the Tigers showcased a couple of the reasons the White Sox are very likely going to be playing some postseason games. The primary reason being that they have consistently been good about keeping losses from stacking up, and they have maintained a relaxed clubhouse culture all season.

The Sox have never had a losing streak go longer than four games. A lot of teams might start to spiral after a crushing loss like they experienced Friday night, but instead, the Sox got a quality start from Sean Burke, strong relief appearances from Noah Schultz and Grant Taylor, and timely hitting from two of the more important batters in the lineup.

“This is what this team is about. We never give up,” Miguel Vargas said. “We always come back and battle the next day and play all nine innings. That’s what we have been doing the whole year, just show up that day.”

Vargas was a key part of the first run scored by the Sox on Saturday; he walked, stole second, and then scored on a Munetaka Murakami single. He added an insurance run solo homer in the sixth inning, for his 33rd home run of the season.

With his first inning stolen base, Vargas became the first player in White Sox history to hit 30 doubles, 30 home runs, score 100 runs, and steal 20 bases in a season.

“That’s what I work for. That’s why I wake up every day and work so hard for these types of moments,” he said. “And for me, I think it’s just this group has been pushing me every single day. And I never have been thinking about my individual stats, I just want to go out there and do the best for my team, and have some fun and always try hard.”

Though Vargas is easily the biggest driving force in the Sox offense, a part of why they have been successful this season is because they regularly get production from other spots in the lineup as well. After the Tigers tied it up in the top of the fifth, Braden Montgomery and Brenton Doyle teamed up for a go-ahead run in the bottom of the frame.

That, paired with a six-inning quality start from Burke and three shutdown innings from Schultz and Taylor, is a good recipe for getting a very important win with just seven games left to play in the regular season and the Sox and Guardians swapping places at the top of the division almost every day.

“These games are important for the position we’re in. We could earn a bye or be out of the playoffs, so all these games are super important,” Burke said.

The playoff field in the American League is tight. As things stood in the hours after Saturday’s win, the Sox held the third wild card spot, but only by 1.5 games over the Rangers. And behind them by just one game, the Blue Jays. Back another game, the Orioles. As Burke said, the next few days could be the difference between winning their division and getting a wild card bye and not being in the playoffs at all.

Objectively, the Sox have already outperformed most anyone’s preseason expectations, and winning this many games so soon after three straight 100-loss seasons is a huge step forward. But as the season has gone on, the bar has been raised, and anything less than a postseason appearance is going to feel like a disappointment.

The Sox missed a chance at pushing the Guardians down in the standings by losing two out of three in Cleveland earlier this week, which means they have to control their fate by winning as much as possible in the next seven days.

“Everybody’s got a lot of confidence, guys are playing hard,” Burke said. “We’re all pulling the same rope. Everybody’s putting the individual stuff aside here. It doesn’t matter how you get the job done. It can look ugly – that was a little grindy for me today, but it doesn’t matter.”

The Sox have succeeded all year in part thanks to a clubhouse that stays loose through the ups and downs of the season. You have to be good to avoid long losing streaks and to be in the playoff hunt, but sometimes even good teams get in their own way by pressing.

If the White Sox are going to get across the finish line of making the postseason, staying relaxed through the pressure of a close division race might be what makes the difference. Manager Will Venable said it is the separator between them going out and playing good games and not, and some of the guys who came over at the trade deadline quickly picked up on the locker room culture.

“I think you can’t pay too much attention to it, or else it might negatively affect you,” Brenton Doyle said. “This clubhouse, we’re trying to do the best job we can. I know I just got traded over here, but it seemed like the looser guys are, especially before the games and in the dugout and stuff like that, the better we play on the field.

“So I think the guys are just trying to find that happy medium of understanding that it’s a very tight race going on right now, but at the same time still play free and loose like we have all season.”

The bounce back win on Saturday keeps the Sox playoff dreams alive for another day, and it provides hope that they can do enough to meet the bar that they raised by outperforming those preseason expectations.