The White Sox have not had an offense ranked in the top half of the league since 2021. Entering Saturday’s 6-1 win over the Mariners, the Sox were sitting at 16th in baseball in offensive wins above replacement, according to Fangraphs.
The addition of Munetaka Murakami to the lineup has certainly contributed to their rise from 29th in fWAR in baseball at the end of last season to where they are now. His 1.4 wins above replacement is better than both the Mets and Giants. But the offensive group as a whole is taking steps forward, and that has allowed manager Will Venable to spend less energy on tinkering with his lineups.
“As we’ve seen guys really take to different positions and settle in offensively, it’s been really clear what the everyday group is,” he said. “And so we are in a good spot to be able to be consistent. When guys need days, we have different matchups, we’ll make little adjustments but feel good about the way the group has settled in.”
That consistency has helped multiple Sox batters take steps forward at the plate this season.
Among the guys demonstrating growth offensively is Colson Montgomery, who about a year ago was down in Glendale, Arizona at the White Sox spring complex repairing his swing. He drove in the first two runs of Saturday’s game with a home run to the right field seats.
That was Montgomery’s tenth home run of the season. Of the Sox hitters who are playing an integral role in boosting the offense, Montgomery has been almost as impactful as Murakami.
“I just think as a result of […] whatever spot he’s in, he just gets back on line really quickly,” Venable said. “He goes through stretches where maybe he’s not feeling great but pretty quickly gets back on line and takes a big swing and has a big at-bat and seems to be locked back in.
“So, you are seeing a guy who continues to make adjustments really well and tap back into the best version of himself.”
Montgomery’s performance thus far this season reads in many ways as a continuation of what he did in 2025 once he reached the majors. His wRC+ is almost the same as it was last year (124 to 129), and his strikeout and walk rates are only about a percentage point off of a season ago. This is a good sign; again, just about a year ago Montgomery was looking more like he was going to go from being a 2021 first round draft pick to a bust.
But instead, Montgomery has become one of the best run producers on the team. Last season, despite playing in just 71 games, Montgomery ranked fourth among Sox batters in runs batted in. And this year, he trails only Murakami in runs batted in, and that’s by a single run.
“He’s come through a lot,” Venable said. “With the way the guys ahead of him are getting on base and performing, hopefully he continues to have those opportunities and continues to come through.”
Along with Murakami and Montgomery, Miguel Vargas has established himself as a formidable part of the Sox lineup. He homered twice on Saturday for the second multi-homer game of his career — the first was on May 16 of last season against the Cubs — and his current OPS of .840 is over 100 points higher than where he finished last year. His second home run of Saturday’s game left his bat at 113 miles per hour, the hardest hit ball of his career.
In Vargas’ case, he is showing significant improvement in production over 2025, and that is having an impact on the lineup as a whole. Venable said that Vargas is taking steps forward in pitch selection, which has helped drop his strikeout rate from 24% when he first came to the White Sox in 2024 to 16.5% this season. At the same time, Vargas is walking nearly twice as often as he did last year, and his hard-hit rate has jumped almost three percent over what it was in 2025. And his chase rate at pitches out of the zone has gone from 21.6% in 2025 to 15.7% this season.
Those improvements coupled with an increase in his power numbers are coming together nicely for Vargas, and for the rest of the Sox offense. But despite his success hitting longballs of late, Vargas said he is keeping his goals at the plate simple and avoiding thinking of himself as a home run hitter.
“I don’t know, I just want to be a good hitter out there,” Vargas said. “I want to swing at strikes and hit the ball as hard as I can. Whatever happens, whatever the result, is out of my hands. I just want to be a good hitter to [swing] at strikes and less balls.”
His fifth-inning bomb on Saturday is a good example of how Vargas’ matured plate approach is paying off in multiple ways.
“I don’t want to focus about hitting homers or anything like that,” Vargas said. “Especially days like today, I got a 2-2 count, I just want to put the ball in play, and I got the hardest ball of my life. I just don’t want to do too much. Swing at strikes and whatever happens, it’s out of my hands.”
There’s more to a successful Sox offense than just Murakami, Montgomery, and Vargas, of course. Leadoff batter Sam Antonacci got on base to start the first and third innings on Saturday, setting the table to score on the Montgomery homer and Vargas’ first home run of the night.
The Sox also manufactured a run in the eighth, thanks to Chase Meidroth’s leadoff double that eventually lead to him scoring on a ball in play off of Edgar Quero’s bat. On the whole, the Sox offense is clicking as a group more nights than not, and continuing to do that will mean good things for the White Sox in the months to come.
“I think we’re in a really good spot right now. I think we trust each other,” Vargas said. “The guys behind you, taking quality at-bats, I think it’s going to help us maintain the offense. We know it’s a long season, and we’re going to have days where it’s going to be hard to perform like that. But I think we’ve been doing a really good job being consistent with it.”
