What number of video games will the White Sox win in 2026?

Predicting what number of video games the Chicago White Sox will win in 2026 is difficult due to the odd mixture of veterans and inexperienced gamers and the present state of their rebuild. Plus, there’s at all times the inherent bias of underestimating a group that’s beneath Chris Getz’s administration. Fortunately, statistics supplies an unbiased and clear approach to decide ground and ceiling anticipated wins.

I created a mannequin to foretell anticipated wins from group WAR utilizing knowledge from the final three seasons. I picked WAR as a result of it’s a robust metric that measures group and participant efficiency in comparison with bench and minor league expertise. It’s additionally broadly utilized by MLB entrance workplaces to tell trades and signings. While WAR has its flaws on account of its variability throughout baseball databases and its reliance on substitute gamers (which could be subjective), WAR is a confirmed measure of group aptitude. I narrowed my evaluation to 2023-25 knowledge to keep away from pre-universal DH-era WAR calculations for pitchers. Three years of information present a big sufficient pattern dimension to know current group WAR traits.

To decide the anticipated variety of Sox wins, I created a linear regression to investigate the connection between group WAR utilizing knowledge from all 30 groups from 2023-25. The following chart and system summarizes the predictive relationship between group WAR and wins.

Expected wins = 49.50848 + 0.94504 * WAR

Using this system and FanGraphs’ 27.5 White Sox team WAR prediction as of February 20, the Sox are anticipated to win 74 video games, rounded to the closest sport. I used the mannequin’s residual error of 4.877 to find out a ground of 64 and ceiling of 84 anticipated wins, adhering to the mannequin’s 95% confidence interval.

These flooring are fairly conservative on the ground aspect and beneficiant on the ceiling aspect. New group dynamics and potential sophomore slumps might stop the Sox from making one other 19-game enchancment, however a four-win enchancment appears laughably low. On the opposite hand, setting the ceiling at higher than .500 baseball and a wild card run is just too formidable. Everything must go completely to plan, and the Sox would should be patrons on the commerce deadline.

Realistically, the Sox ought to win no less than 70 video games, with their ceiling being 81 wins. Narrowing it all the way down to a single quantity, 74 video games is a good expectation and ought to be thought-about a robust signal of rebuilding progress.