Chicago White Sox shortstop Colson Montgomery is not shying away from his belief that this team can win the AL Central in 2026.
Before the 2026 season got underway, I laid out one of the keys to the Chicago White Sox exceeding expectations, and it all came down to having a strong start.
The White Sox are a young team with a lot of fresh faces. They seem to enjoy one another both on and off the baseball field. Many of these players live together in the offseason and seem to relish the day-to-day grind of playing together for 162 games. So while the national media and those on the outside looking in see the White Sox as an organization that has lost 100 games in three consecutive seasons, the players putting on the uniform have very little to do with the organization’s past. And most of them had a ton of confidence in this particular group.
White Sox manager Will Venable and GM Chris Getz refused to put a ceiling on what this team was capable of during the offseason. Then we heard from players who talked about how they "expect to win in 2026" and believed this team could compete for a playoff spot.
That seemed like quite the lofty goal at the time, but it's exactly why a strong start to the regular season was so important. This group was already confident, and if they got off to a strong start, that confidence could have a domino effect on the rest of the season. We are starting to see that now.
Entering play on Wednesday, the White Sox have a 20-21 record and currently hold the final playoff spot in the American League, now more than 25 percent of the way through the regular season.
And what is becoming more and more evident is that, internally, the White Sox don't believe this is a fluke. In a recent interview with baseball analyst Chris Rose, White Sox shortstop Colson Montgomery talked about his belief that the White Sox can win the AL Central this season.
“You guys actually think you can win this, don’t you?” asked Rose.
“Yeah. I think, being a true competitor, you think you're the best and that you can compete with the best,” said Montgomery. “We have a good group of guys. We've come together, and we've really put together that competitiveness and that mindset that we are the best. And I feel like that's when a team is most powerful, when not just one guy or two guys really believe in it. It's like the whole team and a lot of the young players.”
According to Montgomery, that belief comes from the coaches and the messages that were instilled in this team during spring training. This White Sox staff was preaching the fact that the AL Central is wide open, and if you play good baseball at the right time, you will give yourself a shot.
The White Sox are doing that right now. And it has them just 1.5 games back of the Cleveland Guardians for the division lead.
It will not be an easy task to keep pace. It does not feel like Cleveland, Detroit, or even Kansas City have played their best baseball in 2026. And a hot streak by any of those teams would really put the pressure on the White Sox. But all in all, this division seems to be middling. The same could really be said of the entire American League. There are only four teams in the AL with an over .500 record right now, and the 21-20 Athletics and 23-21 Guardians are both cutting it close.
Moving forward for Chicago, it should not even be about the standings, where they are at in the division, or where they are at in the wild card race. The focus needs to remain internal. Stack games and stack series. Try to keep that record around or above .500. And when it is all said and done, you might just be in the thick of things during the final stretch of the year.
Who knows how the rest of this is going to play out, but for right now, on May 13, it is nice to have the White Sox back to being relevant and to be invested in every game they play. And it is nice to hear from players like Colson Montgomery, who take a lot of pride in playing for the White Sox and have a lot of faith in the organization moving forward.