October has already started to reshape Chase Meidroth’s profile.
The White Sox second baseman entered the postseason as a player most fans outside Chicago probably weren’t circling. Two games into the Wild Card Series, that’s changed in a hurry. Meidroth went 4-for-7 with four RBI as Chicago swept the Houston Astros, and he heads into the ALDS against the Cleveland Guardians hitting .571 with a .625 on-base percentage and a 1.625 OPS.
That’s the kind of line that gets attention fast.
His biggest moment came in Game 2, with Chicago holding a 4-3 lead in the sixth inning and Bryan Abreu on the mound. The Astros had been hanging around after three solo homers had trimmed what was once a four-run White Sox cushion to a single run.
Then Meidroth stepped in and blew the game open, hammering an 87.5 mph slider 390 feet into the left-field seats for a three-run homer. The ball came off his bat at 102 mph, and the lead suddenly stretched to 7-3.
That was the final score, and it sent the White Sox into the ALDS while giving the franchise its first postseason series victory since the 2005 World Series.
The homer was the kind of swing that can launch a postseason reputation. It didn’t come out of nowhere, either.
Meidroth spent the regular season putting together a strong year across 154 games. He hit .276 with a .350 on-base percentage, 16 home runs, 31 doubles, 63 RBI and 90 runs.
His 156 hits led the White Sox. The power jump stood out, too: after hitting five homers as a rookie in 2025, he more than tripled that total in his second season while raising his batting average from .253 to .276 and his OPS from .649 to .765.
So this wasn’t some random October surge from a player who’d been invisible all year. It was a continuation of what Meidroth had already built.
White Sox fans have seen this kind of thing before. Scott Podsednik hit zero home runs in the 2005 regular season before launching two in the postseason, including a walk-off in Game 2 of the World Series. Geoff Blum had just 16 regular-season at-bats that year, then delivered the 14th-inning homer in Game 3 of the World Series that nobody in Chicago forgot.
That’s the nature of October. The spotlight doesn’t always land on the biggest name. Sometimes it finds the guy who’s simply ready when the moment shows up.
Meidroth has been ready so far. He has four hits in seven postseason at-bats, hasn’t struck out, and has driven in four runs while scoring twice.
Now comes another shot against Cleveland.
The White Sox and Guardians met 13 times during the regular season, with Chicago taking the season series 7-6. Cleveland still finished one game ahead for the AL Central title and earned the advantage of skipping the Wild Card Series.
Chicago doesn’t need Meidroth to do everything. It just needs him to keep making the kind of contact that changes innings, changes games, and, in October, changes how a player is remembered.
In Other News...
White Sox Face 3 Arbitration Calls They Really Can't Get Wrong
The White Sox have plenty of winter decisions ahead, but the arbitration class offers a cleaner test of how much they want to reward progress and preserve value. Miguel Vargas looks like the most obvious keep after a breakout season that changed the conversation around him, while Brenton Doyle brings veteran outfield defense that still carries real weight on a roster trying to sort out its fit. Huascar Brazobn also fits the kind of low-cost, upside bet a team can justify when the alternatives are more expensive or less established.
Still, the process is rarely about the three players a club wants to retain most. Joey Bart, Chris Murphy and Jordan Leasure sit closer to the edge of the roster calculus, where projected arbitration salaries and organizational preference can matter as much as upside or familiarity. For the White Sox, the challenge is not simply trimming the list, but avoiding the kind of misstep that leaves them paying for the wrong pieces while the more useful ones slip away. [Read more 🡒]
White Sox Have A New Guardians Threat To Worry About
The White Sox are getting a familiar kind of postseason problem in the Guardians, and now Cleveland has added another power bat to the mix in Jo Adell. Acquired from the Angels at the 2026 trade deadline, Adell made it onto the Guardians ALDS roster against Chicago after a regular season that showed both sides of his game: plenty of punch, with 23 homers and 94 RBIs, but also the swing-and-miss that has long come with it.
What makes Adell especially interesting in this matchup is the way he fared against left-handed pitching. He hit .320 with a .971 OPS against southpaws, a split that hints at a useful platoon fit for Cleveland if it wants to get the most out of him in a short series. For a White Sox club already trying to map out every edge it can find, adding a bat with that kind of split-oriented threat gives the Guardians one more wrinkle to manage. [Read more 🡒]
White Sox Turn To A Different Game 2 Look With Control At Stake
After opening their best-of-five series at Progressive Field, the White Sox are preparing a different look for Game 2 as they try to seize control against Cleveland. Chicago is expected to lean on a lefty-heavy lineup against Guardians right-hander Gavin Williams, a matchup tweak that speaks to how closely both clubs are now studying the margins in October.
Williams brings strikeout stuff and some postseason experience, which is exactly why the White Sox will need their adjustments to matter early. Game 2 will be spread across TBS, HBO Max and TruTV, with Spanish-language coverage on Univision and TUDN and radio coverage on ESPN Chicago WMVP 1000 AM and ESPN Radio, giving the matchup plenty of places to be watched as the series turns. [Read more 🡒]