Even if Kyle Teel’s return eventually squeezes Jake Rogers out of the White Sox catching picture later this month, Rogers has already stamped himself on this season in a couple of ways.
First, there was the walk-off homer he hit against the Mets on Aug. 21.
Then there’s the facial hair.
The White Sox kicked off September on Tuesday with a wave of mustaches and goatees, and Sean Burke said after the game that Rogers was the one who set it in motion. The idea, apparently, is to carry that look through the final month of the season.
“I think it was Rogers who was talking about it yesterday,” starting pitcher Sean Burke said. “I always do a mustache at one point in the year. A new month, last month of the year, want to finish strong, feel like kind of changing it up, do a little team thing and get the mustache, goatees going."
Not every White Sox player can pull it off with the same level of confidence, but that didn’t stop the group from giving it a shot. Rogers, naturally, is the kind of guy who can suggest a team-wide facial-hair experiment and make it sound like a reasonable clubhouse plan.
Tristan Peters, who is perfectly willing to go the goatee route over the final month, also found himself in the spotlight in a different way. He was the subject of not one, but two FanGraphs articles in the last few days, and taken together they paint the picture of a player getting by with more than just raw strength. The read there: he’s succeeding because he’s lifting and pulling the ball, and because of the power of friendship.
Sean Newcomb’s season could still point him back toward starting pitching when he reaches free agency after the year, but he may be even more useful as a one-man high-leverage bullpen. Either way, he looks set to beat the $4.5 million deal he signed with the White Sox last winter.
Chris Getz told Jared Diamond he wasn’t sure the club could improve its worst-in-baseball bat speed numbers without swapping out the players who were responsible, but the team managed to make progress anyway. The strange part is that the White Sox are still 25th in bat speed at 71.7 mph, even though the clubs sitting below them include the Cubs and Dodgers, with the Guardians at the bottom.
Away from Chicago, Arte Moreno sold the Angels to Stan Kroenke for $4 billion, a move that was stunning mostly because it happened so quickly. Moreno had been trying to sell the team for years, and his ownership style seemed to match that lack of urgency, but there had been no serious rumored buyer before the news broke.
For the Angels, the sale could be a welcome change. It might also end up being a good thing for baseball fans if Kroenke’s age means he won’t be eager to see a labor fight drag on. But that hope comes with a catch: he owns the Rams, Avalanche and Nuggets, all in leagues with salary caps, so he may be inclined to push in the other direction.
Kroenke’s wealth is no mystery, but Mark Walter was a different kind of owner when he bought the other Los Angeles team for $2.15 billion in 2012. Even some Chicago billionaires, Jerry Reinsdorf included, didn’t know much about him. Because the Dodgers sale went through bankruptcy, the league didn’t have the same level of control over the vetting process.
In Other News...
White Sox Look Right For Giving Up On This Pitcher Fast
The White Sox did not need much time to decide Jedixson Paez was not going to be part of their pitching picture this spring. Chicago grabbed the right-hander in the Rule 5 draft, gave him a look in camp, and then moved on quickly after he was tagged for six earned runs in three innings during his spring appearances.
Paez was sent back to the Boston Red Sox organization and assigned to Double-A Portland, which only added another layer to a rough stretch for the 23-year-old. Boston later gave him a major league start, and he was hit hard there, too, before being optioned back to Triple-A, a reminder that the White Sox may have been early to bail, but not necessarily wrong. [Read more 🡒]
Will Venable Admitted One White Sox Mistake That Still Stings
A late-inning decision continues to linger for Will Venable, who said he came away wishing he had handled the eighth inning differently after Drew Romo reached a spot where a pinch runner could have changed the calculus. Venable said Romos speed was not the main issue in the moment, but the catchers defensive value weighed into the choice to keep him in the game.
Venable was candid that, with a do-over, he would have sent a pinch runner for Romo. For a White Sox club trying to squeeze every edge out of tight games, it was the kind of call that can stick with a manager because it sits right at the intersection of defense, urgency and the small details that decide whether an inning keeps moving or stops cold. [Read more 🡒]
White Sox Could Fast Track A Prospect Fans Need To Watch
The White Sox have several young infield names worth tracking as the minor league season winds down, and the conversation around Caleb Bonemer, Kyle Lodise and Anthony DePino is starting to sound less like long-range dreaming and more like practical development planning. Each has spent 2026 building a case in the system, and the organization has a chance to use the final weeks to push one or more of them into tougher competition rather than letting the year simply fade out at the same level.
For a rebuilding club, those late-season decisions matter. A jump to a higher affiliate can tell the front office a lot about how far a prospect has come and how ready he might be for a bigger role down the road, especially with 2027 in view. Nothing has been finalized yet, but the possibility alone makes this a situation worth watching closely as Chicago looks for the next wave of players who can move quickly when the time comes. [Read more 🡒]