AL Midseason Check-In: Are The White Sox The Best Story In Baseball?

We're right at the midpoint of the 2026 MLB season.

Hello! Welcome to my midseason check-in for all fifteen American League teams. The preamble to these sorts of pieces is always the hardest to write, I’ve found. It’s a lot harder to write about what you’re going to write about. I’ve found the same is true for podcasting, where it’s a lot harder to talk about what you’re going to talk about.

So, let’s talk turkey.

Tampa Bay Rays

It’s Sunday, June 28th, and the Rays sit atop the AL East. The Rays have won four in a row and will try to complete the sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks this afternoon. The Yankees have lost three in a row. The Blue Jays have lost five in a row. Junior Caminero hit three homers against the Royals on the 25th. And the top three starters for Tampa Bay — Drew Rasmussen, Nick Martinez, and Shane McClanahan — have started 46 games for the team and have a combined FIP average of 3.37. The Rays and White Sox continue their never-ending struggle to be crowned the best story in baseball this year.

New York Yankees

The Yankees are 12-11 in June, all without the team’s best hitter, Aaron Judge. New York is 14 games over .500, and they have the highest playoff odds out of all the teams in the AL at 98.6%. Cam Schlittler is the only pitcher in the AL with an ERA in the ones at 1.62. The Yankees, like the Braves, are two teams that got off to great starts and now find themselves skating by without their best hitter in the lineup for the foreseeable future — Judge and Ronald Acuna Jr. The Red Sox can complete a four-game sweep of New York today. Quite simply, New York baseball fans are not having a lot of fun right now. Thank goodness for the Knicks.

Toronto Blue Jays

The Blue Jays haven’t won a baseball game since the 22nd. Toronto is 5 games below .500 and finds themselves in their own never-ending struggle for the crown of most disappointing team in the AL East with Baltimore, who also has 39 wins on the season with one more loss. The good news is that Shane Bieber got activated off the 60-day IL on Tuesday. The other good news is that Dylan Cease has been phenomenal and leads the AL in strikeouts. Kevin Gausman has been good, and Patrick Corbin has turned back the clock a bit, but Toronto is still 25th in all of baseball with a team SP ERA of 4.56. 2024 first-round pick Trey Yesavage was solid in 5-and-two-thirds on Wednesday. The Blue Jays’ starting rotation becoming a strength, not a weakness, for the second half of the season seems very doable. I can’t quit the Jays just yet.

Baltimore Orioles

The Orioles are a different matter. For the second season in a row, their starters sit in the 20s in combined FIP. In 2024, Baltimore’s starters were ninth in FIP across Major League Baseball. That team won 91 games. The 2026 Baltimore Orioles are projected to win 78 games, a three-win improvement from a season ago. We all worried about the starting pitching before the season, and it’s a major problem for the O’s once again. Only Kyle Bradish has an xFIP below four for any Baltimore starter who has started ten-plus games for the team this season.

Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox have dominated the Yankees this weekend. Boston has outscored New York by 11 runs and held the Bronx Bombers to one run in two of their three victories. Because the American League is a terrible mess, even though Boston is eleven games under .500, a glass half-full fan could argue the team should not be dead-set on being sellers at the MLB trade deadline. The Red Sox do have a better run differential than the red-hot Philadelphia Phillies, the Washington Nationals, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the San Diego Padres, who are all over .500 and all could very well make the playoffs this season. (If I were Boston, I would still very much trade Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, and Aroldis Chapman. Ranger Suarez is a keeper.)

Chicago White Sox

Before the start of the season, we all, collectively, would have presumed that the White Sox, not the Chicago Cubs, would be most likely to be atop their division at the end of June, right? No, the White Sox continue to be the biggest surprise in the sport. Here they are five games over .500 on June 28 as I type this, and yet, Fangraphs’ projections still have Chicago finishing with the third-worst run differential in baseball. The White Sox mash the baseball, with two players who have already hit twenty-plus homers and one player a couple shy. They only trail the Yankees in home runs as a team. What a delight. A true never-tell-us-the-odds team.

Cleveland Guardians

The Guardians feel like they do every year. They are in the top-half of the league in pitching, bottom third in home runs, and in the top-5 in soft-hit percentage. The Guardians are good, not great, and are still the best bet to hang around and win the AL Central. Cleveland is three games over .500 at around the midway point in the season and are projected to finish two games under .500 by the end of the season, which would still win them the AL Central if Fangraphs’ projections nail this division the rest of the way. Lots of NFC South-ness in the AL Central.

Minnesota Twins

I do not envy the position Minnesota’s front office now finds themselves in. The Twins have about a 1-in-5 chance of making the playoffs with how they’ve played thus far, per FanGraphs. With the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals out of the picture, the Twins, Guardians and White Sox could all win this division, and all win it with a losing record. Byron Buxton has been healthy and awesome. They have six guys in the lineup with a WRC+ of over 100. Minnesota is fifth in runs scored. They are ninth in home runs. I hope the powers that be in the Minnesota front office don’t skew cynical ahead of this summer’s trade deadline. They are buyers as we head towards July.

Detroit Tigers

I almost want to combine my Tigers and Royals sections. Both teams had dreams of winning the AL Central before the season. Those dreams are likely dead. For Detroit, they have to trade Tarik Skubal. That will be sad. This is a team that has tried to break through. They signed Framber Valdez in February. Then the month of May happened. Detroit went 6-22. June has been kinder to the Tigers as they have gone 13-10 with three games to spare. What I imagine is most frustrating if you’re a Tigers fan is that you have two of the top four players in batting WAR in the AL this season: Dillon Dingler and Kevin McGonigle, at No. 2 and No. 4, respectively.

Kansas City Royals

The Royals are the worst team in the AL Central, but they have the leader in batting WAR in the AL in Bobby Witt Jr. He’s second in the AL overall in total WAR. He’s second in MLB in stolen bases. He’s No. 1 in FanGraphs’ fielding metric. He is third in AL MVP odds on FanDuel. (There is a scenario where the top-3 finishers all miss the playoffs.) The Royals are having a terrible season as a team while their best individual player is having a tremendous season. It obviously won’t be this year, but you hope the Royals can eventually turn the tide so Witt Jr. is on all of our television sets in October sooner rather than later.

Seattle Mariners

The 2026 Seattle Mariners are the “Call An Ambulance, But Not For Me” meme come to life. They got off to a terrible start. They did not look like a team that was likely to get back to the ALCS. Since May 25, the Mariners are 17-13. Over a thirty-game stretch this season, that feels about right for Seattle. Ninety-plus wins feels a bit too rich, but 84 or 85 feels right. If the Mariners can hover around this area the rest of the way, they should win the AL West, and then who knows what happens come playoff time. Oddly enough, they are still in the top-10 in all of baseball in home runs even with Cal Raleigh only accounting for eight of them in what has been a disastrous season for him. Outside of the Yankees, the Mariners are the safest long-term bet in the AL.

Texas Rangers

Like the Tigers and Royals, the Rangers and Astros feel intertwined. For the two Texas teams, though, they have won titles, and won titles recently. They won back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023. They are both in the top-half of the league in payroll. Both farm systems are near the bottom, 25th for Texas and 29th for Houston. The Jays: Jake Burger, Joc Pederson and Josh Jung have been huge in the lineup. Their two vets atop the rotation, Jacob DeGrom and Nathan Eovaldi, have been healthy and awesome. If the playoffs started today, the Rangers would be the last team in and the Astros would be the first team out. That’s the good stuff.

Houston Astros

It will eventually get bad for Houston. The farm system is barren. They won a lot for a long time. They got their titles. They produced All-Stars everywhere. They did what the Orioles hoped to do the last two years. 2026 seemed like it might be the year the bottom fell out for the Astros. Instead, they have the current AL MVP favorite in Yordan Alvarez. They have better playoff odds than the Padres. They could end the season with a better record than the AL Central champion and miss the postseason, too. With the state of their farm system, I’m not sure how grandiose the club can be as buyers next month, but they should, and I’m so sorry for this, reach for the stars. They should push for the postseason. They should push for one more run because the bottom will fall out at some point and they will have to really rebuild. The losing is likely still coming. At some point. Not this year, though.

Athletics

The A’s are playing with house money. They are loaded with young talent. They don’t move to their new long-term home in Las Vegas until 2028. Baltimore can’t believe it’s the A’s and not the O’s doing what they’re doing. Nick Kurtz could win the AL MVP award. The team is seventh in home runs overall. The team is ninth in team batting average. The team is eighth in slugging. It’s the pitching that is dreadful. Athletics’ starters are 29th in FIP. The Athletics are one of two MLB teams that have a starting pitching FIP over 5. The Athletics are must-see television and have the best young core of hitters in all of Major League Baseball. They have six players with a WRC+ over 100, and all six are under-30. If I were to guess which AL West team won the most games over the next five seasons, it’d be the A’s.

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

This team was projected to finish last in the AL West. They are usually predicted to finish last in the AL West. It’s early, and we’ve got time, but I will predict this team to finish last in the AL West next season, too. Oh, and the team fired their general manager, Perry Minasian, this week, too. There are some positives, though. Mike Trout had been excellent before his hamstring injury. Reid Detmers and Jose Soriano have been success stories in the rotation. They should probably trade the latter. Dave Dombrowski should call about Trout. The Braves should acquire Jorge Soler again. Maybe Soriano, too. All of which will not drastically jumpstart the Angels franchise. Somehow, the team also has the 28th-best farm system in baseball, too. With the White Sox’s rise, the Angels stand alone as the helpless and directionless team in the AL.