For White Sox, third place is better but nothing to celebrate

Third place!

Call it progress if you must — this will be the first time since 2012 the White Sox won’t finish fourth or last in the five-team American League Central — but it’s not exactly reason to celebrate. In fact, it’s more of the same old, same old with a seventh consecutive losing record that worsened in the second half.

Remember when the rebuilding Sox were 42-44 at the All-Star break? Hovering around 20 games below .500 in this final week of the season, that feels like a distant memory now.

On the plus side, core pieces such as Lucas Giolito, Yoan Moncada, Tim Anderson and Eloy Jimenez took significant steps forward, and Luis Robert is on the way. Overall, however, finishing in the middle of a five-team division reflects the Sox’ lack of depth and the 100-plus-loss seasons of the rebuilding Tigers (four division titles, one AL pennant since 2011) and Royals (one World Series title, two AL pennants since 2014) weighing down the bottom two-fifths of the Central.

The Sox are finishing a long way away from the playoffs for an 11th consecutive season, the fourth-longest drought in the majors. They’ve won one postseason game since capturing the World Series in 2005 under the same ownership (Jerry Reinsdorf) and front office (Ken Williams and Rick Hahn, the latter taking over as general manager when the former was promoted from GM to vice president before the 2013 season).

With the stated goal of adding multiple titles and sprucing up the lacking list at right, the Sox are heading into Year 4 of their rebuild.

Will it look better than Year 3?

Approaching their four-game series against the Tigers to wrap up the season, they were positioned to sew up their first winning record against the Central since 2012 (37-35). Winning the season series against the playoff-pursuing Indians for the first time since 2015 made that possible, and the Sox will chalk that up as a small step toward progress.

Bigger steps will be expected in 2020.

Here are the Sox’ season-by-season records since 2005:

Year Pos. Manager

2006 3^rd 90-72 Guillen

2007 4^th 72-90 Guillen

2008 1^st 89-74 Guillen

2009 3^rd 79-83 Guillen

2010 2^nd 88-74 Guillen

2011 3^rd 79-83 Guillen

2012 2^nd 85-77 Ventura

2013 5^th 63-99 Ventura

2014 4^th 73-89 Ventura

2015 4^th 76-86 Ventura

2016 4^th 78-84 Ventura

2017 4^th 67-95 Renteria

2018 4^th 62-100 Renteria

2019 3^rd 70-88 Renteria