Last year, that club was the Minnesota Twins, who went 78-84 in 2018 before making a 23-game improvement to go 101-61 and claim the American League Central Division championship last summer.
It seems as though many prognosticators, much to my surprise, believe the White Sox can be that team to go from losing record to playoffs in 2020. The Sox, of course, were 72-89 in 2019, and they probably would need about a 20-game improvement to get into the playoffs in the American League this year.
As we noted in a previous blog, Lindy's Sports picked the Sox to win the AL Central. I recently received the Athlon Sports season preview in the mail, and while Athlon selects Minnesota to repeat as division champion, it has the Sox finishing second in the division and claiming an AL wild card spot.
The magazine notes that the AL Central is ripe for a surprise contender to emerge, and well, why not the Sox? The Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers are rebuilding, and in Athlon's words, the Cleveland Indians are "counting nickels."
Fellow Sox fans, if you want to get a copy of this magazine, I recommend visiting athlonsports.com and ordering online. On newsstands around here, this magazine features Javier Baez as the bigger photo, not Yoan Moncada.
Me personally, I think Baez gets enough publicity both locally and nationally, so I wanted a copy with my favorite team featured on the cover. So, I ordered the Moncada edition online, and I'm pleased that I did.
The irony in all this: I've received two preview mags in the mail thus far, and both have predicted a playoff season for the Sox, and a non-playoff season for the Cubs. Maybe the Cubs are featured more prominently on covers because their fans buy more magazines that us Sox fans? Not sure ...
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