Are the White Sox on the playoff bubble?

If the Twins fall back to Earth, the three-team fight in the AL Central will be something special
Are the White Sox on the playoff bubble?
Are the White Sox on the playoff bubble? /

SI's Matt Martell paints a somewhat dour picture for the Chicago White Sox when it comes to a 2020 playoff berth.

And Matt's not wrong. The proposed expansion of playoffs that was one of the many carrots dangled by ownership in order to get their players to accept, like, a 20-game season, or 33% of pay, or only middle seats on flights throughout the 2020s, would have benefited the up-and-coming White Sox, for sure. Busting open the back door to let a buncha not-ready-for-prime-time ballclubs, too old and too young alike, would certainly have made things easier for the South Siders.

But don't cancel your ... err ... November? December? ... playoff plans too quickly.

Think about it. The White Sox will have a big say (as will Cleveland) in whether or not the Minnesota Twins run away with the division again in 2020. 

First off, it's a 60-game season, which is plum nuts. Nelson Cruz missing a series because he knocked knees with Eddie Rosario playing pregame touch football at Target Field means he's missing 5% of the season now, not 2%. Everything will be magnified, including those nagging ills. A 10-day stay on the IL? More than 15% of the season.

OK, so now that you're dazzled by my math, let's do some more. Because better play by Chicago and Cleveland, even just slightly better play (as would be expected, Cleveland is still strong despite making apparent negative effort to get better for 2020 and the Sox taking it to the rim!) is going to pull the Twinkies back to the pack. A 90-win pace in a 162-game season is just a 33-win pace in 2020; 100 wins is 37. It's not inconceivable that the last series of the 2020 "regular season" takes a team from last to first place in 2020.

Or hey, just watch the video above, because I apparently summarized this entire concept in like 15 seconds of prose poetry. Dig!


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Brett Ballantini
BRETT BALLANTINI

Actor (final credit: murdered by Albert Einstein in "Carnage Hall"), musician (Ethnocentric Republicans), and Nerf hoops champion, Wiffleball aficionado and onetime bilingual kindergarten teacher, Brett Ballantini also writes about baseball, basketball and sometimes hockey, for the NBA, MLB, NHL, and Slam, Hoop, Sporting News, the Athletic, SB Nation and others. He was CSN Chicago’s Blackhawks beat writer when their 49-year Stanley Cup drought ended in 2009-10, and took over the White Sox beat after that. He currently is the editor-in-chief of South Side Hit Pen and beat writer for Inside the Rays. He also wrote a book about Ozzie Guillén but is running out of space, so follow him on Twitter @BrettBallantini and he'll probably tell you even more about himself than you ever wanted to know.