With Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the Padres, the White Sox have wrapped their 2025 home schedule. There are still games in New York and Washington, D.C. to be played before the season is over, but the only possible noteworthy achievement remaining will be whether the Sox can avoid reaching at least 100 losses for the third year in a row.

That is the kind of progress the organization needs to make; realistically, they could still be a few years from serious contention, but tallying triple-digit losses for too many consecutive seasons can deflate a fanbase that’s already been gritting its collective teeth since at least 2022.

And that’s not lost on the guys in the clubhouse.

“The last few years it’s been tough to be a fan,” Andrew Benintendi told CHGO. “We haven’t been winning many games […] Obviously not the year we wanted this year, but it is a step in the right direction. And I think there’s something to be excited about.”

According to the most obvious measure, yes, the White Sox have taken a step forward. They passed their 2024 win total all the way back on August 2, but that bar was so low that it would have taken a truly remarkable combination of things going wrong for the Sox for them not to have done better than they did last year.

Sunday’s loss means the Sox have 98 on the season, and with road series against the Yankees and Nationals ahead of them, it will be tough to avoid losing two more times in their next six games. It’s likely that they will finish with a record almost exactly like — if not right on the nose with it — their 61-101 record from two years ago.

That would, again, represent movement in the right direction, but it doesn’t come without a cost. The coaching staff and players believe the fans are buying into what’s happening in the organization to keep moving forward, but that doesn’t mean they still don’t need to see different results.

“I think they see what we’re starting to build here, and I think they’re excited for it,” Sean Burke said.

Ballpark attendance has understandably dwindled over the past few seasons, but like the team’s overall record, the number of people coming to games is trending upward just a little. The Sox will finish their 2025 home season ranked 13th out of 15 American League teams in attendance, which is a five-spot drop from where they ranked just three years ago. But with Sunday’s total of 24,205 fans in the seats at the Rate, the Sox will have drawn 1,445,750 fans to Rate Field in 2025, which is a slight uptick from 2024’s 1,380,733.

“It kind of gives us the motivation to be better,” Benintendi said. “The more games you win, the more people show up. I played here against the White Sox in 2021 when they won the division, and the place was rocking. They’re passionate about the team, and it’d be great to put a winner back out there for them.”

But there’s probably some reason for optimism, at least compared to where things stood a year ago. The 2025 season has been a showcase of some of the organization’s up-and-coming talents, like Colson Montgomery, Chase Meidroth, Miguel Vargas, Kyle Teel, and Edgar Quero, and if for nothing else sometimes, Sox fans have shown up to see the kids play.

“They’ve been great the entire summer,” manager Will Venable said of the fans. “It’s been great to see them identify with our growing club, and [we’re] really excited about the thought even beyond today. This fanbase and our group, just excited about the thought of them coming out and supporting us when we have better results is exciting.”

That will probably depend on what the offseason looks like. General manager Chris Getz has been clear about his intention to keep Luis Robert, Jr. on the team in 2026, despite his down year and ongoing issues with staying healthy, as well as the $20 million team option price tag for next year. Robert, Jr. could still be July trade fodder, but that’s been a longstanding possibility dangled in front of Sox fans for years without coming to fruition.

Holding on to Robert, Jr. could mean the Sox don’t spend as much on free agents this offseason, but the smarter timeline for them is to hold off on diving into the free agent market until the 2026/2027 offseason anyway. Yes, there are labor concerns going into ’27 with the current collective bargaining agreement set to expire in December 2026, but that’s a future concern and not one the Sox front office can do anything about this offseason.

That said, Robert, Jr. is probably not the guy who will have the most significant impact on the long term health of the franchise. Instead, it’s the aforementioned burgeoning core of young talent, many of them acquired via trade in the past couple of seasons. Under new manager Venable, the Sox have taken a very big step forward this season, even if they don’t avoid 100 losses. And, unlike a year ago, the vision of a successful Sox future is much more clear than it was at the end of last season. There’s an identifiable core of young talent, a skilled manager at the helm, and new ownership coming who are expected to open the pocketbook for the necessary free agents.

Put all of that together, and it feels increasingly like the darkest Sox days are well behind them.