The White Sox surprisingly hold a 2.5 game division lead as we near the three-quarter mark of the regular season. They’d have a first-round bye if the season ended today. Chicago has ceded some ground to the red hot Tigers with a 3-6 showing this month, but they’ve already won more games (61) than they did in the entire 2025 season (60).

One of the better offenses in the American League is the primary driver of that success, but the Sox couldn’t have reached this point without a functional pitching staff. It wasn’t clear that’d be the case when they entered the season with one of the worst on-paper rotations in the game: Shane Smith, Sean Burke, Davis Martin, Anthony Kay and Erick Fedde. Smith, their Opening Day starter, gave up 12 runs in 8 1/3 innings over three starts and has been in Triple-A since the second week of April. They needed someone unexpected to step up.

For two months, Davis Martin was that pitcher. Martin took advantage of a weak slate of opposing lineups and posted an even 2.00 earned run average with a 27% strikeout rate in his first 11 starts. Martin’s early-season success dried up, however, and he has been one of the worst pitchers in MLB since the start of June. Only Freddy Peralta has a higher ERA than Martin’s 6.83 mark over that time (minimum 50 innings).

Enter Sean Burke.

Excellent as Martin was to begin the season, Burke hadn’t earned the same amount of trust. Last season, he posted a 4.22 ERA with underlying numbers that pointed to him as a fifth starter. The Sox were reluctant to let him work beyond five innings and pitched him behind an opener a few times early this year. That hasn’t been the case since the middle of June … with good reason.