The Chicago White Sox are poised to take over as the city’s dominant team in 2020
Chicago has always been a Cubs town at heart, and that won’t change in 2020.
What will change is the balance of power. For the first time in nearly a decade, the South Side White Sox are poised to supersede the North Side Cubs as the city’s dominant baseball power in 2020.
Not since 2012 have the White Sox won more games than the Cubs. Since Joe Maddon’s arrival as manager prior to the 2015 season, the Cubs have a .581 collective winning percentage, light years better than the White Sox’ .439 record over the same period.
The Cubs can also claim the 2016 World Series, the 2017 NL Central title and wild card post-season spots in 2015 and 2018. White Sox fans haven’t had a rooting stake in the post-season since 2008, when their heroes won the AL Central but flamed out in four games in the division series round.
At the box office, the Cubs are even more dominant. For more than a quarter century, Chicago’s North Side team has unfailingly outdrawn its South Side team, and that’s irrespective of the teams’ performances. In 2005, when the White Sox won the World Series while the Cubs finished four games under .500, the Cubs out-drew the Sox by three quarters of a million fans.
Since the arrival of the ‘Bleacher Bums’ in 1968 – that’s 51 seasons ago – the White Sox have been the better draw only eight times.
Eighteen different times – including annually since 2014 – the Cubs have out-drawn the White Sox by more than one million fans. Never in their history have the White Sox out-drawn the Cubs by anything close to a million fans.
Those long-held and often inbred loyalties are not about to change. But the power balance undergirding them is likely to change. While the Cubs enter 2020 as a franchise on the cusp of decline, the Sox are poised to emerge as a front-rank team. What follows is a look at the reasons why the White Sox are poised to overtake the Cubs as Chicago’s marquee team.