Chicago White Sox: The franchise all-time bracket

The Chicago White Sox have produced three World Series winners. But it’s a disgraced World Series loser that still dominates the team’s history.

Any consideration of an-time Chicago White Sox bracket must first come to grips with the question of how to handle the 1919 American League champions.

That of course was the ballclub – known since then in American culture as the Black Sox – who conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series, eventually losing to the Cincinnati Reds in eight games.

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The question is a simple one: Do you allow the most notorious team in baseball history a chance to establish itself as its franchise’s greatest team? Or does it simply disqualify itself from consideration?

Given a desire to actually take the measure of one of the game’s most discussed ballclubs, the solution here is to allow the 1919 Sox in the field…but cut them no slack on tiebreakers or questions of judgment.

The 1919 White Sox are one of nine division or pennant winners in the history of a franchise that has often done just well enough to compete without winning. The White Sox’ career winning percentage is above .500, yet they’ve only played in five World Series…just one in the past half-century.

The franchise has 20 second-place finishes, five of them in the decade between 1956 and 1965. They spent that period perennially chasing the Yankees, catching them only in 1959.

Beyond 1919, an all-time White Sox bracket begins with the World Series winners – there are only three — of 1906, 1917 and 2005. With half the bracket filled out, we look next at World Series also-rans. There are two others, the 1959 and 1983 teams.

For the final two spots, three obvious candidates emerge, the playoff teams of 1993, 2000 and 2008. Of those, the 1993 and 2000 teams had the better regular-season records, so they become the choices.

The format is identical to previous bracket challenges. Each matchup in the tournament is decided based on seven criteria. You can think of each as a ‘game,’ the winner of four games advancing. The seven criteria are:

• Game 1: Regular season winning percentage.
• Game 2: Post-season winning percentage
• Game 3: Team OPS+
• Game 4: Team ERA+
• Game 5 (if necessary): Team WAR
• Game 6 (if necessary: Fielding percentage above the league average for the season in question.
• Game 7 (if necessary): Hall of Famers or likely future Hall of Famers