THE APEX TIMES
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s 2026 American League Manager of the Year award will be decided next Tuesday, Nov. 10, with Venable among three finalists after Chicago’s climb from consecutive 100-loss seasons to the postseason.
Will Venable’s second season as White Sox manager has earned him a spot on the BBWAA’s three-person finalist list for the 2026 American League Manager of the Year award. The league announced the finalists Monday on MLB Network, setting up the award show for Tuesday, Nov. 10 on MLB Network (6 p.m. CT).
Venable joins Kevin Cash of the Tampa Bay Rays and Chad Tracy of Boston as the other AL finalists. For Venable, the case is rooted in the magnitude of Chicago’s improvement after three straight 100-loss seasons entering 2024.
According to the White Sox release, the club endured 121 losses in 2024 and then fell 102 games in Venable’s first full season in 2025. The turnaround accelerated in 2025 after the All-Star break, when the team finished 28-37 in the second half, and Chicago totaled 60 victories overall.
In 2026, the White Sox overcame a rocky start, beginning the season 1-5 on an opening road trip and losing 13 of their first 19 games. Despite that early stretch, the team finished with 84 wins, placing third in the AL Wild Card race as the sixth overall seed and earning a postseason berth for the first time since 2021.
The postseason run began with a Wild Card round sweep of the Astros, and the team advanced in the Division Series by taking the first two games in Cleveland. Even after elimination in three straight losses to the Guardians, the season secured what the release describes as the franchise’s 12th playoff appearance, led by a manager overseeing what would be an unprecedented improvement from the prior two seasons.
The release also frames Venable’s bid historically: it says the White Sox became the first team to reach the postseason after losing 100-plus games in each of the two preceding seasons and matched a benchmark for teams coming off back-to-back 100-plus loss years. It further notes Venable is the third MLB manager since 1901 to oversee a 19-plus win improvement in back-to-back full seasons.
Chicago’s identity shift under Venable is described as a focus on competing for each of the 27 outs, with players embracing the approach into the winning stretch. The team also points out that Sporting News previously named Venable AL Manager of the Year as voted on by his peers, and that a BBWAA win would make him the sixth White Sox manager to claim the award, first since Ozzie Guillén in 2005.