One unexpected American League team and the Atlanta Braves of 2021 have an intriguing statistic in common.
Braves supporters had high hopes before the 2021 season started that their club could pull it all together and win the World Series. Despite having great rosters, they had failed to reach their goal for the previous three seasons.
But 2021 was a strange year for the Braves, and it seemed like they would perform below expectations and miss the postseason. Jay Cuda recently posted a picture on X that connected the start of the Braves’ 2021 season to a strange squad that had faced Atlanta.
Unbelievably, there is a similarity between the start of the 2024 Chicago White Sox season and the Braves’ World Series victory.
In the first five games of the 2024 season, the White Sox had a slugging percentage of.329, 28 hits, 11 walks, 19 walks allowed, and six home runs. They are 1-4 overall.
The likelihood of matching those specific stats is very low and, interestingly, it happened. Obviously, these are cherry-picked to make a point but it’s still interesting to see. The White Sox are not expecting to be very good this season so assuming they might go on to win a World Series is farfetched.
This is more of a surprising stat from the Atlanta Braves side than anything. To see one of the league’s best offenses sit with a .329 slugging percentage is alarming. However, it’s still early and they’ll get it figured out sooner than later.
While I don’t believe Chicago will go on to win a World Series title, many doubted the Braves would go on to win the World Series in 2021. It was understandable why they didn’t take that seriously as the team struggled to reach the .500 mark during the first half. They finished the first half with 44 wins and 45 losses and lost their superstar outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. to a season-ending injury.
Luckily, Alex Anthopoulos didn’t give up on the team and went out and added four outfielders to give this team a chance at going all the way. They had a good offense and two great starters at the top of their rotation with Max Fried and Charlie Morton. However, they had to depend on youngsters like Ian Anderson and Huascar Ynoa to help get them through the back of the rotation.
Ynoa unfortunately missed a lot of time due to fracturing his hand by punching a dugout bench after a rough outing just two months into his debut with the Braves which was impressive.
Kyle Wright ended up being a big part of the Braves success in the World Series as well after not pitching most of the year. Wright pitched an inning in game two striking out the side and then picked up the Braves in game four after Dylan Lee couldn’t record more than one out to start the game.
Wright pitched 4.2 innings out of the bullpen for the team, giving up three walks, three strikeouts, and one run on five hits. The takeaway from this is that you never know who could assist a club win in the postseason, so it’s reasonable to believe the White Sox have a chance to advance even with all the odds against them.
Will the World Series be won by the Chicago White Sox? Most likely not, but it’s interesting to note the parallels between them and a team that struggled early on but ultimately succeeded. Baseball has the wonderful quality that you can never predict what will happen.
