White Sox Struggle with Bullpen Closers
- Chicago opened 2026 without a fixed closer, then signed Seranthony Domínguez and watched him collect six saves as late innings stabilized. - Before Domínguez arrived, Jordan Leasure’s seven saves led the 2025 club, and Grant Taylor’s six showed how unsettled the ninth inning had become. - The bullpen stayed a roster priority after a 121-loss 2024 season and a 60-102 finish in 2025. (mlb.com)
The Chicago White Sox spent the past two seasons trying to finish games without a true, everyday closer. That instability carried into the winter before the club paid Seranthony Domínguez to handle the ninth inning. (mlb.com 1) (mlb.com 2) Chicago announced Domínguez’s deal on January 30, a two-year contract worth $20 million with a mutual option for 2028. Manager Will Venable said then that Domínguez would be “finishing a lot of games” and “lock us down at the back end.” (mlb.com) That signing answered a problem the White Sox had not solved in 2025. Jordan Leasure led the team with seven saves last season, and Grant Taylor added six, a split that showed Chicago never settled on one ninth-inning arm. (mlb.com 1) (mlb.com 2) The front office treated that as more than a cosmetic fix. Chris Getz said after the Luis Robert Jr. trade that the roster would “continue to evolve,” and MLB.com identified the bullpen as a spending priority entering 2026. (mlb.com) (mlb.com) The backdrop was bleak. Chicago lost 121 games in 2024, then improved by 19 wins to 60-102 in 2025, leaving little margin for a bullpen that could not consistently protect late leads. (mlb.com) (baseball-reference.com) Domínguez arrived with a closing résumé, even if it was not built on huge save totals. He had 40 career saves entering 2026, posted a 3.16 earned run average in 67 appearances last year, and opponents hit.198 against him in 2025. (mlb.com) The White Sox also wanted more flexibility for Taylor, whose fastball touched 102.2 miles per hour in his rookie season. Venable said Domínguez’s addition would free Taylor to work in different leverage spots instead of forcing him into one late-inning lane. (mlb.com) That plan has shown up in game usage. In a 4-1 win at Arizona on April 23, Taylor got four outs in the seventh and eighth before Domínguez recorded his fifth save in a clean ninth. (espn.com) A day later, Domínguez closed out a 5-4 win over Washington for his sixth save, striking out two and leaving the tying run at third. Those two games offered the version of the White Sox bullpen the club spent the winter trying to build. (espn.com) (espn.com) Chicago still had a losing record at 12-17 through April 29, with 149 runs allowed in 29 games, so the bullpen fix has not solved everything. But after two seasons of shared saves and late-game drift, the White Sox finally have a defined finisher. (baseball-reference.com)
