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CHICAGO — When Will Venable was named the Baseball Writers Association of America’s 2026 American League Manager of the Year on Tuesday night, the White Sox leader shared the honor with the entire organization.
From chairman Jerry Reinsdorf to general manager Chris Getz, Venable’s coaches and players all heaped praise on the man in his second year on the job. Venable’s modest reaction is no surprise.
Getting him to throw praise in his direction is like Venable announcing his starting pitchers six or seven days ago. Venable deservedly got the most votes, but by his educated reckoning it would take a village to set up this amazing and fun turnaround.
“There’s a lot of people involved in making us better. A lot of good people. So I see this award as recognition and recognition of our progress. I’m proud to be a part of it,” Venable said during a post-award Zoom event Tuesday night. “I’m just a small part of an incredible effort to get better with a lot of really good people working really hard to make it happen.
“I look at it as a very organizational award. And I think about it especially in our case because we’re a very collaborative group.”
Venable finished with 111 points, ahead of Tampa Bay’s Kevin Cash, who finished with 98 points. Venable received 15 first-place votes, 11 second-place votes and three third-place votes and was named on all but one of the 30 ballots.
Being honored by the BBWAA made Venable the sixth White Sox winner in the category and the first since Ozzie Guillén’s World Series championship year in ’05. Other White Sox winners are Jerry Manuel (2000), Gene Lamont (1993), Jeff Torborg (1990) and Tony La Russa (1983).
The White Sox are tied with Cleveland for the most Manager of the Year awards.
All three ’26 AL finalists made a strong case for top managerial honors. Cash led the AL’s best team to the World Series, where the Rays lost in five games to the Brewers, and helped turn a rough Boston season into a playoff appearance after Chad Tracy replaced Alex Cora as interim manager on April 25.
But Venable had the most impressive resume of the year. The White Sox entered 2026 with three straight 100-loss seasons, including a Modern Era single-season record of 121 in 2026. They lost 102 in Venable’s debut effort in ’25, though they showed signs of improvement in going 28-37 after the All-Star break.
Venable’s team started 1-5 in ’26 with road trips against the Brewers and Marlins, losing 13 of their first 19 contests. Not lost on a special performance, White Sox players spoke at SoxFest in late January, and the White Sox eventually finished with 84 wins.
“This group in Spring Training has developed trust in each other,” Venable said during Tuesday’s awards show. “Then they went out and did it.”
“I’m proud of our group, I’m proud of our front office, I’m proud of our ownership for really supporting this group to continue to get better,” Venable said during Zoom. “That’s what we’re going to do every day.”
That jump from 60 wins in 2025 put the White Sox in the playoffs as the third AL Wild Card and sixth seed overall. They swept the Astros in two games to win the Wild Card Series before taking the first two games in the Division Series in Cleveland. Even though three straight losses to the Rangers meant they were eliminated, the White Sox, led by the 43-year-old Venable, couldn’t break the big turnaround.
En route to the franchise’s 12th playoff appearance and first since 2021, the White Sox have sat atop the AL Central for 96 days. Venable became the third MLB manager to oversee back-to-back 19-plus-win seasons since 1901, joining New York Yankees Hall of Famers Miller Huggins (69-91-110) from 1925-27 and New York’s John McGraw from 1902-0448.
Those 84 wins were the most in MLB history by a team after three consecutive 100-plus losses and tied for the most in MLB history for a team with back-to-back 100-plus losses with the 1974 Rangers. The White Sox became the first team to reach the postseason after losing more than 100 games in each of the previous two seasons.
As many players have talked about, the team identity was established by Venable in 2025. It was about playing hard for all 27 appearances in every game, staying focused on the game and playing for each other as much as with each other. The players embraced Venable’s idea and ran to success.
In October, Sporting News named Venable the AL manager of the year in a vote of his peers. He joins Guillén (2005), Manuel (2000), Torborg (1990), La Russa (1983) and Chuck Tanner (1972) as previous winners of this award.