2025 White Sox Lineup Simulation Challenge

HAPPY 2025 OPENING DAY! Coming off the record setting (positive spin, eh) 2024 campaign, I was a little nervous that interest in the contest would fall off a cliff. Thankfully, you all were able to get past the pain and submit a lineup…or maybe it was the More Than Dawgs gift cards that served as your motivation. Either way, I was excited to see what lineups you all would submit. The 2025 opening day roster is not very strong, but I thought that sprinkling in some of the prospects that we hope to see this year into the list of guys available would lead to interesting lineup combinations (apologies to Nick Maton for not making it on the list despite making the Opening Day roster). You all did not disappoint and got very creative with the lineups that you submitted. It was a lot of fun seeing where folks placed guys like Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero, Chase Meidroth, and Colson Montgomery.

Before getting to the results and awards, I want to thank you for sharing, re-tweeting, blackmailing your friends, and most importantly: submitting lineups! I also cannot forget to thank our wonderful sponsor, More Than Dawgs. More Than Dawgs is a locally owned hot dog stand located at the southeast corner of 3400 S. Shields during game days and most evenings during the summer. The More Than Dawgs crew were very generous and are providing $100 of gift cards to this year’s top performers! Be sure to check them out during the summer and do note that they also can cater parties! Lastly, I want to thank Grace, of 643 Studios, for the awesome flyer that she designed for the contest. If you’re in need of graphic design work, you should definitely reach out to her. 

As a reminder, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, be sure to check out my post for the first iteration of the challenge and the post from last year. As a quick reminder, I run each lineup for 10k games and log the average runs scored per game. This ensures that the exercise gets to the core of the lineup’s ability and isn’t ranked on a very high or very low simulation result. Additionally, the numbers used to feed the simulation program came from ZiPS projections via Fangraph’s website, so I’d be remiss to not thank Dan Szymborski for making them publicly available.

One last bit of housekeeping before diving into the results… You may notice that a handful of submissions are highlighted in red. This is due to those lineups not having a catcher and/or a middle infielder. I admit that I dropped the ball by not explicitly providing positional assignments to players - I will do that next year for those who may be unaware. The lineups that did not include players from these positional groups are unfortunately disqualified from receiving a gift card. I hope that there are no hard feelings and that you will come back next year.

This is the sixth year of the White Sox Lineup Simulation Challenge and while we didn’t break the overall record, it was still a very strong year on the submission front! 99 lineups were submitted, of which 97 of them were unique! Of the repeated lineup, it was submitted 3 times. Similar to last year, the competition was strong and the margin was very tight! Please note that I did not re-rank post disqualifying entries - y’all can figure it out! You can quickly and easily access the results in the linked google sheets file below. Continue reading to see the awards!

Lineup Spots: Most Common Players

Results

Click Here For Google Sheets File

The Awards Section

The “Golden Hot Dog” Award

I liken this to White Sox fans' version of the “I’ve Got a Golden Ticket” song from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. “I’ve Got a Golden Hot Dog”... anyways… Congratulations to Jeff Feyerer for winning this year’s contest with a lineup that produced a whopping 4.6519 runs per game. Jeff won by the slimmest of margins… 0.0001 runs per game! I hope you use this newly found bragging right—and remind everyone, every day, on Twitter—just how much smarter you are than they are. Thanks again and I hope to see you back next year.

The “Oh No Baby What Is You Doin” Award

This award goes out to Tej Seth and Sam Reeves for both placing in the top 10 and being disqualified due to forgetting to include a catcher in their lineups! I am quite disappointed in the two of you, but for different reasons. Tej, you can identify a disguised blitz package 15 seconds before a defense lines up but can’t identify a catcher?! Come on! And Sam, I thought that you were on your quest to reclaim your rightful place amongst the top of the leaderboard but you must have been distracted creating all of that fantastic 108 Tourney content (hilarious videos by the way…thanks for the laughs). I hope that you both take this with your chin held high and come back next year.

The “You Again” Award

Another year, another top finish by @jgrinz and @richwp01. @jgrinz finished in 2nd place with a lineup that produced 4.6518 runs per game! @richwp01 finished in 5th, without de-placing those who DQed, with a lineup that produced 4.6021 runs per game. It is becoming an annual event to see you both at the top the leaderboard. Thanks again for submitting a lineup and see you next year!

The “White Sox Podcast Bragging Rights” Award

This might have been the strongest year yet from the White Sox podcast contingency. I was once again fortunate to receive submissions from folks at SoxMachine, CHGO White Sox, The All Sports Scene, and the Addison to 35th Podcast. My apologies if I missed anyone - it’s tough to keep up with it all! Out of the accounts that I recognized, Sam Reeves placed 6th (DQ), Josh Nelson placed 9th, Sean Anderson placed 11th, Herb Lawrence placed 15th, BeefLoaf placed 44th, and @liddle_ktina placed 62nd. You might have lost last year’s steak dinner bet, Josh, but you beat BeefLoaf in this year’s contest…so that goes for something! Thanks again to each of you and I hope to see you again next year!

The “Hall of Famer” Award

This award goes to @baseballdocdave, who placed 60th with a lineup that produced 4.3299 runs per game. You are not getting this award due to your strong submission, but because you recently made the Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Through last season, you totaled 606 wins, 7 conference titles, 8 regional titles, 3 sectional titles, and 4 Chicago Public League Final Fours. I think that I should receive something for surviving four years of your coaching but that’s neither here nor there. Congratulations on making it into the HOF and here’s to a hell of a 2025 season! Oh, and if you don’t want to get kicked out of the HOF, maybe put a better lineup together ;)

The “Venable Line” Award

Building off last years’ “Sheets Line” Award, I thought it would be fun to see how a lineup made up entirely of Will Venables would stack up! I used Venable’s stats from his last full season in 2015 and unsurprisingly, it did not produce many runs. The lineup placed 97th out of 99 submissions… which means that there were two of you who submitted a worse lineup. SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

The “Golden Goose” Award

Another year, another person who submitted a lineup because they like me finishing dead last. This time, this person has now finished dead last two years in a row! A-A-Ron, I am sorry, but you are the Golden Goose. We all collectively hope that Venable does not ask for your advice when it comes to constructing lineups! But, I definitely appreciate you sending one in and hope that you come back next year!

Prizes

This year, prizes will go to the top five performing lineups, who were not disqualified and who indicated that they would accept a gift card! I will be in contact about how I can get the gift cards to you.

1. @jgrinz: $30

2. Luke Smailes: $25

3. @joezmbets: $20

4. @ErikHaegel32434: $15

5. Josh Nelson: $10

   
   
   
   

To wrap things up, I want to once again thank everyone for participating. This year was a great success and I hope to see you back next year! Go Sox!