October has a funny way of introducing baseball fans to players they probably weren't paying much attention to a week earlier.
The Chicago White Sox second baseman wasn't the biggest name on the roster entering the postseason. He wasn't even one of the first players most people would have picked to deliver the defining swing of Chicago's Wild Card Series against the Houston Astros.
Two games later, that conversation has changed.
Meidroth went 4-for-7 with four RBI's during Chicago's two-game sweep of Houston. He enters the ALDS against the Cleveland Guardians hitting .571 with a .625 on-base percentage and a ridiculous 1.625 OPS.
That's a pretty good way to introduce yourself to October.
Chase Meidroth already delivered his first October moment
The White Sox had a 4-3 lead in the sixth inning of Game 2 against Houston when Meidroth stepped to the plate against Bryan Abreu.
Chicago had controlled much of the game, but the Astros were hanging around. Three solo home runs had cut what had been a four-run White Sox lead down to one.
Then Meidroth ended the suspense.
He crushed an 87.5 mph slider 390 feet into the left-field seats for a three-run homer. The ball left his bat at 102 mph and suddenly Chicago's 4-3 lead was 7-3.
That ended up being the final score.
It also helped send the White Sox to the ALDS and gave the franchise its first postseason series victory since the 2005 World Series.
One swing doesn't make someone a postseason star.
It can certainly start the process.
Meidroth's breakout didn't begin in October
It would be easy to look at Meidroth's first two playoff games and chalk everything up to a small sample size.
That would ignore what he did for the previous six months.
Meidroth quietly put together one of the better seasons on the White Sox roster. He hit .276 with a .350 on-base percentage, 16 home runs, 31 doubles, 63 RBI and 90 runs in 154 games. His 156 hits were the most on the team.
The power was also a significant development.
Meidroth hit only five home runs as a rookie in 2025. He more than tripled that number in his second season while raising his batting average from .253 to .276 and his OPS from .649 to .765.
He didn't suddenly become a useful hitter when the calendar flipped to October.
People outside Chicago are simply starting to notice.
October has a way of creating unlikely stars
White Sox fans should understand this better than most.
Scott Podsednik hit exactly zero home runs during the 2005 regular season. Then he hit two during the postseason, including a walk-off homer in Game 2 of the World Series.
Geoff Blum had 16 regular-season at-bats for the White Sox that year. His 14th-inning home run in Game 3 of the World Series made sure nobody in Chicago forgot his name.
That's October.
The biggest postseason moments don't always belong to the highest-paid player or the guy plastered across national commercials.
Sometimes somebody just gets hot at exactly the right time.
Meidroth is already there.
He has four hits in seven postseason at-bats. He hasn't struck out. He has driven in four runs and scored twice.
Now he gets another opportunity against Cleveland.
The White Sox may need another Meidroth moment
Chicago knows Cleveland well.
The teams played 13 times during the regular season, with the White Sox winning the season series 7-6. The Guardians still edged Chicago by one game for the AL Central championship and earned the benefit of skipping the Wild Card Series.
The White Sox don't need Meidroth to carry them through the ALDS by himself.
They just need him to keep doing what he's been doing. Another big at-bat. Another ball in the gap. Maybe another swing that changes a game.
That's how postseason reputations are built.
A week ago, Chase Meidroth was a good young second baseman coming off a strong season for one of baseball's biggest turnaround stories.
Now he's already responsible for one of the White Sox's biggest postseason swings in more than two decades.
If Chicago keeps winning and Meidroth keeps hitting, White Sox fans won't be the only ones who know his name much longer.
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