On August 6, 2026, the Boston Red Sox outlasted the Chicago White Sox 12–11 in a slugfest at Fenway Park that swung deep into the late innings. Chase Meidroth, Chicago's 25-year-old second baseman, hit two home runs in the loss — a rare burst of power from a player built more on contact than thump. It wasn't enough to save the White Sox, but it was easily the loudest night of his season.
Across every major league game played on August 6, the average hitter produced 0.13 home runs — most players, naturally, hit zero. Meidroth's two homers translate to a z-score of 5.03 against that day's population, a number that sits well beyond typical outlier territory. Z-scores above 4 already describe performances that show up maybe once every few seasons leaguewide; a 5.03 pushes into rarer air still — the kind of single-game output that, statistically, most players will never produce even once in a career. Meidroth entered the season with 16 home runs total across 233 career games. Two in one night is not something his track record suggested was coming.
Statcast doesn't have exit-velocity or launch-angle readings logged for either home run from this game, so there's no way to say definitively whether these were mistake-pitch souvenirs or legitimately crushed line drives. What the record does show is Meidroth's broader hitting profile: a .405 slugging percentage and 11 home runs across 111 games this season, numbers that describe a high-contact, low-strikeout hitter rather than a middle-of-the-order slugger. Fenway's short left-field wall is a known equalizer for hitters who don't need to hit the ball 420 feet to clear a fence — one plausible, if unconfirmed, piece of the puzzle. The other is simpler: even contact-oriented hitters occasionally run into two mistakes in the same night.
Statcast doesn't have exit-velocity or launch-angle readings logged for either home run from this game, so there's no way to say definitively whether these were mistake-pitch souvenirs or legitimately crushed line drives. What the record does show is Meidroth's broader hitting profile: a .405 slugging percentage and 11 home runs across 111 games this season, numbers that describe a high-contact, low-strikeout hitter rather than a middle-of-the-order slugger. Fenway's short left-field wall is a known equalizer for hitters who don't need to hit the ball 420 feet to clear a fence — one plausible, if unconfirmed, piece of the puzzle. The other is simpler: even contact-oriented hitters occasionally run into two mistakes in the same night.
Zoom out and the two homers account for nearly a fifth of Meidroth's home run total for the entire season — a meaningful chunk of production compressed into one nine-inning game. He's a rookie still writing his first full-season book: a .275 average, .352 on-base percentage, and .757 OPS through 111 games, the profile of a solid everyday player rather than a power threat. The White Sox lost anyway, 12–11, a reminder that even a mid-5s z-score from an individual hitter doesn't guarantee a team result — Boston simply scored one more run.
Over his 233-game career, Meidroth has hit a home run roughly once every 14.6 games; this season alone, that rate has quickened to about once every 10 games, roughly 45% faster than his career norm. The question worth tracking through the rest of August: does this two-homer night mark a continuation of that accelerating power trend, or was it a one-off spike against a Red Sox staff that gave up 11 runs itself? His next 10 games will be the real test of which story is true.
Either way, the White Sox now have a middle infielder who can suddenly turn a game into a track meet — even if, on August 6, it still wasn't enough.