Tristan Peters and Edgar Quero—both viewed as long shots at the plate—sparked a late surge that turned a Cubs lead into a 9-8, 10-inning walk-off win at Rate Field on Sunday.
By the time the scoreboard flipped to Sox 9. Cubs 8 after 10 innings. it was clear the usual suspects hadn’t produced the deciding moments at Rate Field on Sunday.. It wasn’t Munetaka Murakami. it wasn’t Pete Crow-Armstrong. and it wasn’t even the broader buzz around a Crosstown weekend that actually felt like it mattered.
The series rubber match had already carried plenty of heat and tension. But the final swing came from a duo that, on paper, looked far from the story—Tristan Peters and Edgar Quero.
In the eighth. Peters came to the plate and yanked a pitch from reliever Phil Maton over the wall in right to put the White Sox ahead 7-4.. Two innings later. with Chase Meidroth on third. one out. and the Cubs up 8-7. Quero launched a homer to left-center off Ryan Rolison to walk the game off and send fireworks into the night.
The backdrop for the win is what’s making it land even harder for Sox fans.. The surprising White Sox are averaging over a run per game more than last year at this point. have nearly twice as many homers. and an OPS more than 100 points higher.. Over the past month—when the Sox have gone 18-9—they’ve led the majors in home runs. runs per game. on-base percentage and slugging.
That momentum sets up the questions that have followed the team’s recent success: who is this group supposed to be. and why are contributions showing up from places no one expected?. Players like Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert Jr.. were long considered the core of Chicago’s offense.. On Sunday, though, the spotlight belonged to two names fans had reason to wonder about.
Quero wasn’t an automatic choice in the conversation earlier in the series.. Before Sunday. his .151 average and zero home runs left plenty of room for skepticism. and the idea of replacing him with injured Kyle Teel at catcher was already in play—so much so that it made the moment feel even more improbable when he delivered.
Peters’ path is different, but the result carried the same shock.. He’s from Manitoba. Canada. and the route to a major-league moment included stops that read like a detour from the conventional baseball ladder: he scratched his way to Southern Illinois University for the 2021 season. then played for the Savannah Bananas. reached High-A ball with the Brewers. moved on to Double-A with the Giants. and even took an unpleasant trip into the majors.
In 2025, Peters went 0-for-12 in four games with the Rays, a stretch that preceded a trade to the White Sox for “cash or a player to be named later”—the kind of baseball phrase people treat like a formality until it turns into a turning point.
“I mean, it’s been a journey,” Peters said. “I’ve been in a lot of places, experienced a lot of things. A lot of learning, too — learning things about myself.”
Now 26, Peters described what it meant to finally feel the game from inside the moment. “I’ve never experienced anything like that,” he said. “It was incredible.”
Quero’s timing has its own weight.. He watched the first two games of the series from the bench while Teel was out. with manager Will Venable unable to keep using the regular No.. 1 catcher.. But after the night before shifted into a three-hit. three-RBI. walk-off performance. Quero said he had already turned the situation over in his head.
“I was ready for [my] time,” Quero said.
After connecting, he wasn’t even certain what would happen once the ball left his bat, saying he wasn’t sure it would get over Crow-Armstrong’s head and then the wall. Still, it landed as if it belonged in the highlight reels.
“Just happy for me, for the team, for everybody,” Quero said. “Just happy because we won the series, too.”
Peters, for his part, sounded focused on the personal side of the celebration—calling his wife afterward, with the likelihood of a house full of excitement, even if the baby was sleeping. He also offered a reminder of why he believes moments like this matter beyond the box score.
“We do it for the fans,” Peters said. “It’s why we play. It’s incredible to be known. It’s an honor.”
Some players might treat heroics like this as expected, something that comes with success. Peters didn’t. “Couldn’t ask for a better moment,” he said.
What made Sunday’s ending so sharp is how the same kind of momentum—first Peters’ eighth-inning swing and then Quero’s late. two-homer-seconds kind of strike—arrived from players whose earlier contributions weren’t the loudest part of the season.. And at a time when the Sox have been climbing with heavy production across categories. the walk-off came courtesy of the two least predictable names in the night’s story.
The pattern on Sunday was simple and brutal: when the Sox were behind late, Peters flipped the game with a homer in the eighth, then Quero tied the finish in the tenth with a shot off Ryan Rolison—two replies that turned Cubs leads into Sox celebrations without waiting for anything else to catch up.
By the final out, the Sox didn’t just win a rubber match. They did it in a way that made the bigger, louder names fade into the background—and left nearly 40,000 black- or blue-hearted maniacs packing Rate Field with a version of disbelief that sticks.
White Sox Cubs Tristan Peters Edgar Quero Rate Field 10 innings walk-off Phil Maton Ryan Rolison