Unless the major league-worst Chicago White Sox play .625 ball or better down the stretch, they’ll be all alone in infamy.
Even if you’ve seen little of the Sox this season, consider that a safe bet.
At 33-113 entering Wednesday’s matinee visit from Cleveland, the White Sox must finish no worse than 10-6 to avoid losing 120 games. That’s as many Ls as the New York Mets absorbed in their expansion season of 1962, the most to date in modern baseball history.
These Sox have been in business—literally, anyway—since 1901. They won the American League Central in 2021 after a wild-card berth during the shortened season before, but recent history isn’t so grand. Nor is this quote from general manager Chris Getz.
“If you would have told me we were going to end up flirting with the [major league] record, I would have been a little surprised,” Getz said Monday. “Now if you would have told me prior to the year that we would have ended up with over 100 losses, 105, 110, I wouldn’t have been as surprised.”
Translation: I thought we’d be lousy, but not to this degree.
Then again, is the gulf between 110 and 120 losses really so pronounced?
Whatever the case, Chicago has lost 100 games or more in consecutive seasons for the first time in franchise history. The current outfit moved past the 1970 Sox for most losses in club annals when the New York Mets blanked them 2-0 on Sept. 1, sending Chicago to defeat for the 107th time.
While the White Sox rank next-to-last in the majors with a 4.84 ERA and .221 batting average, not every loss has transpired equally. A recent 0-10 homestand against the Tigers, Rangers and Mets featured a 13-4 Detroit runaway, sure, but Chicago also played defending World Series champion Texas to a pair of one-run defeats.
In one of them, Rangers defensive replacement Travis Jankowski leapt over the left-field wall to rob Andrew Vaughn of a potential game-ending, three-run home run for the second out of the ninth inning.
Broadcasters on the White Sox postgame show soon debated whether that loss qualified as the most heart-wrenching of many.
In reality, whether it’s the opposition making a highlight reel catch or not, the Sox have struggled in clutch hitting situations and had a leaky bullpen. Chicago often stays afloat for six or seven innings before those flaws add up.
No member of the Opening Day relief corps remains on the roster. On Tuesday, right-hander
Sean Burke set a franchise record by becoming the 62nd different White Sox player to appear in a game.
Chicago’s third-round draft pick in 2021, Burke, allowed an unearned run in three innings of relief with three strikeouts in his major league debut.
“It was unbelievable,” he said. “This is definitely the best day of my life. It’s something I’ve worked for since I picked up a baseball for the first time. It’s hard to put into words right now.”
Sour Sox fans can relate to that last part as the 2024 season goes. Getz took a stab at addressing the futility Monday, doing his best to move the dialogue forward.
“This is the cards we’ve been dealt at this point,” he said. “You try to make the best of it, and it’s an opportunity to embrace the situation that we’re in.”
Getz spoke of his upbringing in Detroit, recalling the 2003 Tigers team that lost an American League-record 119 games before steadily regrouping, advancing to the World Series in 2006.
“I view it as kind of the frustrating part of the story,” Getz said. “But I also know that the future’s looking bright, and it’s going to make it just that much sweeter once we get there.”
Until then, the Sox continued slide has morphed many on the South Side into math majors and history buffs.
With the Guardians in town for another game, the slog to the record recalls this exchange from two fictitious Cleveland ballplayers in Major League:
“I thought you had to do something good to be a celebrity.”
“Not if you do it colorfully.”
