Hey all! So I just got back from two months of travel and am now digging out after Hurrcane Helene's visit to upstate South Carolina, so I'm catching up on things and figured I should post some of these. It seems that trying to post all of the eliminations has become a bit too tall of a task for me, so I think we'll limit this thread to ten (or so) stories that I want to tell.
We'll start with the obvious one:
Years ago, when I lived in Baltimore, I was talking to my friend Orioles’ fan friend Adam about baseball. Some team or other was on a long losing skid, one of those skids where the team just has a knack for throwing the ball into the stands at the right time or finding just the right reliever to pour gasoline on the fire. Adam was no stranger to losing streaks; when he was seven years old, his Orioles began the 1988 season by losing 21 straight games. I mentioned how at some point a streak just starts to become funny – a running inside joke among the fandom, if you will.
“If you’re an adult, sure,” said Adam. “But I was the seven-year-old O’s fan crying after every loss.”
______________________________________
I’m reminded of this remark every time a team goes on a protracted losing streak.
Celebrating an historic level of losing is always an awkward proposition. One the one hand, if you’re an interested stakeholder – an athlete who takes pride in his craft, an usher who sees every game, a seven-year-old who hangs on every win or loss – a protracted losing streak is a miserable existence. Every day is the same – a Groundhog Day of futility, where the sun rises, the sun sets, the team loses, the athletes answer media questions about what went wrong, the seven-year-olds cry, and then cycle begins again. Losing becomes all-consuming; it’s a cloud that hangs over the franchise as the team struggles to fix whatever went wrong.
On the other hand, historic losing streaks and losing seasons are objectively funny in that “comedy is tragedy that happens to other people” way. The jokes, the blooper reels, the ridiculous stats, the historical comparisons to the ‘62 Mets and ‘16 A’s, the occasional Onion headline (“MLB Reminds White Sox That Games Televised”), the pictures of fans with paper bags over their heads…it’s hard not to laugh at the whole ordeal. Baseball is, at its core, still entertainment; baseball fans delight in absurdity, and there’s something so delightfully absurd about a team that just….can’t win.
Whatever your perspective, the White Sox have now achieved something that no other team can claim: a 121st loss in a baseball season. There’s some solace (or disappointment) to be derived from the fact that they didn’t pass the 1916 Philadelphia A’s for worst winning percentage in a season, but in the loss category they stand triumphantly alone (if we ignore the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, which we seem to do for some reason).
In some sense, it’s no mystery why the team is so bad: they don’t hit, and they have no bullpen. The White Sox hitters have combined to be roughly seven wins below replacement; Pale Hose hitters have been so inept that if they somehow scored 95 runs tomorrow, they would still be 30th in the majors in runs scored. The bullpen has blown 37 saves this season, a stat which is made all the more impressive by the fact that they’ve only notched 21 saves. Put those two together and you have a team that’s destined for late-inning anti-heroics. The White Sox went 0-79 when trailing after six innings, and they were 0-104 when trailing after eight. Worse, they were only 32-23 when leading after six innings; in other words, if you spot the White Sox a lead and only require them to hold it for three innings, they’re still only slightly better than .500.
In another sense, though, it’s a complete mystery why the team is this bad. The 1962 Mets were an expansion team created before expansion draft rules made it possible for expansion teams to have decent players. The 2003 Tigers were at the nadir of a rebuild, having stripped the team down to a collection of overmatched kids and Dmitri Young. The 1916 A’s had sold off every good player from their ‘14 World Series-winning team, ostensibly in an attempt to stay financially solvent. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders were a trainwreck of a franchise that would be disbanded at the end of the season. The 2024 White Sox, though? They're rebuilding, sure, but they’re not in full tear-down mode (yet) and they’d been in the playoffs with many of the same players just a few years prior. Sure, they had a bizarre front-office power struggle culminating in a major housecleaning last year. Certainly, they've held onto players too long; players like Luis Robert Jr. and Eloy Jimenez were kept past their expiration dates - to say nothing of the DFA’d former All-Star (and failed pugilist) Tim Anderson or the waiver-wire dump of seven players last August. And yes, they have a meddling owner with a penchant for trying to bring back the 80’s (both in managerial choice and in analytics approaches), which is odd for a team whose glory days were decidedly not the 80’s. But those afflictions are hardly unusual; lots of teams in history have had dysfunctional front offices, have missed on player evaluations, or have had meddlesome owners. (As many commenters have pointed out, Reinsdorf isn’t even the worst owner in baseball.) And yet, somehow the heavens (or perhaps Hells?) aligned this year for the White Sox, and they were somehow able to put together a losing team that even the tankingest of tanking teams could previously only dream of.
Last August, Reinsdorf finally put an end to the era of having two executives who both thought they were the general manager and promoted Chris Getz from the scouting department to the GM chair. Now, if you thought, “Hmm….if the organization is dysfunctional, it might not be a great idea to hire the new head from within,” well, the last 400 days or so have done little to assuage your concerns. Getz’s major offseason move was the trade of Dylan Cease for Padres three propsects and a fungible reliever; one of those prospects (Drew Thorpe) is now on the IL with bone spurs, while a second (Samuel Zavala) hit .187 with 104 strikeouts in high-A (although he’s young for the league). Getz’s decision not to trade Robert and Jimenez after surprisingly healthy 2023 campaigns appears to have been in error; Robert suffered a hip flexor injury in April and hit .224/.279/.381 in limited action, while Jimenez suffered a hamstring injury in May and was eventually dumped on the Orioles in exchange for a quadruple-A player. Getz’s flyers on Erik Fedde and Tommy Pham netted a few good prospects in trade; his flyers on pretty much everyone else ended in disaster. And of course, Getz’s claims that he wanted to establish a winning culture in Chicago – well, those didn’t quite materialize.
There are a number of questions now hanging over the White Sox franchise. Reinsdorf is clamoring for a new ballpark and has threatened to move the team to Nashville or Portland or similar, a statement which seems as much a threat to Nashville or Portland as it does to Chicago. Getz has to figure out how to right the ship, which is concerning since he’s one of the people who helped run the ship aground in the first place. They’ll need to figure out how to resolve Garret Crochet’s demands for a long-term extension, how to find impact players in the 2025 draft despite only getting the 10th pick next year, how to acquire ballplayers who can hit or relieve, and maybe how to convince fans to stop wearing paper bags over their heads. The good news is that, if history’s any guide, the White Sox can only go up from here….because no team has ever been worse.
The White Sox last made the playoffs in 2021. Their last title was in 2005.
We'll start with the obvious one:
Years ago, when I lived in Baltimore, I was talking to my friend Orioles’ fan friend Adam about baseball. Some team or other was on a long losing skid, one of those skids where the team just has a knack for throwing the ball into the stands at the right time or finding just the right reliever to pour gasoline on the fire. Adam was no stranger to losing streaks; when he was seven years old, his Orioles began the 1988 season by losing 21 straight games. I mentioned how at some point a streak just starts to become funny – a running inside joke among the fandom, if you will.
“If you’re an adult, sure,” said Adam. “But I was the seven-year-old O’s fan crying after every loss.”
______________________________________
I’m reminded of this remark every time a team goes on a protracted losing streak.
Celebrating an historic level of losing is always an awkward proposition. One the one hand, if you’re an interested stakeholder – an athlete who takes pride in his craft, an usher who sees every game, a seven-year-old who hangs on every win or loss – a protracted losing streak is a miserable existence. Every day is the same – a Groundhog Day of futility, where the sun rises, the sun sets, the team loses, the athletes answer media questions about what went wrong, the seven-year-olds cry, and then cycle begins again. Losing becomes all-consuming; it’s a cloud that hangs over the franchise as the team struggles to fix whatever went wrong.
On the other hand, historic losing streaks and losing seasons are objectively funny in that “comedy is tragedy that happens to other people” way. The jokes, the blooper reels, the ridiculous stats, the historical comparisons to the ‘62 Mets and ‘16 A’s, the occasional Onion headline (“MLB Reminds White Sox That Games Televised”), the pictures of fans with paper bags over their heads…it’s hard not to laugh at the whole ordeal. Baseball is, at its core, still entertainment; baseball fans delight in absurdity, and there’s something so delightfully absurd about a team that just….can’t win.
Whatever your perspective, the White Sox have now achieved something that no other team can claim: a 121st loss in a baseball season. There’s some solace (or disappointment) to be derived from the fact that they didn’t pass the 1916 Philadelphia A’s for worst winning percentage in a season, but in the loss category they stand triumphantly alone (if we ignore the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, which we seem to do for some reason).
In some sense, it’s no mystery why the team is so bad: they don’t hit, and they have no bullpen. The White Sox hitters have combined to be roughly seven wins below replacement; Pale Hose hitters have been so inept that if they somehow scored 95 runs tomorrow, they would still be 30th in the majors in runs scored. The bullpen has blown 37 saves this season, a stat which is made all the more impressive by the fact that they’ve only notched 21 saves. Put those two together and you have a team that’s destined for late-inning anti-heroics. The White Sox went 0-79 when trailing after six innings, and they were 0-104 when trailing after eight. Worse, they were only 32-23 when leading after six innings; in other words, if you spot the White Sox a lead and only require them to hold it for three innings, they’re still only slightly better than .500.
In another sense, though, it’s a complete mystery why the team is this bad. The 1962 Mets were an expansion team created before expansion draft rules made it possible for expansion teams to have decent players. The 2003 Tigers were at the nadir of a rebuild, having stripped the team down to a collection of overmatched kids and Dmitri Young. The 1916 A’s had sold off every good player from their ‘14 World Series-winning team, ostensibly in an attempt to stay financially solvent. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders were a trainwreck of a franchise that would be disbanded at the end of the season. The 2024 White Sox, though? They're rebuilding, sure, but they’re not in full tear-down mode (yet) and they’d been in the playoffs with many of the same players just a few years prior. Sure, they had a bizarre front-office power struggle culminating in a major housecleaning last year. Certainly, they've held onto players too long; players like Luis Robert Jr. and Eloy Jimenez were kept past their expiration dates - to say nothing of the DFA’d former All-Star (and failed pugilist) Tim Anderson or the waiver-wire dump of seven players last August. And yes, they have a meddling owner with a penchant for trying to bring back the 80’s (both in managerial choice and in analytics approaches), which is odd for a team whose glory days were decidedly not the 80’s. But those afflictions are hardly unusual; lots of teams in history have had dysfunctional front offices, have missed on player evaluations, or have had meddlesome owners. (As many commenters have pointed out, Reinsdorf isn’t even the worst owner in baseball.) And yet, somehow the heavens (or perhaps Hells?) aligned this year for the White Sox, and they were somehow able to put together a losing team that even the tankingest of tanking teams could previously only dream of.
Last August, Reinsdorf finally put an end to the era of having two executives who both thought they were the general manager and promoted Chris Getz from the scouting department to the GM chair. Now, if you thought, “Hmm….if the organization is dysfunctional, it might not be a great idea to hire the new head from within,” well, the last 400 days or so have done little to assuage your concerns. Getz’s major offseason move was the trade of Dylan Cease for Padres three propsects and a fungible reliever; one of those prospects (Drew Thorpe) is now on the IL with bone spurs, while a second (Samuel Zavala) hit .187 with 104 strikeouts in high-A (although he’s young for the league). Getz’s decision not to trade Robert and Jimenez after surprisingly healthy 2023 campaigns appears to have been in error; Robert suffered a hip flexor injury in April and hit .224/.279/.381 in limited action, while Jimenez suffered a hamstring injury in May and was eventually dumped on the Orioles in exchange for a quadruple-A player. Getz’s flyers on Erik Fedde and Tommy Pham netted a few good prospects in trade; his flyers on pretty much everyone else ended in disaster. And of course, Getz’s claims that he wanted to establish a winning culture in Chicago – well, those didn’t quite materialize.
There are a number of questions now hanging over the White Sox franchise. Reinsdorf is clamoring for a new ballpark and has threatened to move the team to Nashville or Portland or similar, a statement which seems as much a threat to Nashville or Portland as it does to Chicago. Getz has to figure out how to right the ship, which is concerning since he’s one of the people who helped run the ship aground in the first place. They’ll need to figure out how to resolve Garret Crochet’s demands for a long-term extension, how to find impact players in the 2025 draft despite only getting the 10th pick next year, how to acquire ballplayers who can hit or relieve, and maybe how to convince fans to stop wearing paper bags over their heads. The good news is that, if history’s any guide, the White Sox can only go up from here….because no team has ever been worse.
The White Sox last made the playoffs in 2021. Their last title was in 2005.
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