White Sox on pace for ignominious history: Can Chicago challenge 1962 Mets for another 120-loss season?

Urgent bulletin: The 2024 Chicago White Sox are terrible at their baseball-related tasks and duties. A glance at the current standings, should you dare such a thing, will tell you that much, as well the fact that they’re currently slouching under the weight of a franchise-record 17-game losing streak (thus breaking the old record of 14 straight losses, which was set … back in June). The Sox are 27-84, which comes to an imponderably wee winning percentage – “winning” percentage is perhaps more accurate – of .243. Framed another way, 15 clubs presently have higher batting averages than that. 

Such sustained haplessness puts the 2024 Sox on course for the rocky shoals of Ugly Baseball History. Specifically, the South Siders right now are on pace for 123 losses, which would be the highest tally of defeats in modern baseball history – i.e., since the American League and National League first joined forces way back yonder in 1903. Here’s a look at the unfortunate company they’ll likely be keeping: 

Just missing the cutoff are the 2019 Tigers, who clocked 114 losses. If there’s any consoling knowledge for the current White Sox model, it’s that the overall record for losses across organized baseball is probably out of reach. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders endured 134 defeats (in just 154 games!), but that predates both the 20th century and what we regard as the modern structure of Major League Baseball. So cling to that, Sox rooters.

But wait! There’s more. The Sox also have a chance to log the lowest winning percentage in modern baseball history (differences in schedule length over the years means that most losses doesn’t necessarily equate to lowest winning percentage). Here’s a look at that “leaderboard”: 

Again, it’s worth paying homage of failure to those 1899 Spiders, who somehow managed a winning percentage of .130 (20-134) as a member of the nascent National League. For those reasons laid out above, though, they’re not part of our historical sample. 

So where does this leave our 2024 White Sox and the appointment with history that they’d very much not like to keep? On the wins front, it’s a clear case of “keep doing what you’re doing.” The White Sox’s aforementioned current winning percentage of .243 puts them on pace for a 39-123 season. That, you may have already surmised, would give them the single-season losses record by a full three Ls over the ’62 Mets. That means the White Sox over their final 51 games need to need to go 15-36 to reach 120 losses or 14-37 to get to 121 and thus break the record. In other words, they can play .275 ball the rest of the way — which would be measurably better than their winning percentage to date — and still get to 121. People, they can do this. 

A heavier lift will be breaking the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics’ record that’s persisted for more than a century. A final record of 38-124 gets them there, albeit barely. To repeat, the Sox are right now on course for a 39-123 record, so they need to be just a tad worse the rest of the way in order to make winning percentage history. Specifically, the Sox need to go 11-40 (.216) or worse over the remainder of the season to get under Philly’s mark. 

As long as we’re exploring this particular wasteland, let’s note that point out that the modern record for worst run differential in a season is minus-349 by the 1932 Boston Red Sox, who finished 43-111. The White Sox right now have a run differential of minus-229, which puts them on pace for a season-long run differential of minus-334. So they have work to do on that front. What most people are going to seize upon, however, is the total number of losses the Sox amass, and they seem hellbent on the record right now. 

Before we take leave of these miseries, let’s observe that the White Sox’s roster is now as weaker than it’s been all season. That’s because the recently passed trade deadline saw general manager Chris Getz, in the service of the ongoing organizational teardown, trade away some important players. Veteran right-hander Erick Fedde was shipped off to the St. Louis Cardinals as part of a three-way swap that also involved the Los Angeles Dodgers. At the time of the deal, Fedde’s 4.6 WAR ranked second to Tarik Skubal among all MLB pitchers. Outfielder Tommy Pham, still a potent force against lefty pitching, also went to St. Louis in the deal. As well, reliever Michael Kopech is now a Dodger. Eloy Jimenez was sent to the Orioles for salary relief. 

Not all of those players were faring well in 2024, but the White Sox, being that they are a terrible team on a generational scale, can’t replace even below-average talents all that well. Yes, they may have upgraded the DH spot by, in essence, swapping out Jimenez for Miguel Vargas, whom they received in the Fedde trade. The Fedde trade, however, carves a hunk out of what was already one of the worst rotations in baseball and exposes the team’s non-existent starting pitching depth. Not traded was lefty Garrett Crochet, whose conversion from reliever to starter went splendidly. However, Crochet isn’t exactly a known quantity moving forward. That’s because he’ll soon double his previous high for innings pitched in a season, which came back in his college days at Tennessee. Given that the Sox may revisit Crochet trade talks this offseason, they have much incentive to be cautious with him over the rest of 2024. Maybe that means a “shutdown” or maybe it means extra rest between starts. Whatever the specifics, it seems likely that Crochet won’t continue taking turns as often as he has been. That’s speculative, yes, but what isn’t speculative is that the White Sox’s most valuable performer to date — Fedde — now pitches for the Cardinals.

That’s how it goes when bad teams sell at the deadline: they get worse. In the case of the 2024 White Sox, however, getting worse than they already are may seal their fate as one of the very worst teams ever to afflict baseball at the highest level.