Despite rallying back in the ninth inning, the Chicago White Sox ended up with an extra-innings defeat last night.
Losing has become such a common place for the Sox this season that the social media team no longer bothers to print the final score.
FINAL: the number of runs we scored was not greater than the number of runs they scored
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) September 21, 2024
Last night's 3-2 defeat in 10 innings to the San Diego Padres inched the Sox closer to date of setting a new record for season futility. The rendezvous with history could come as soon as Tuesday if the Padres ended up sweeping the Sox and the Los Angeles Angels win the first game of the final home stand.
The Sox have a magic number that people are paying attention to but for all the wrong reasons.
The national media has picked up on how bad the Sox have become. People seem fascinated with watching this train wreck.
The Sox setting a new record in being awful is now just a matter of when.
The White Sox can only afford one more defeat over the season's final games if they hope to avoid tying the 1962 New York Mets record for most losses in a 162-game season. Losing two more games seems almost certain since the Sox have to face playoff contenders such as the Padres and the Detroit Tigers to end the year.
Taking three more defeats also feels like a foregone conclusion and that would set a new single-season record for futility.
Overlooked in all of this losing record watch is setting the worst winning percentage in the modern era is also very much in play.
The Sox's .234 winning percentage is still a percentage point worse than the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics.
That team was bad because of the financial issues that most owners faced at the beginning of the last century. The 62 Mets were awful because they were an expansion team.
The Sox are on the doorstep of breaking those records of incompetence because of an owner who still thinks the game should be played like it was in 1992 and pay players like it is 1958. It also does not help that owner Jerry Reinsdorf conducted the worst general manager search known to mankind and promoted a general manager who is in over his head.
Maybe he promoted Chris Getz when he was not ready to construct an MLB roster that would even qualify for something resembling a rebuilding roster. Instead, Getz was thrust by the owner to turn things around quickly with little financial backing to do it. That would be hard for any qualified GM to pull off.
The club had rotted to the point that in reality, the club had to be ripped down to the studs yet again to be rebuilt back into a competitive team. Losing a record amount of games finally got the owner to see the light, so that is about the only silver-lining.
If tanking was still allowed, Getz should get an award for the roster he put together. Instead, the new anti-tanking rules and the Sox losing 101 games in 2023 means this historic losing will not even get the payoff of having a top-nine pick.
Walking around for all-time as the worst team ever is also something that not even Theo Epstein would want when he was putting together terrible rosters in order to build the Chicago Cubs into the winners of the 2016 World Series.
With all the technology, scouting, the ability to travel by plane (even if the Sox use outdated travel) to scout players, and data available, it should be almost impossible to be this bad. That is why once the White Sox crosses the 121 loss threshold, it will likely be a record the 2024 White Sox hold for a long time, maybe even for all time.
There are some glimpses that Getz is learning from his mistakes (or was encouraging front-office changes before he got the job) and is at the beginning stages of modernizing the way things are run on 35th and Shields.
Since everything was so outdated, the Sox have a magic number worth tracking, but one that results in record futility.