The Chicago White Sox may have only tied the 1962 New York Mets for the most losses in a 162-game season, but that does not mean it does not make this version of the Sox the worst team of all time.
The context demands that the White Sox deserve that distinction.
The 1899 Cleveland Spiders have the worst record of all time, but that was because the team's owner also owned another team. The owner put all the best players on his baseball team in St. Louis.
The 1962 New York Mets were awful because they were an expansion team. That was a team starting from scratch.
Breaking the record for the worst winning percentage of the modern era is still very much in play. The 1916 Philadelphia Athletics were terrible because the team struggled to draw in an era when attendence was needed to financially thrive.
The Sox have none of the excuses those three historically awful franchises had.
That is why the 2024 Chicago White Sox will go down as the worst team ever in baseball history. The White Sox are terrible because of incompetence, front-office dysfunction, and operating like a franchise that still thinks it is 1992 and players should be paid like it is 1958.
News keeps coming out on how owner Jerry Reinsdorf created such an insular franchise stuck in a time warp that this season is the final result.
Pretty much this terrible season was self-imposed, and it was not because of money, even though the owner refuses to spend it correctly. It was not because the Sox were completely starting from scratch.
At last check, Jerry also owns the Chicago Bulls who play a completely different sport, so he is not sending his best players there.
Also, it is 2024, when teams have access to planes (even if the Sox use an outdated plane to travel), better record-keeping for accurate player data, and video technology. Heck, just having access to the Internet and the evolution of thinking should make it nearly impossible to be this bad as a team like the 1916 A's who operated before the United States entered World War I.
Then again, since Jerry Reinsdorf thinks it still 1992 so maybe the franchise is still using dial-up.
Plus, it makes no sense for a team to tank like this when the rules have changed to prevent how the Baltimore Orioles or Chicago Cubs build themselves into contenders.
Well, it would have made sense to be this awful to have a shot at the top pick had the White Sox not lost 101 games in 2023. That is why the White Sox are not eligible to have a shot to win the MLB Draft Lottery and select Ethan Holliday.
The only silver lining of this season is the owner is starting to understand that it has been almost 20 years since he was on top of the baseball world, and the way things were done then does not work now. That has led to some beneficial changes being made in the front office that hopefully lead to a modern, functional franchise.