Power ranking the most frustrating parts of the Chicago White Sox this season

The Chicago White Sox are the worst team in baseball and are on pace to finish with the worst record in a 162-game schedule in franchise history. For context of how bad that is, the White Sox have been around since 1900.

No man, woman, or child can say they have seen worse from the Sox as not even the 1970 White Sox were this bad at the near halfway point of the season. That is the team that currently holds the distinction of being the worst team in franchise history over a 162-game season.

The expectation was the Sox were going to be bad this year. Not many expected it to be a season where the Southsiders have a legit shot at being worse than the 1962 New York Mets or 2003 Detroit Tigers--two teams considered to be the absolute worst teams in a 161 or 162-game schedule era.

Owner Jerry Reinsdorf's decision to conduct the worst general manager search in baseball history last summer and refusal to spend the going rate for premium talent has created plenty of apathy among the fanbase.

Not selling the team is clearly the most frustrating part of the organization, but that has never been in the cards. Plus, all Reinsdorf can do is set the budget and then sit in the owner's box the rest of the year.

However, he does play a role when it comes to the most frustrating part in the frustration power rankings of the Chicago White Sox this season.

1) Pedro Grifol is still the manager

The speculation is Jerry Reinsdorf does not want to pay Grifol to go away since this disaster is not entirely Pedro's fault. General manager Chris Getz indeed put this awful team together. He did so with meeting Grifol's vision for a winning team in mind.

Instead, the talent that is needed to implement Pedro's acronym of F.A.S.T means having bad players. Pedro loves himself some grinders, but grinder baseball does nothing if you have hitters that have no value and do not hit the long ball.

The biggest issue is that Grifol has led the Sox to nothing but losing. He is in over his head. He is a roving minor-league instructor pretending to be a manager. Most importantly, someone should have been held accountable for all this losing and it should be Pedro.

Yet, here he is still in charge of the lineup card (which is he not very good at properly putting together or the front office is bad at helping him) and bullpen decisions.

3) The terrible defense

The focus in the offseason was to upgrade the defense. It was terrible in 2023 and it is still terrible.

The Sox rank dead last in defensive runs saved and are in the bottom 10 in fielding percentage. It is sad that teams know that all they have to do is put the ball in the play and there is a good chance they can still get on base.

It should also be a cause for concern, if you did not already have those by now, that Getz cannot do the GM job. It was a big focus this offseason and he failed to upgrade the defense.

4) Blowing leads

The White Sox realistically could have about 10-15 more wins if they did not blow so many leads, they had in the seventh inning or later.

The bullpen has failed to protect the lead a bunch of times. The defense has not helped in a lot of those situations. Even if the Sox hung one to win a few of those games, they would not be on this historically bad pace.

5) The offense not putting teams away.

A big reason the Sox have blown leads is the offense does just enough to get a lead, but not enough to put teams away.

The Sox offense is the worst in baseball. The lineup has barely any value players with just three players who have 150 or more at-bats that have a wRC+ over 100.

Poor base running also keeps costing the Sox victories like on Friday night.

It is kind of hard to put teams away when the offense struggles to hit with runners in scoring position. That is a huge reason the Sox keep losing.