It was another day and another loss for the Chicago White Sox, but there was something extra special about Sunday’s defeat.
Sunday’s loss, a standard 13-7 defeat at the hands of the Minnesota Twins, marked their 20th in a row — a nice round number to give this franchise the national stage it deserves. No team had lost 20 in a row since the 1988 Baltimore Orioles, who lost 21 times in succession.
In Chicago, we’re used to the White Sox losing. It’s kind of their thing. But 20 in a row? We’re past the point of embarrassment here.
In Chicago, we’ve been laser-focused on the Sox being on track to break the 1962 Mets’ modern-day record of 120 losses, but now we’re at the point where they could surpass the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies’ record of 23 straight defeats.
Infamy, thy name is White Sox.
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On NBC Sports Chicago’s beloved, painfully honest postgame show Sunday, host Chuck Garfien was rattling off some familiar insult statistics.
“Twentieth loss in a row, 40 games back, 1-12 against Minnesota,” he said. “I could go all day on this, 1-12 against Kansas City …”
That’s when Frank Thomas interrupted him. Thomas is, of course, the greatest player in franchise history and a semi-regular co-host on the show. As a hitter, Thomas was a stickler for details. On this show, too, he wanted it to be accurate.
“Sixty games under .500,” he said. “Under. Sixty games.”
That’s when Garfien realized his mistake. With the loss, the White Sox had dropped to 27-87. Talk about a Big Hurt.
“Sixty games,” he said. “I said they were 40 games under .500.”
With a little theatrical flourish, he slammed his stack of papers on the carpet.
“They’re 60 games under .500!” Garfien yelled, before settling back in his chair.
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That’s when Ozzie Guillen, Garfien’s everyday co-host and the team’s World Series-winning manager, brought up the stat that I came up with recently: If you take out the Sox’s two franchise-record losing streaks, they still have the worst record in baseball.
See, it’s one thing to be the worst team in baseball in a singular season. Someone has to do it, after all. But add to that a 14-game losing streak and a 20-game (and counting) losing streak, and it makes them a contender for the worst baseball team in modern history. A laughingstock for the ages.
The ’62 Mets were an expansion team with a certain sense of whimsy. They had Marvelous Marv Throneberry and Casey Stengel. Jimmy Breslin’s book, “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” was a classic, and seven years later, the Amazin’ Mets were world champs.
But the White Sox have been around since 1901. Their franchise record for losses is 106, which should be eclipsed before Labor Day. It’s been a long way down from the rebuild that was supposed to bring multiple championship parades to Chicago.
Two years after the Sox won 93 games and the AL Central, they hit what we thought was rock bottom. That was last year when they lost 101 games and Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf made the move none of us saw coming by firing his longtime front-office duo of Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. Reinsdorf promised a quick turnaround behind new general manager Chris Getz. No one believed Jerry then because why would they? He has no trust left with the fans, not after all these years.
For some reason — OK, money — the team kept manager Pedro Grifol, whose managing record is currently 88-188. But he’s been a dead manager walking all season, and after the trade deadline passed, the focus quickly turned to his job status. It almost seems cruel that Getz and Reinsdorf haven’t fired Grifol yet. Maybe they’re waiting for him to win a game so he can go out on a high note.
“That means Pedro is 100 games under .500 since he got the job,” Guillen said. “Hoo, hoo boy.”
Ozzie is having an existential crisis on the Postgame Show right now pic.twitter.com/5eCUlirBgI
— White Sox Talk (@NBCSWhiteSox) August 4, 2024
Guillen, who led the Sox to their World Series victory in 2005, said he needs to see a psychologist because he’s been more angry and sad than usual lately. The reason?
“I don’t think I was that bad a manager, but they picked Pedro in front of me,” Guillen said to laughter on the show.
After Tony La Russa stepped down following health issues in 2022, Guillen was given a token interview for the open job, the one that he gave away in 2011. Guillen has wanted this job back for years, but the previous regime of Williams and Hahn didn’t want him back and they had no intention of hiring him two years ago. I agreed with them but only because the organization needs to move forward, not backward.
Guillen added: “I swear to God on this, when Rick Hahn called me and said I don’t have the job, he said, ‘We found the next Ozzie Guillen.’”
While Hahn was trying to compliment Grifol, Guillen, who went 678-617 (.524) in eight seasons, sure doesn’t appreciate the comparison now. But I bet he’s getting a kick out of how bad the Sox are without him.
A lot of fans want Guillen to immediately replace Grifol if and when the team fires him, but why would he want that headache? If I were any of the coaches on Grifol’s staff, I wouldn’t want to take the job, either. You don’t want to have to answer questions about this team, this season, twice a day.
Now, in what could be his waning days in the job, Grifol took some time to do what a lot of failed coaches and managers do in a Reinsdorf regime: kiss up to the boss.
“I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again,” Grifol said according to the Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. “This gets taken out of context and somehow it gets turned around over and over again, how people want to perceive it. Jerry’s a winner, OK? He’s an absolute winner. He’s a competitor. No, he’s not content. Who is?”
People have funny definitions of what makes someone a winner, especially when they work for a perennial loser.
The Bulls are under .500 since their actual, absolute winner, Michael Jordan, retired in 1998. The Sox have made the postseason just seven times in Reinsdorf’s 44 years of ownership. The 2005 playoffs were the only time they won a series, and 2020 and 2021 were the only years they reached the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.
But Grifol is speaking to an audience of one, even as he’s left dangling.
If the Sox get swept in Oakland this week, they could break the ’61 Phillies record at home Friday against the Cubs. The atmosphere will be somewhere between funereal and riotous.
I can’t imagine Grifol is on the top step for that one. How could you do that to him? How could you insult the fans’ intelligence by keeping him around?
It’s an awful situation for everyone, but this isn’t just on Grifol, though he’s certainly culpable for making a bad situation worse.
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While he’s focused on building up the farm system, Getz tried to add some defense to last year’s slapdash fielding team to make the major-league product more palatable, but he failed in a very public fashion. The core hitters who are always hurt were, surprise, injured again early in the season (Yoán Moncada has played only 11 games and is in the team’s top 10 for bWAR), and the season fell off the rails with a 3-22 start. The starting pitching, at least, has been solid, and Getz and his staff have bolstered the organization’s pitching outlook.
That’s all part of the upside to losing: It allows a front office the runway to improve an organization, sometimes fairly quickly. That was the plan after the 2016 season, and it worked until it didn’t. But in his first trade deadline, Getz’s moves were widely panned, and new baseball rules are limiting the Sox to the 10th pick in next year’s draft.
Money is going to be an issue. The Sox are having another attendance decline, and their TV broadcasts, which were a highlight for the team, are now thought of as the worst in baseball. The team’s deal with NBC Sports Chicago is ending and a new RSN (in partnership with the Bulls and Blackhawks) will debut this fall.
It’s going to be a long road back to respectability. At least there’s still the TV pre- and postgame shows, which were as unfailingly honest and critical as ever Sunday. Those shows, the Campfire Milkshake and the pitching in the minors are the only things the organization has going for it.
The White Sox lose and lose and lose, and they’ve gotten so much practice, they now might be the best to ever do it.
(Photo of Nicky Lopez reacting to Sunday’s loss: David Berding / Getty Images)
