White Sox postmortem: How did they go from bad to historically awful?
By Todd Feurer
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CHICAGO (WBBM) — The White Sox have finally wrapped up a dismal season that fans and players alike would likely sooner forget, after setting the modern-era record for most losses in a season, finishing 41-121, beating the previous record for futility of 40-120 set by the 1962 New York Mets.
While no one expected the White Sox to be good, or even average, in 2024 – with a dearth of talented hitters or pitchers on the roster, and coming off a 101-loss season in 2023 – few expected the South Siders to be historically bad.
So what went wrong? Simply put, everything.
The White Sox had the worst offense in baseball, finishing last in the league in runs scored with 507 – nearly 100 runs fewer than the next worst offense, the Tampa Bay Rays, who scored 604 runs.
Breaking down the White Sox hapless offense even further, the White Sox ranked dead last in the league in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, hits, home runs, runs batted in, and walks.
Their pitching wasn’t much better. The White Sox allowed the third most runs in the league, with 813, behind only the Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins. Their pitchers also surrendered the fourth most home runs in the league, had the second-worst WHIP in the majors, and gave up the most walks in MLB.
So they couldn’t score consistently, nor could they reliably get opposing batters out, finishing the season with the worst run differential in MLB, at -306. The next worst team, the Colorado Rockies, had a run differential of -247.
Even their best player, center fielder Luis Robert Jr., who was a All-Star and Silver Slugger Award winner in 2023, was a supreme disappointment. He went from slashing .264/.315/.542, with 38 home runs and 80 RBI to a slash line of .224/.278/.379, with 14 home runs and 35 RBI, after missing nearly two months with a hip flexor injury.
The team’s incredible feat of futility was the culmination of a long, grueling season in which the White Sox recorded multiple double-digit losing streaks, including a 14-game skid from May 22 to June 6, and then an American League-record 21-game losing streak between July 10 and Aug. 5. All that losing led to the firing of manager Pedro Grifol during just his second season at the helm. In less than two seasons, Grifol led the team to more than twice as many losses as he did wins.
Grady Sizemore took over as interim manager for the rest of the season.
The White Sox then recorded another 12-game losing streak that lasted from Aug. 23 through Sept. 3.
Only one other team in MLB had even one double-digit losing streak all year, the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had a 10-game losing streak, but still finished with a far better record of 76-86.
White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf called the season “embarrassing” and a “failure” and took responsibility in a letter issued to fans during the final game of the season on Sunday.
While Reinsdorf vowed changes are coming, White Sox fans shouldn’t expect to see a winning team on the South Side anytime soon given how far they’ve fallen, and how much rebuilding they’ll have to do.
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