The White Sox are All-Time Bad

We’ve reached the month of August in the nosebleeds, and as we approach our 100th podcast episode and 1-year anniversary, it’s fairly fitting we have football right on the horizon. Once we finally passed the theoretical barrier of simply sitting down for a zoom meeting twice a week, our content revolved around football (and the occasional Phillies “Red October” rant from Matt).  I’ll save the gooshy, wooshy, nostalgia bait for another blog later this month, but my point of all this is football is king up in the nosebleeds.

While you’ll see me write about the Mets a few times a month and cover college basketball and football once the fall kicks off, we are football guys. So why then am I writing a blog about the Chicago White Sox when we just released our first NFL-catered podcast of the year? Simply put, this team is too horrific to ignore. I could write a comically long, adjective filled, tirade about the absurdity taking place in the south side of Chicago, but I simply don’t want to give that much of my creative juices to a team run by an owner who cares more about selling milkshakes than he does placing a winning product on the field. Instead, we’ll go through the numbers and I’ll do my best to justify the overblown lunacy developing in the Windy City.

The Chicago White Sox are currently;

• On a 20-game losing streak

Chicago’s last win came closer in time to the Boston Celtics winning the NBA Finals (June 17) than today (August 5). The current 20-game losing streak is barely the White Sox longest of the season, as they went on a 14-game skid earlier this year. If Chicago loses two more in a row, they would pass the 1988 Baltimore Orioles for the longest streak in American League history. The 1961 Philadelphia Phillies own the Major League Record (since 1900) with 23 consecutive losses.

• 41.5 games out of first place in the AL Central

While the White Sox still are mathematically alive in the postseason hunt, they have been dead in the water since May. Nicky Lopez and company are 8-34 (.190 winning percentage) in the division. The third place Kansas City Royals currently have 63 wins. Neatly twenty percent of them (12) have come against Chicago.

• 60 games under .500

The White Sox are currently on pace to become the worst team in the history of the live ball era (1900-present). Chicago’s current winning percentage puts them on pace for 39 wins, which would be one win less than the 1962 Mets, who went 40-120 in their first season in existence.

• Have more blown saves this season (28) than wins (27) 

Chicago’s bullpen has successfully converted 60% of their save opportunities this season. Their number of blown saves (28) is greater than successful saves by 16 other teams in the major leagues. Somehow, Chicago’s bullpen era of 5.04 is only second worst in the majors. They can thank the worst team in the National League, the Colorado Rockies (5.63) for that.

• Employing a manager with the same career winning percentage as a dentist

Believe it or not this headline is not misleading. Only two managers in the history of Major League Baseball have survived employment for at least 200 games while earning a career winning percentage of under 0.33. Those two infamous figures are White Sox manager Pedro Grifol and Dr. James Prothro, who practiced as a licensed dentist while managing American Association teams in the early 1900s. Protho later went on to take over as the Phillies manager while much of the major leagues was sent oversees to fight the Axis Powers in World War 2. “Doc” Protho accumulated a record of 138–320 with the Phitins’ from 1939-1941.

• Sending out an everyday lineup with an average batting average of .218

Chicago’s best batting hitter by average is shortstop Nicky Lopez. He is hitting .239. Luis Robert leads the White Sox in OPS with a below-league-average number of .714. Unfortunately neither player has accumulated enough at-bats to qualify for the league leaderboard. Andrew Vaughn leads both categories as a qualifying player with a .235 batting average and .682 OPS.

So yeah. Chicago is very bad at baseball. Much like every poor fan of that team, I have developed a headache. See you on Thursday.

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