April 28, 2024. The Chicago White Sox win 4-2 over the Tampa Bay Rays, sealing a three-game sweep of a team that won 99 games and made the postseason last year. Surely, things are looking good on the South Side.
Unfortunately, things are most certainly not looking good on the South Side. Thanks to a horrific 3-22 start to the season, the White Sox possess a 6-22 record, good for a paltry .272 winning percentage. This alone is not particularly unique: the 2022 Cincinnati Reds also started their season 3-22 en route to a 100 loss campaign, a rather typical year for a bottom-feeder in the majors. However, the 2024 Chicago White Sox were not your typical basement-dwelling team; they were historically inept and, to put it bluntly, one of the worst teams of all time. But just how bad is “one of the worst of all time?” Let’s find out.
The Chicago White Sox lost 121 games in 2024, finishing with a final record of 41-121 and a winning percentage of .253. Since the first World Series was played in 1903, no team has lost as many games as the White Sox did this year. In fact, in the roughly 150 years of professional baseball in the United States, only one team has ever lost more games than the White Sox this year, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. But at least the Cleveland Spiders had an excuse. Their owner also owned the St. Louis Cardinals and openly used the Spiders as a feeder team, trading any Cleveland player with a modicum of talent to the Cardinals. The White Sox have no such excuse, they just suck. To add to the misery, as MLB only counts records from the “modern era,” i.e. after 1900, the 2024 White Sox do actually hold the record for most losses in a single season.
Legendary manager Tommy Lasorda once famously said, “No matter how good you are, you’re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are, you’re going to win one-third of your games. It’s the other third that makes the difference.” The White Sox did not win a third of their games. They were not particularly close either, falling 13 wins short of what is supposed to be the lowest a team can go.
Between July 10th and August 5th, the White Sox did not win a single game. Their 21 game losing streak was by far the longest of the season and was also the longest in the 123 year history of the American League. The White Sox also suffered an entirely separate 14 game losing streak from May 22nd to June 6th, the second longest losing streak of any team this year. Don’t worry, the White Sox suffered the third longest losing streak this year as well, a 12 game skid from August 23rd to September 3rd. On the matter of losing streaks, the Chicago White Sox lost 20 consecutive games that were started by Chris Flexen, breaking the previous record of 19 consecutive losses in games started by the same starting pitcher from 1909.
As mentioned, the White Sox won only 41 games this year, with their 41st win coming on the final day of the season, September 29th. The Yankees were the first team in baseball to reach 42 wins, doing so on June 2nd. In a sport where teams play almost every day, another team should not be able to surpass your season win total with 119 days and 101 games left in their season. The 29th team and final in baseball to reach 42 wins, the seemingly always hopeless Colorado Rockies, did so on August 6th, with 54 days and 48 games left in their season. A team as bad as the Colorado Rockies should never be able to win more in 114 games than your team did in 162 games. And yet, this was the fate of the 2024 White Sox.
The 2020 MLB season was shortened to just 60 games due to Covid. In this shortened season, the White Sox finished with a record of 35-25, just one game back of the division-winning Minnesota Twins. It took 151 games for the 2024 Chicago White Sox to secure their 36th win. The 2024 team needed 91 more games to record just one more win than they did in 2020. As a result of this miserable performance, the White Sox finished a laughable 51.5 games back of the division-winning Cleveland Guardians, whose 92-69 record isn’t even particularly impressive for a division winner.
In baseball, comebacks are inevitable. Over the 162 game season, a team will eventually luck its way into some hits late in a game to overcome a deficit and win. Except the White Sox did not. They lost 94 straight games when trailing after 7 innings. The White Sox were effectively playing seven-inning games; if the seventh inning ended and the Sox were losing, the game was already over. 94 games where the team could not do anything with the 6 outs they still had left is beyond hopeless. The team finally brought an end to this streak with a comeback win over the Los Angeles Angels, fellow basement-dwellers, on September 24th. At the end of the season, when trailing after seven innings, the Chicago White Sox had 1 win and 95 losses. Pathetic.
To make matters worse, the White Sox’s front office is arguably more incompetent than the team. While their bullpen in 2024 was a hot mess, with their 4.75 ERA and 4.51 FIP the third worst in the league, the front office practically gifted other teams dominant relievers. In March, the White Sox traded Jake Cousins (who is, in fact, cousins with NFL quarterback Kirk Cousins) to the Yankees for cash considerations, not even getting a prospect in return. Cousins followed this trade by throwing 38 innings with an elite 2.37 ERA, one of the best sliders in baseball, and a K/9 of 12.55, the 13th highest of any pitcher who threw more than 30 innings this year. To add insult to injury, he picked up a save against the White Sox on August 13th. Tim Hill, who had a 5.87 ERA in 23 innings with the White Sox, was DFA’d by the team in mid-June. After being picked up by the Yankees on June 20th, Hill pitched to a 2.05 ERA in 44 innings. Both relievers are now key pieces in the Yankees bullpen this postseason. In a similar vein, Michael Kopech, despite his dominant fastball, had a 4.74 ERA and 4.84 FIP with the White Sox in 43.2 innings this year. After being traded to the Dodgers in late July, Kopech threw 22 innings with an elite 1.13 ERA and 2.54 FIP and is one of their big bullpen arms this postseason. The White Sox had three relievers any team would gladly add to their bullpen and gave them away for practically nothing. The only player of note the White Sox got in return for these relievers was Miguel Vargas, who came over in a three team trade with the Dodgers and Cardinals that saw the Sox give up Kopech, veteran outfielder Tommy Pham, and starter Erick Fedde. As if things could not get worse, Vargas was horrific with the White Sox. In 157 plate appearances, Vargas had a triple slash of .104/.217/.170, good for an OPS of .387 and a wRC+ of just 16, making him 84 percent worse than the average hitter. Thanks to this atrocious hitting, Vargas racked up -1.5 fWAR, FanGraphs wins above replacement, in his short time with Chicago. This means that the theoretical “replacement player,” i.e. a player stuck in Triple A who would only play if someone on their major league club got injured, would have contributed 1.5 more wins to the White Sox than Vargas.
2024 was a disaster for the Chicago White Sox. The team broke the single season record for losses, endured the three longest losing streaks of the season, looked hopeless when trailing, saw their all-time record drop below .500, and broke several more unwanted records. Unfortunately, things don’t look much brighter for 2025. The team consists of the same players who were by far the worst offense in the league by wRC+ and had the 3rd worst ERA this year. After getting burned by Andrew Benintendi, who signed the largest contract in team history ahead of the 2023 season before accruing negative WAR in both 2023 and 2024, the team is unlikely to make a major splash in free agency. The front office is largely the same, and owner Jerry Reinsdorf seems unwilling to make changes to the people and culture that got the White Sox into this mess. So while the Chicago White Sox were historically bad in 2024, there is not much stopping them from being worse in 2025. To quote former MLB player and manager Joe Girardi, “it’s not what you want.”
