1917 White Sox (Creative Commons: pingnews.com)
The Chicago White Sox losing streak has reached 19 games after their 6-2 loss to the Twins Saturday night. The headline says they are “marching” towards history. That term “marching” may be a little too complimentary. It’s more like a funny walk or stumble. While eclipsing the 1962 Mets record of 120 losses seemed like a long shot a month or so back, it’s now looking like real possibility. Maybe even a probability.
The team is now appreciably worse now than it was before the trade deadline
The Sox are an historically bad team, but for the first half of the season they had very good starting pitching, but that is no longer the case. Garrett Crochet has been an ace, but his workload has been reduced. The drop-off from what Crochet gave the Sox in the first half of the season and what his fill-in will give them is tremendous.
Erick Fedde had been a great second banana in the Sox rotation, even winning seven games for this woebegone team. Once again, what the Sox will trot out to the mound in lieu of the now departed Fedde amounts to cannon fodder.
In an especially painful turn of events, Dylan Cease recently pitched a no-hitter for the Padres. A couple of days after that, Drew Thorpe, the center piece in the return the Sox got for Cease, took the mound against the Seattle Mariners. The results weren’t pretty. He didn’t get out of the first inning, and gave up eight runs, including three consecutive home runs.
After one more ineffective start, Thorpe went on the IL and won’t be back this season. It should be mentioned that prior to that, Thorpe was very effective for about a six-game stretch. He finished with a record of 3-3. Under the conditions he pitched under, he was very effective.
That’s three White Sox starters who are either gone or will have a reduced workload for the rest of the season. The Sox starting rotation should be horrific for the rest of the season.
The Sox bullpen has been abysmal, but with the departure of Michael Kopech to the Dodgers, the Sox pen will have to improve to get to abysmal. John Brebbia gets a special shout out for being ineffective and letting wins get away from the Sox. Without John’s lack of effectiveness, the Sox wouldn’t be in position to snag the record for most consecutive losses ever by a big-league team. In his last five appearances, John has pitched 3.2 innings while giving up 10 runs.
Luis Robert Jr. isn’t helping
The multi-talented Luis Robert Jr. is hitting .214 with an OPS of .736. He’s the star of the organization, but he’s regressing to the level of those around him. Of course, it would be easy to get caught up in that morass. Andrew Vaughn, another alleged big stick in the White Sox lineup, has an OPS of .667.
Where is Jerry Reinsdorf?
Reinsdorf is easily the person most responsible for the epic mess that is the White Sox franchise. It would be nice to see him step up and take responsibility for what he has begotten and also give his vision for the team going forward.
Of course, his vision is probably bringing David Eckstein out of retirement.
Likely the most famous, or infamous team White Sox team in history is the 1919 Black Sox. Some of those guys were on board for the 1917 Sox championship, but later got paid to not win the 1919 World Series.
The 2024 White Sox are putting a different spin on historical losing.
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