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The White Sox dropped their ninth consecutive game last night, their 76th this season. The team’s 27-76 record is the worst 103-game mark since the 1979 A’s were also 27-76. Although a number of teams started worse in the first half of the 20th century, just two have been this bad, this late in the season, since World War II ended.
The Dog Days (worst 103-game records, 1946-2024)
Finished
Mets 1962 26-77 40-120
White Sox 2024 27-76
Athletics 1979 27-76 54-108
Athletics 2023 28-75 50-112
Tigers 2003 28-75 43-119
The 1962 Mets are the gold standard for baseball incompetence, one of two teams to ever lose 120 games in a season, and the only one to do so since the start of the 20th century. Can the White Sox catch them? They would have to finish 15-44 or worse, which isn’t as hard as you might think, a .254 winning percentage just slightly lower than the .262 mark to which they’ve played. Teams close the season on jags like that with some frequency, four times in this century alone. The Sox themselves have lost 46 of their last 59, so they just need to do it again to race past the ’62 Mets.
The Sox will send Chris Flexen to the mound in Arlington tonight in an effort to snap their nine-game losing streak. If they do drop the game, they will be the first team since 2021 to have two separate losing streaks of at least ten games. Three teams, including the crosstown Cubs, pulled the trick that year, and five have in this century.
With a 14-game losing streak already on the books, the White Sox have a chance to join a very select club if they can’t pull out of this spiral over the weekend. Just three teams in baseball history -- the 2021 Orioles, the 1935 Braves, and the 1911 Braves -- have ever had two distinct losing streaks of at least 14 games in a single season.
Why are the Sox this bad? Well, that’s a story dating back decades to when a rich guy named Jerry bought the team, but we don’t have that kind of time. On the field this year, well, we know it’s not the starting rotation’s fault. As I wrote back in June, the White Sox have one of the best top-twos in baseball in Garrett Crochet and Erick Fedde. Sox pitchers are 28th in ERA, 27th in FIP, and 16th in fWAR. It’s not a great staff, it’s just not an “all-time terrible” staff.
No, it’s the offense. The White Sox are last in MLB with a .279 OBP, last with a .345 SLG, and last with a 76 wRC+. The Sox probably can’t catch the 1920 A’s (.252/.304/.337, 68 wRC+) for worst offense since the mound was set at 60' 6", but they could become the worst offense of the 21st century.
The Dog Years (worst wRC+, 2001-2024, ex. 2020)
AVG OBP SLG wRC+
Diamondbacks 2004 .253 .310 .393 74
Marlins 2013 .231 .293 .335 74
White Sox 2024 .218 .279 .345 76
Expos 2004 .249 .313 .392 77
Tigers 2019 .230 .294 .388 77
Those White Sox and Expos lines are a pretty good illustration, in themselves, of how far offense has fallen over the last 20 years. This year’s Sox are giving up 34 points of OBP and 47 points of SLG to those late-period Expos, and yet they have nearly the same wRC+.
The 2024 White Sox are making outs at a rate that we haven’t seen in almost 60 years. Now, the 1900s...really the period from 1904 to 1909, the true Deadball Era...are their own thing. League OBP ranged from .297 to .306 across those six seasons. The three lowest team OBPs, five of the lowest six, etc., etc. all date from those six years. So let’s draw a line at 1909, and consider teams since then.
The Dogs (lowest team OBP, 1910-2024)
White Sox 1910 .275
Mets 1965 .277
White Sox 2024 .279
Athletics 2022 .281
Mets 1968 .281
Browns 1910 .281
Just three teams since the end of the Deadball Era have posted an OBP below .280, and one of them is the great-great-grandfather of the team doing it right now.
The record for fewest runs per game mostly dates to the same era. The 1909 Washington Senators scored 382 runs in 156 games, the only team in history to play at least 150 games and score fewer than 400 runs. Thirty-eight teams have failed to score 500 runs in a season, none of them since 1972, but 1972 was shortened a bit by a player strike. Of the three teams that didn’t score 500 runs in 1972, all missed at least six games. The 1972 Angels scored just 454 runs in 155 games, though, and surely would have missed 500 runs in a full season.
1972 is an interesting line of demarcation because it was after that season that the American League adopted the designated hitter. The NL followed suit in 2022. The White Sox have scored just 321 runs, averaging 3.1 runs a game and on pace for 505, which would be the worst production by an offense with a DH in baseball history.
Doggone It (fewest runs by a DH team, min. 155 games)
R R/G
White Sox 2024 321 3.1*
Mariners 2010 513 3.2
Athletics 1978 532 3.3
Orioles 1988 550 3.4
Angels 1976 550 3.4
Mariners 2011 556 3.4
*through 103 games
We don’t talk about batting average much any more, but the Sox, at .218, are threatening to become just the seventh team since 1910 to hit under .220. We’re going to wrap this up, though, by taking the Sox off the hook. The Sox aren’t even the worst team in baseball this year at hitting for average.
Sea Dogs (lowest batting average, min. 100 games, 1910-2024)
AVG
White Sox 1910 .211
Yankees 1968 .214
Athletics 2022 .216
Mariners 2024 .216
Rangers 1972 .217
The Mariners are a bad couple of months from having the worst batting average in more than a century.
