By John Ruberry
“The Mets have shown me more ways to lose than I even knew existed.” Casey Stengel, New York Mets manager in 1962.
“I didn’t know there were this many ways to lose a ballgame.” John Schriffen, Chicago White Sox play-by-play announcer in 2024.
“It was a year that none of us anticipated,” Steve Stone, White Sox color analyst, during the last game of the season.
Last Friday night the Chicago White Sox made history in Detroit when they lost their MLB record 121st game. To add salt to the wounds, in the home broadcast booth, Chicago area native Jason Benetti, who was the South Siders’ play-by-play announcer from 2019 thru 2023, called the game for the Tigers. According to media reports, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who has been, deservedly so, cast as the villain on the South Side, didn’t like the serendipitous and a bit quirky broadcasting style of Benetti, who is now the television voice of the Tigers.
When your team sucks, Jerry, an announcer like Benetti is just what is needed. Besides, I thought Jason was great.
While I didn’t make it out to Guaranteed Rate Field for a Sox home game—lots of stuff came up–I viewed many games on television.
And it was bizarre watching.
After I’d miss a few games, I’d tune in and see an unfamiliar player at bat or on the pitchers’ mound. A lot.
By the end of July, it was as if the team plane for the White Sox had crashed, killing the entire roster. Of course that’s exaggeration, but there was an incredible amount of turnover this season as general manager Chris Getz and team manager Pedro Grifol, tried to patch holes on the sinking ship.
Who is that guy? Where did he come from? Those are questions I asked a lot when tuning in to White Sox baseball.
Grifol didn’t survive August. Few managers do after losing 21 straight games—and that tied an American League record, set by the Baltimore Orioles in 1988.
Here’s an interesting fact. Larry Sheets, an outfielder for those awful O’s, is the father of Gavin Sheets, an outfielder and first baseman for the Sox.
Why were the Sox so bad in 2024? Bad luck? Perhaps. Injuries? A bit. But in a 162-game season, even the best teams hit an unlucky patch or two. All teams in all sports have injuries.
The short answer is that the White Sox farm system has been bereft of talent for years, save for “white flag” mid-season trades of established players with expensive contracts in exchange for prospects. The last number one Sox draft pick who has justifiably been called an MLB standout was shortstop Tim Anderson, the 2019 American League batting champion and a two-time all-star. Anderson was drafted eleven years ago. He’s out of baseball now. The following year the Sox drafted Carlos Rodón in the first round, he now hurls for the New York Yankees. Rodón is a two-time all-star who pitched a no-hitter in 2021. He comes close to stardom, but again, Rodón was drafted ten years ago.
In this afternoon’s game against the Tigers, there was a typical White Sox boneheaded error. Stone remarked that “communication issues” have been a problem all year for Chicago. A Detroit pinch hitter, Andy Ibáñez, hit a routine foul pop-up that soared near the visitors’ dugout. Sox first baseman, Andrew Vaughn, yelled “I got it” repeatedly. But Pale Hose catcher Korey Lee ran towards the pop-up too. Neither caught the ball, it landed between them.
Of the White Sox players with enough at-bats to qualify for a batting average crown, Vaughn ended up with the highest average at .246. That made him the 88th best batter in MLB in 2024
I hate to single out Vaughn, but he played a big role in one of the most bizarre endings of an MLB game ever. He was called for interference on an infield fly rule play, concluding a game against the Orioles with a double play.
Take a look.
Schriffen pointed to this defeat when making that comment about his naiveté on the many ways to lose a baseball game.
There is some good news for the South Siders. If you are a “there is a no such thing as bad publicity” type, for the first time since the White Sox won the World Series in 2005, they’re no longer playing in the shadow of the more popular Chicago Cubs. They’re getting national attention.
Secondly, the Sox, who lost 101 games last year, didn’t finish last in the AL Central in 2023. The Kansas City Royals lost 106 games a year ago–and they made the playoffs this season. That being said, if you believe that the White Sox will play in the post season in 2025, which by the way will be their 125th annual effort, I have some Enron stock to sell you. Getz has already said that the Sox won’t be a big factor in the off-season free agency market.
Thirdly, unless the Pale Hose break the record again next season, its “worst ever” record might be broken soon by someone else. In the 21st century, there have been several teams, most notoriously the 2003 Detroit Tigers who lost 119 games, who have challenged the Mets’ 1962 woeful performance. The 2018 Orioles tanked 115 times. The Tigers had another very rough year in 2019, losing 114 times.
The Orioles and Tigers will be joining the Royals in this year’s playoffs.
Lastly, the White Sox finished the 2024 season winning five of its last six games, including today’s game in Detroit. Interim manager Grady Sizemore might have made a difference–and he could return next year.
UPDATE 8:30pm EDT:
During the White Sox-Tigers game, Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf issued a long statement where he admitted that the South Siders “on-field performance this season was a failure.”
From that statement:
While embracing new ideas and outside perspectives, we will do everything we can to fix this for 2025 and the future. This will include further development of players on our current roster, development within our system, evaluating the trade and free agent markets to improve our ballclub and new leadership for our analytics department, allowing us to elevate and improve every process within our organization with a focus for competing for championships. In fact, change has already been happening in our baseball operations group throughout this past year. When named general manager in 2023, Chris Getz and his staff immediately began conducting a top-to-bottom evaluation of our existing operations. Chris is rebuilding the foundation of our baseball operations department, with key personnel changes already happening in player development, international scouting, professional scouting and analytics. Some of these changes will be apparent quickly while others will need time to produce the results we all want to see at the major-league level.
Great words, these are.
But Getz’ “top-to-bottom evaluation of our existing operations” that he began over a year ago has seen the White Sox, a bad team then, get much worse.
John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
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