Grimness. Gloom. Some bitterness, too.
The looks on the White Sox’ faces said it all Sunday after a 9-4 loss to the Tigers that left one of the worst teams in baseball history with a record so cartoonishly terrible — 31-100 — stone-cold silence took up most of the space in the clubhouse.
The Sox are only the third team in baseball’s modern era (starting in 1901) to lose for the 100th time before September. If you want to throw in the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, go ahead because they did it, too. But no team got to the Big 1-0-0 earlier than Aug. 29 until this sad-sack Sox squad bumbled into our lives.
Having to talk about it was just salt in the wound.
“Nothing changed from the first time you asked me [about 100] earlier today,” interim manager Grady Sizemore said, his jaw clenching as he leaned hard into a podium in a hall outside the clubhouse. “Just because it’s a [round] number doesn’t mean I want the focus to be any different.”
Veteran Andrew Benintendi, whose time with the Sox has been bleak from the get-go, had approximately zero interest in an invitation to articulate how unpleasant the season has been.
“We’ve been talking about it all year,” he said. “I think it’s beating a dead horse at this point. We’re not where we want to be, obviously. And I think Grady said it best: If you’re not winning the last game of the year, it really doesn’t matter.”
If the implication is that there’s no real difference between losing the World Series and finishing 40 or 50 games out of a wild-card spot, it’s hard to know how to react to that.
Because there is a gigantic difference, and it’s that the Sox are the equivalent of a winless NFL team. So bad, so inept, so embarrassing, the 2024 season will be etched into baseball lore forevermore.
The 2003 Tigers fell to 34-100 on Aug. 30. The 1962 Mets, a first-year expansion team, fell to 34-100 on Aug. 29 en route to a record 120 losses. The Sox will break their own loss record (106 in 1970) before tangling with the Big 1-2-0. What a pathetic scene that will be as it plays out.
With a winning percentage of .237, the Sox are in range of going lower than the 1916 Philadelphia A’s, who went 36-117 for a percentage of .235 — the worst of the modern era. Yes, that’s really a measuring stick now. It’s amateur hour at Guaranteed Rate Field.
As pitcher Jonathan Cannon spoke in hushed tones with the media after the game, All-Star lefty Garrett Crochet slumped in a chair two stalls over, staring bullets into his phone screen and shaking his head in clear disgust. It said a mouthful, indeed.
Three-dot dash
• THE CUBS HAVE WON three straight series, and six of their last seven, essentially without getting any closer to the third and final National League wild-card spot. That should really be our cue to give up on this playoff pipe dream once and for all.
Not so, pitcher Justin Steele countered a few days back.
“Thirty-plus games [left] is a whole lot,” he said, “especially in this game of baseball where things are so unpredictable. Just look at the [2019] Nationals.”
Those Nats went from 12 games under .500 to World Series champions and often are cited as an example of how dramatically things can change, but they were in the top wild-card position by this date and had the NL’s third-best record. Apples, meet oranges.
. . .
• THINK 100 LOSSES before September is next to impossible? Fine, it is. But so is crashing the 40-40 club, which Dodgers megastar Shohei Ohtani did over the weekend with a walk-off grand slam. Only Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano and Ronald Acuna Jr. have gone for at least 40 homers and 40 steals in the same season — once each — and a 43-43 would be something no one has done. Ohtani will get there and beyond in his sleep. . . .
. . .
• DETROIT’S JAVY BAEZ went on the 10-day injured list with lower-back and hip trouble in between the Tigers’ series on the North and South sides, but a team source expressed doubt that the ex-Cubs star — batting a measly .184 with six homers in 80 games — will play again this season. Lots of luck dealing with Baez’s contract, which has him due another $73 million through 2027.
. . .
• FLORIDA STATE FOOTBALL got the college season off in serious style by gagging in the very first game Saturday in Dublin. The 10th-ranked Seminoles went in as double-digit favorites against unranked Georgia Tech and slunk out after a 24-21 loss that, hopefully, was a sign of months of chaos to come. Sláinte, fellas!
. . .
BLINK AND YOU’LL MISS a bunch of college games — five of them involving Big Ten teams — that will be played before Saturday. Rutgers (Howard) and Illinois (Eastern Illinois) could sip umbrella drinks all game long and win easily Thursday, but Minnesota’s home game against North Carolina is a coin flip. Michigan State and Wisconsin open Friday.
. . .
• CALL HIM “COACH SNOWFLAKE.” That would be Colorado’s Deion Sanders, who got Denver Post columnist Sean Keeler banned from asking football questions the rest of the season because of what the school called a “series of sustained, personal attacks.” In other words, Keeler doesn’t kiss the proverbial ring, and “Coach Prime” can’t take it. Weak.
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• WHAT COACH JIM HARBAUGH said after a dozen of his Chargers players got stuck on an elevator for two hours at the team hotel in Dallas: “You get in those situations, and it’s a test of wills. I was proud of each of the guys. . . . That’s a win. You feel good about yourself. You were challenged.”
Translation: “Thank God I was ironing my khakis.”