Shame, your name is White Sox. After the twentieth defeat in a row, we are past the point of shame

It was another day and another loss for the Chicago White Sox, but there was something extra special about Sunday’s loss.

Sunday’s loss, a routine 13-7 defeat to the Minnesota Twins, marked their twentieth straight – a nice round number to give this franchise the national stage it deserves. No team had lost 20 in a row since the 1988 Baltimore Orioles, who lost 21 in a row.

In Chicago we are used to the White Sox losing. It’s kind of their thing. But 20 in a row? We’re past the point of shame.

In Chicago we were focused on the fact that the Sox were on pace to break the Mets’ 1962 modern record of 120 losses, but now we’re at the point where they would break the Philadelphia Phillies’ 1961 record of 23 losses. can surpass. outright defeats.

Shame, your name is White Sox.

On NBC Sports Chicago’s beloved, painfully honest postgame show Sunday, host Chuck Garfien rattled off some well-known insult statistics.

“Twentieth loss in a row, forty games ago, 1-12 against Minnesota,” he said. “I could go on with this all day, 1-12 against Kansas City…”

That’s when Frank Thomas interrupted. Thomas, of course, is the biggest player in franchise history and a semi-regular co-host of the show. As a hitter, Thomas was a stickler for details. He also wanted it to be accurate in this show.

“Sixty games under .500,” he said. “Under. Sixty games.”

Then Garfien realized his mistake. The loss dropped the White Sox to 27-87. Talk about a big pain.

“Sixty games,” he said. “I said it was 40 games under .500.”

With a bit of theatrical flourish, he threw his stack of papers onto the carpet.

“It’s 60 games under .500!” Garfien shouted before sitting back down in his chair.

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That’s when Ozzie Guillen, Garfien’s daily co-host and the team’s World Series-winning manager, brought up the statistic I recently came up with: If you take away the Sox’ two franchise-record losing streaks, they have still the worst record in history. basketball.

Look, it’s one thing to be the worst team in baseball in one season. After all, someone has to do it. But add to that a fourteen-game losing streak and a twenty-game losing streak (and counting), and it makes them a contender for the worst baseball team in modern history. A laugh for all ages.

The ’62 Mets were an expansion team with a certain sense of quirkiness. They had Marvelous Marv Throneberry and Casey Stengel. Jimmy Breslin’s book: “Can’t Nobody Here Play This Game?” was a classic and seven years later the Amazin’ Mets were world champions.

But the White Sox have been around since 1901. Their franchise record for losses is 106, which should be eclipsed before Labor Day. The rebuild that would bring several championship parades to Chicago is long over.

Two years after the Sox won 93 games and the AL Central, they hit what we thought was rock bottom. That was last year when they lost 101 games and Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf made the move that none of us saw coming by firing his old front office duo of Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. Reinsdorf promised a quick turnaround behind new general manager Chris Getz. No one believed Jerry then, because why would they? He no longer has the trust of the fans, not after all these years.

For some reason – okay, money – the team retained manager Pedro Grifol, whose managerial record is currently 88-188. But he’s been a dead manager all season, and after the trade deadline passed, the focus quickly shifted to his job status. It almost seems cruel that Getz and Reinsdorf haven’t fired Grifol yet. Maybe they’re waiting for him to win a match so he can go out at a high level.

“That means Pedro is 100 games under .500 since he got the job,” Guillen said. “Whoa, whoa boy.”

Ozzie is currently having an existential crisis on the Postgame Show pic.twitter.com/5eCUlirBgI

— White Sox Talk (@NBCSWhiteSox) August 4, 2024

Guillen, who led the Sox to their 2005 World Series victory, said he needs to see a psychologist because he has been angrier and sadder than usual lately. The reason?

“I don’t think I was that bad of a manager, but they chose Pedro over me,” Guillen said with a laugh during the show.

After Tony La Russa resigned in 2022 due to health concerns, Guillen was given a symbolic interview for the open job, which he gave away in 2011. Guillen wanted this job back for years, but the previous regime of Williams and Hahn did not want that. “I don’t want him back and they weren’t going to hire him two years ago. I agreed with them, but only because the organization needs to move forward, not backward.

Guillen added, “I swear to God, when Rick Hahn called me and told me I didn’t have the job, he said, ‘We found the next Ozzie Guillen.'”

While Hahn tried to compliment Grifol, Guillen, who went 678-617 (.524) in eight seasons, certainly doesn’t like the comparison now. But I bet he gets a kick out of how bad the Sox are without him.

Many fans want Guillen to replace Grifol immediately if the team fires him, but why would he want that headache? If I were one of the coaches on Grifol’s staff, I wouldn’t want to take the job either. You don’t want to have to answer questions about this team twice a day this season.

Now, in what could be his final days in office, Grifol took some time to do what many failed coaches and managers do in a Reinsdorf regime: kiss the boss.

“I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again,” Grifol said, according to the Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. “This is taken out of context and somehow it gets twisted over and over again to how people want to perceive it. Jerry’s a winner, okay? He is an absolute winner. He is a competitor. No, he is not satisfied. Who is?”

People have funny definitions of what makes someone a winner, especially if they work for a perennial loser.

The Bulls have been under .500 since their de facto, outright winner, Michael Jordan, retired in 1998. The Sox have made the postseason only seven times in Reinsdorf’s 44 years as owner. The 2005 playoffs were the only time they won a series, and 2020 and 2021 were the only years they reached the playoffs in consecutive seasons.

But Grifol speaks to an audience of one, even as he continues to dangle.

If the Sox are swept in Oakland this week, they could break the ’61 Phillies record at home against the Cubs on Friday. The atmosphere will be somewhere between funereal and riotous.

I can’t imagine Grifol being on the top step for that. How could you do that to him? How can you insult the intelligence of the fans by keeping him around?

It’s a terrible situation for everyone, but this doesn’t just apply to Grifol, although he’s certainly guilty of making a bad situation worse.

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While he focused on building the farm system, Getz tried to add some defense to last year’s lackluster fielding team to make the Major League product more palatable, but he failed in a very public manner. The core hitters who are always injured were surprisingly re-injured early in the season (Yoán Moncada has played only eleven games and is in the top 10 on the team for bWAR), and the season fell off the rails with a 3-22 start . The starting pitching has certainly been solid, and Getz and his staff have solidified the organization’s pitching vision.

That’s all part of the benefit of losing: It allows a front office to improve an organization, sometimes quite quickly. That was the plan after the 2016 season, and it worked until it didn’t. But Getz’s moves were widely reported at his first trade deadline, and new baseball rules limit the Sox to the 10th pick in next year’s draft.

Money will become a problem. The Sox are once again experiencing a decline in attendance, and their TV broadcasts, which were a highlight for the team, are now considered the worst in baseball. The team’s deal with NBC Sports Chicago is set to expire and a new RSN (in partnership with the Bulls and Blackhawks) will debut this fall.

It will be a long road back to respectability. At least there are the TV pre- and postgame shows, which were as unfailingly honest and critical as Sunday. Those shows, the Campfire Milkshake and pitching in the minors are all the organization has to offer.

The White Sox lose and lose and lose, and they’ve practiced so much that now they might be the best to ever do it.

(Photo of Nicky Lopez reacting to Sunday’s loss: David Berding/Getty Images)