In a poignant update, the Chicago white sox vs tigers have secured their place in Major League Baseball lore as the definitive rulers of misfortune. With a staggering 121st loss this season, the White Sox have now cemented their status as the most defeated team in modern baseball history. This disheartening milestone was reached during a 4-1 defeat against the Detroit Tigers on Friday night.
White Sox pitcher Garrett Crochet demonstrated commendable restraint, maintaining a stalemate white sox vs tigers for four innings. However, the tide turned dramatically in the fifth inning after his departure. Reliever Jared Shuster faltered, allowing Detroit to score two runs, shattering the scoreless standoff. Although the Tigers later added two more runs in the seventh, Zach DeLoach’s solo home run in the sixth marked the lone score for the beleaguered White Sox.
This defeat marks a grim milestone, breaking the previous record held by the 1962 New York Mets, who concluded their inaugural season with a dismal 40-120 record. Manager Casey Stengel famously lamented at the time, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”—a question that could equally apply to the struggling 2024 White Sox.
Currently standing at 39-121, the Chicago team has endured punishing losing streaks of 21, 14, and 12 games this season. The most prolonged of these slumps led to the dismissal of manager Pedro Grifol in early August. The White Sox had hoped to evade such notorious notoriety, yet they further compromised their roster by trading away key players such as pitchers Erick Fedde and Michael Kopech, along with outfielders Eloy Jimenez and Tommy Pham, just before the trade deadline on July 30.
As of Friday’s contest, the White Sox languish at the bottom of the league in several critical statistics, including runs scored (3.1 per game), batting average (.221), on-base percentage (.279), and slugging percentage (.340). Moreover, their pitching staff holds the highest team ERA in the American League at 4.71, only trailing the Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies for the most dismal figures in the majors.
Earlier this week, the White Sox managed to stave off solitary infamy by sweeping the Los Angeles Angels; however, they could not avoid their historic 121st loss. “Winning three in a row gave us a glimmer of hope that maybe we could turn this around,” reflected Gavin Sheets of the White Sox. “Yet here we are, on the wrong side of history. It stings more than I anticipated.”
While the White Sox nursed their wounds on Friday night, the Tigers reveled in a more auspicious kind of history: securing their first playoff berth in a decade. Unfortunately for the White Sox, two more games this weekend loom ahead, potentially adding to their record of losses. Notably, the one team they will not eclipse is the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who finished their season with a calamitous record of 20-134, yielding a woeful winning percentage of .130.
