Things have gotten impossibly bleak for the White Sox

Photo by Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

There are a lot of bad teams in baseball right now but none of them are as deeply entrenched in the mud as the Chicago White Sox are right now.

Earlier this week, I talked about how the Houston Astros were stuck in a mighty struggle and relatively uncharted territory when compared to the lofty standard that they’ve set as a franchise. While being in the mud may be a bit of a new development for the Astros, one team that is used to experiencing this lowly position in baseball life is the Chicago White Sox.

We’re talking about a franchise that won two World Series titles in 1906 and 1917 before proceeding to spend the rest of the 20th century rarely even coming close to winning another one. Once the planets aligned and they finally did lift the Commissioner’s Trophy all the way in the distant future of 2005, even then they had to suffer the ignominy of “The Worldwide Leader” forgetting that it actually happened — twice. That’s not to mention the fact that their American League Pennant win and subsequent World Series appearance in 1919 is still to this day is arguably the most infamous piece of corruption in baseball history.

The Chicago White Sox have known mostly agony and distress for their existence as a Major League Baseball club and yet somehow they hadn’t reached the nadir until this year in 2024. Last night, the White Sox took one more punch to the gut as they suffered a heartbreaking walk-off loss at the hands of their hated crosstown rivals in that old den on the North Side. While that alone would’ve been a tough pill to swallow at any given point in the local rivalry between the White Sox and the Cubs, the loss in particular was a historic one for the Pale Hose. They’ve now lost 13 straight games, which is tied for the second-longest streak in franchise history and is also tied for the longest single-season losing streak in club history.

It’s not like this is just a skid, either — they were 15-34 when this streak started and have gone 3-17 in their last 20 games. This isn’t a bad run of form, this isn’t a skid, it’s not a run of bad luck. This is the White Sox habitat. This is where the White Sox live. This is their home. While they’ve still got a puncher’s chance of snapping this losing streak tonight against the Red Sox, it would not be shocking at all if they went ahead and set the franchise record for the longest losing streak in a single season once the action is done tonight. They’re completely adrift at the moment — sure, they can compete and put up a good fight like they did against the Cubs and for the better part of their road series this past weekend against the Brewers but it just rarely all comes together in their favor for a victory.

The series against the Brewers was also when this streak started to veer into the realm of absurdist comedy. Not only are these White Sox on track to be dreadfully bad but they also have one of the most colorful characters in baseball on their squad in the form of Tommy Pham. If you’re going to blame anybody for this team being bad, Pham’s going to be near the bottom of any given list. Pham has made a career out of being one of those glue guys who can be productive when needed while also playing as hard as he can and making the most of every chance he gets to be a regular contributor. The 2023 National League Pennant winners will tell you all about him.

Conversely, he’s also also a big-time hothead who has had multiple instances of getting truculent with other players and even fans for reasons ranging from “somewhat understandable” to “it really ain’t that serious, big dog.” Perhaps this moment on Sunday when he got thrown out at home by a mile while trying to score on a sacrifice fly could be placed somewhere in the middle of that range.

What ended up making this moment an infamous one was that Pham apparently didn’t appreciate what Brewers catcher William Contreras was saying after the play and that set him off on his path to getting ejected. Pham was predictably still heated after the game and these postgame comments were incredibly interesting in their own right, for multiple reasons:

The literal fighting words might have been worthy of the headlines on their own but it was very interesting that Pham seemed to imply that he disagreed with Third Base Coach Eddie Rodriguez’s decision to send him home. While it’s never really a good look to have players publicly questioning the managers or the coaching staff, it’s becoming something of a theme for the White Sox and their big league operation. This is the same organization that got publicly blasted by Kenyan Middleton shortly after he got traded. Lance Lynn was traded out of town after being there since 2021 and basically corroborated everything that Middleton said. You don’t get rumors like the one involving Yasmani Grandal and Tim Anderson from last season if everything is all good with your clubhouse instead of being chaotic and conducive to failure.

Yet failure continues to follow the White Sox. Pedro Grifol’s tenure as manager of the White Sox has been disastrous so far and this was coming after Tommy La Russa was inexplicably given the job back in 2021 and managed to oversee a Postseason appearance (that now feels like it happened 13 years ago instead of three years ago) before the wheels came off for him in the following season. They finally got rid of the ineffective front office duo of Executive Vice President Kenny Williams and General Manager Rick Hahn this past offseason before seemingly undercutting that decision by hiring and promoting Chris Getz as their successor from within. This franchise desperately needs new ideas and new direction as it is abundantly clear at this point that the path that they’re going down likely won’t result in the White Sox having a chance to win a future World Series that won’t get forgotten.

However, the chances of any type of new direction or ideas coming to the Chicago White Sox seem as if they’re fluctuating between “slim” and “none.” As long as team owner Jerry Reinsdorf seems dedicated to the status quo with his on-field product (while also openly flirting with the City of Nashville in an effort to try to convince the local government to part with a billion dollars for a new stadium on the South Side), we’re probably not going to see any type of serious change when it comes to the White Sox. Ownership plays a decent-sized role in the success of any given sports team and sadly for White Sox fans, the rot for this franchise goes straight to the top.

While the Chicago White Sox may not be the most embarrassing organization in Major League Baseball right now (they have John Fisher and his increasingly slapdash attempt to move the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas to thank for that), I’m sure that’s very little comfort for White Sox fans at the moment. It’s a truly dire situation for the White Sox, as they can’t even dream about highly-rated prospects coming up since they only have the 20th-best farm system according to MLB Pipeline, they only got the fifth overall pick in the 2024 Draft Lottery for their troubles in 2023 and won’t be able to pick any lower than 10th in the 2025 draft because they don’t receive revenue sharing as a “large-market team.”

So yeah, it’s a rough situation for the White Sox right now and there are no real indications that things are going to get better for them in the near future. If you’re reading this and you personally know someone who is a White Sox fan, please be nice to them about their team and their struggles. If you’re a White Sox fan yourself reading this, then I don’t know what to tell you, chief! Good luck?