We called the White Sox "Baseball Roanoke" and "Baseball Chernobyl" as they oozed toward the modern MLB record for losses in a season in 2024, but those comparisons only go so far. After Roanoke became the Lost Colony, the English didn't try settling Virginia for nearly 20 years. The nuclear meltdown closed the area around Chernobyl for 25 years before opening to tourists on disaster junkets, but it won't be habitable for a couple more centuries at the earliest.
Comparing apples to apples, the only major league team to accrue more losses in one season than the 2024 White Sox never played another game afterward.
The 1899 Cleveland Spiders went 20-134 in what turned out to be their final year of existence, and that's because their owner assured their demise. Stanley Robinson owned both the Spiders and the St. Louis Perfectos, and he laid the obvious conflict of interest bare by channeling all of his valuable Cleveland resources, including their best players and some home games, to his other National League outfit shortly before the season. The Spiders were outscored by 723 runs while drawing an average of 145 fans per game, and they were dissolved after the season.
What I'm basically trying to say is that the White Sox shouldn't be playing this year.
You can argue among yourselves over the method -- run out of town? formally disbanded? containment sarcophagus constructed over Rate Field before the EPA is formally disbanded? -- but the laws of rational markets and nature would dictate that what we witnessed last year shouldn't be allowed to continue. However, Major League Baseball is an irrational market, a cartel that needs an even number of teams to operate, so the White Sox will be tasked with remediating the disaster in front of paying customer.
It'd be one thing if the White Sox made like the Tigers after their 119-loss 2003 season and attempted to reverse the slide with increased spending, because that would tangibly represent a desire to improve and a reason to believe. Here, the Sox nearly halved their payroll, with FanGraphs' accounting estimating a reduction from $150 million in 2024 to $82 million in 2025. That's not the behavior of a team that is desperate to dodge dissolution.
Nor is Chris Getz clearing the field for an undeniable prospect wave. The White Sox entered the 2024 season with seven positions languishing in the bottom five of the FanGraphs' Positional Power Rankings. This year, they have eight of them.
| Position | 2024 pre | 2024 end | 2025 pre |
|---|---|---|---|
| C | 29th | 30th | 26th |
| 1B | 22nd | 26th | 27th |
| 2B | 30th | 22nd | 29th |
| 3B | 19th | 30th | 19th |
| SS | 28th | 26th | 30th |
| LF | 23rd | 29th | 26th |
| CF | 5th | 28th | 11th |
| RF | 28th | 29th | 23rd |
| DH | 7th | 25th* | 27th |
| SP | 27th | 24th | 29th |
| RP | 30th | 28th | 30th |
| Total | 28th | 30th | 29th |
Given this forecast, it was noteworthy that Getz couldn't immediately bring himself to predict a better record with his chest. At the beginning of spring training, he said, "I do think we're going to win more games than we did last year." It took Jon Greenberg supplying him the words to form it into something closer to a promise:
Can you confidently say you’ll win more games than you did last year?
I can confidently say we’re going to win more games than we did last year.
Any hope for a more watchable product lies with the Sox making marginal gains, which isn't new. Getz advertised fundamental improvements in 2024, too. The only difference is that the coaching staff is now his idea. "I'm not going to let my manager die on the vine until Jerry allows me to fire him this time!" would be welcome candor, but it's short of a rallying cry that translates into wins.
And things have to start translating into wins, or at least successes. That can take a number of shapes outside of the record, like seeing all the talk about seam effects and improved receiving translate into No. 5 pitchers becoming No. 3 starters, or a couple of journeymen outfielders becoming comfortable starters or an above-average platoon, or more sophisticated information resulting in better plate discipline or defensive positioning.
Basically, it's time for the Getz administration to provide proof of concepts and justify the playing of the games. His White Sox can't afford a third straight year of braining themselves on the lowest of bars. Sure, they technically can persist as a major league franchise because of the requirements of the greater enterprise, but when it's already hard enough to watch them due to CHSN's launch issues, they can't give fans any more incentive to tune them out.
