The White Sox are a quarter of the way through their season, and they have one save to show for it -- the one Brandon Eisert recorded by accident in a rain-shortened seven-inning affair.
Putting it another way: The 2025 White Sox are on pace for four saves as a team, and zero recognized in real time.
Putting it yet another way: That's at least 17 fewer saves than the 2024 White Sox collected as a team, and, as most of you will probably remember, those Sox only won 41 games.
That's how you know that what you're seeing is bad, but also weird. And, at least for the time being, it's more the latter than the former.
Since the save became an official stat in 1969, a search on Baseball-Reference.com shows that the 2025 White Sox are one of only four teams that saved just one of their first 40 games. Moreover, they're the only team that didn't play in the 1970s, when many organizations regarded bullpens as something they only needed when losing. Looking at the other three teams with one save in their first 40 games, they generally let their starter pitch until he failed, and the games they won largely overlapped with the games in which that failure never occurred.
| Team | Record | CG |
|---|---|---|
| 1972 Cardinals | 15-25 | 15 |
| 1974 Rangers | 20-20 | 20 |
| 1978 Cardinals | 14-26 | 11 |
| 2025 White Sox | 11-29 | 0 |
That said, while the White Sox stand alone in the severity of their save shortage, they haven't exactly broken the modern game. The 2016 Twins only recorded two saves through their first 40 games en route to a 59-103 record under Paul Molitor, and the decade before that, the 2007 Yankees and 2006 Nationals only collected three apiece at the three-quarter pole.
In such a case like the one we're currently watching unfold before our eyes, it usually takes a bad team -- or at least a really wobbly bullpen -- but it also requires a wacky distribution of runs. This year's Rockies show that both components are necessary, because although they have only won six games all year, they've recorded five saves.
Those 2016 Twins picked one way to steer clear of saves. They went 10-30 over their first 40 games en route to a 103-loss season under Paul Molitor, but three of those 10 victories were walk-off winners, and another was a six-inning complete game.
The White Sox have planted their flag on the other end of that spectrum. In their 11 wins, the White Sox have scored 78 runs while allowing only 20, meaning on the occasions they've been victorious, it's often been by a five-run margin.
The first two games against the Marlins this weekend have covered both fronts of this war. On Friday, the White Sox took a three-run lead in the bottom of the seventh to make it a save situation ... until Josh Rojas scored via #WILDPITCHOFFENSE in the eighth. When Eisert came out to pitch the ninth, he had no particular stat riding on the outcome except his ERA.
Then came Saturday, when the bullpen was tasked with protecting a one-run lead starting in the seventh inning, and faltered in short order. Steven Wilson lost it two batters in on a solo shot, and then Jordan Leasure took the loss on Eisert's watch in the eighth as the Marlins rallied to win, 3-1.
The end result is that the White Sox don't have anything resembling a reliable late-inning combination, but it's partially because they've played in so few games demanding one. The save opportunity that Wilson squandered was just the seventh for the White Sox all season, which is tied with six other teams for the fewest over the first 40 games since 1990.
One of those six other teams was the 2017 White Sox, but David Robertson went 5-for-6 in save opportunities during that stretch. The White Sox don't appear to have a Robertson in their ranks. The more interesting question: Would they know it if they did?
During spring training, Ethan Katz told James that some trial and error was necessary when it came to determining this year's leverage ladder, but success through matchups would perhaps yield some repeatable paths to victory.
“We’re going to be hunting matchups. We're still getting know a lot of the guys that are here and figuring out who can handle what situation. But also we want to put them in the best spot to succeed, and by doing that, we should in turn get the results that we need. But if we just throw guys out there randomly, it could get a little ugly.”
Yet with a quarter of the regular season in the books, Will Venable's postgame comments suggested no progress on this front:
"We're talking about it before the game and we're lining up some pockets and trying to put these guys in the best situations possible. It's about the matchups but it's also about how guys are throwing. We're just piecing it together day by day."
While progress hasn't been made, it's mostly due to the lack of chances. This year's White Sox went 21 days without a save opportunity at one point, and when you look at their 1-for-7 conversion rate, you'll see that most weren't determined in what most people would consider save situations. Four of them have come in the seventh inning or earlier, including Eisert's accidental save and two more situations in the past two days. Wilson was charged with the blown save in Saturday's loss, and Caleb Freeman was tagged with a "BS" on Friday for allowing a run in a game the White Sox ended up winning by four.
I suppose the fact that the White Sox are 0-for-3 in standard save situations suggests that this season wouldn't be any easier to watch if their offense provided them more late-inning leads. Sunny side up, even if Venable and Katz felt like they had a burgeoning group of cold-blooded killers lurking in the bullpen, any combination of setup men and closer would still require a lot more testing to advance beyond the theory stage.
