The Colorado Rockies have lost three in a row, but they won seven of nine before this recent skid, which will make it next to impossible to break the White Sox's record for most losses in an MLB season, or even tie it. Simply finishing the rest of the season 5-27 would be enough to avoid ignominy.
But the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team which has beaten the Rockies the last two nights, are on track to undermine last year's White Sox team in a different way. As FanGraphs' Jay Jaffe notes, the Pirates are flirting with the possibility of not having even one league-average hitter, regardless of how much playing time he has accrued.
Yet it turns out the Pirates are chasing history, albeit in an under-the-radar and unflattering way. They’re in danger of becoming the first AL or NL team since the start of the 20th century to finish the season without a single hitter producing at a league-average level or better.
I don’t mean “without a single regular,” though depending upon how we define that term, that’s on the table as well. I mean anybody who’s stepped up to the plate while wearing the Pirates’ black and gold this season.
The White Sox managed to avoid this particular title, although it's easy to imagine a world in which they made it happen when considering the players that spared them that fate. They traded Tommy Pham before his late-season slide, so while he posted an 84 wRC+ with the Cardinals and 60 with the Royals, his 104 wRC+ with the White Sox was already secure. But even if Pham's decline set in a little earlier, they still locked in Moncada's 116 wRC+ by limiting him to one 12th-inning pinch-hit appearance at the end of the season for seemingly punitive reasons.
Pham once again finds himself standing in history's way this season. He started the weekend against Colorado going 3-for-9 with a homer, double and a walk over the first two games, so he's lifted his wRC+ to 102 for the time being. Perhaps that's his job now, roaming the country in search of a team desperate for a non-terrible bat, and thus willing to tolerate at least one goofy on-field confrontation.
For those who are curious, the White Sox have a whopping eight players who meet that criteria now ...
- Corey Julks, 175
- Mike Tauchman, 123
- Colson Montgomery, 120
- Kyle Teel, 118
- Edgar Quero, 106
- Matt Thaiss, 104
- Lenyn Sosa, 102
- Omar Narváez, 100
... and a majority of them are supposed to be part of the bigger picture going forward. That's another one of the ways that the 2025 season feels so much more professional, even if the record fails to reflect improvement that propels them out of the ranks of the abysmal.
Spare Parts
While Mark Buehrle has received plenty of laurels over the last month, one of the things that went underheralded was his willingness to catch ceremonial first pitches, which he almost always did during White Sox home games when he wasn't pitching. Carson Fulmer is that guy for the Angels, who haven't had a designated first pitch catcher since Hector Santiago. Besides being old friends, humility is a common thread.
Zack Wheeler underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from his right shoulder, and he's expected to undergo surgery for his venous thoracic outlet syndrome, which caused the clot. It's a major blow to the Phillies, as Wheeler was having yet another season deserving of Cy Young consideration.
While Aaron Civale made a veiled critique of Kyle Teel's pitch-calling when discussing Royce Lewis' grand slam on Friday, Lewis offered some pointed criticism of his own situation in Minnesota before the game.
“It’s also hard to make a full in-season adjustment because you can try that, and those 30 games or at-bats of trial go toward your stats,” Lewis said. “Do you really want to sacrifice that? And if it doesn’t work, then you go back to what you were doing before. It’s always hard. I know (Michael) Harris (II) just did a significant change. Being under contract probably helps because he knows what he’s making that year and the year after. For someone like me, I’m fighting (to take) care of myself and my family. I don’t want to put any of those stats in jeopardy. I’m trying to do what’s best as fast as possible. But feeling like I’ve been on an island, it’s kind of tough.”
Hurston Waldrep was the last pitcher to truly subdue the White Sox offense, throwing seven shutout innings with ease in the series finale in Atlanta on Wednesday. But he did the same thing to the Guardians over six innings the start before, and for that matter, he's only allowed two runs over 24⅔ innings all season. Here's Mario Delgado Genzor with a thorough explanation of how his arsenal works.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and in this case, the Astros signed Craig Kimbrel fresh off his release from the Rangers' Triple-A squad because Josh Hader is out, and Bennett Sousa also hit the injured list with elbow inflammation.
