The 2024 White Sox can flush a bowl full of toilet wine, because with the Rockies winning their 42nd game of the season on Friday night, they still stand alone as the losingest team in modern MLB history.
Given that members of last year's team are still active and scattered around the league, it'll probably be a decade until they can gather and do whatever is the opposite of popping open a bottle of champagne, but should they hold this title as long as the 1962 Mets did, it will eventually be a (de)feat worth commemorating in one aspect or another, for the 2025 Rockies proved just how difficult it is to lose as often as the White Sox did the season before.
On paper, this year's Rockies should've worsted last year's White Sox, because they possessed important edges. Those White Sox started the season 6-24 through April, but the Rockies were 5-25. While those White Sox "improved" to 15-43 through May, these Rockies still languished at 9-49. Those White Sox finished the season with a staggering -308 run differential, yet that's nearly 100 runs better than the deficit these Rockies are currently running.
And still the White Sox devailed. What's more, it didn't even come down to the final week, because the Rockies just didn't have what it takes.
As I tracked Colorado's trajectory, two things stood out:
No. 1: They lacked the knack for losing weeks at a time. While the White Sox posted losing streaks of 14, 21 and 12 games over the course of the 2024 schedule, the Rockies' longest skids topped out at eight. Sure, they did that five times, with four of them coming over the first two months of the season, but that brings me to the fact that ...
No. 2: They fired their manager early. At least early in the season. Bud Black carried a streak of six consecutive losing seasons into this one, so nobody would call the Monforts proactive. Still, the Rockies switched managers when they were 7-33, and since handing the reins to Warren Schaeffer, they're 35-79. That's still awful, but that's 50-win awful, which makes them vastly overqualified for this discussion.
As the Rockies started closing the gap, I realized that when it came to setting the record, Pedro Grifol is the one who made it possible. His presence, necessitated by Jerry Reinsdorf, was vital for creating the conditions for meeting the Mets, then passing them by. If the 2024 White Sox turned losing into an art form, then Grifol was Piero Manzoni.
It's not that Grifol was solely responsible for going 41-121, or that he was the worst tactician ever, or that he's alone in taking the keys to the clubhouse and promptly dropping them down a sewer grate. He's far from the first manager to be immediately overwhelmed by the task, and he won't be the last.
Except all of that was revealed during Grifol's first season, in which an ostensibly contending White Sox team lost 101 games, and the only culture Grifol could develop teemed with bacteria. If Reinsdorf fired Grifol at the same time he axed Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn, or at least let his new GM make the decision after the conclusion of a year that went sideways, Grifol would've been allowed to depart with some pride intact. The front office had reasons for moving on, and the firings of the chief decision-makers afforded Grifol some cover, as he could say he assumed an impossible position.
But because Reinsdorf's brand of loyalty prevents leaders from leaving with a measure of dignity, Grifol was left to be inherited by Getz, who did not exactly sell the public on his return. When Getz was asked during his introductory press conference why Grifol would remain as manager, Getz started his tepid defense by saying Grifol "had to wear a lot of hats this year." When asked what that meant, he could only count one hat.
From that point forward, it became increasingly evident that Grifol was a less a manager, and more of a preexisting condition that Getz chose not to manage. Maybe Getz didn't intend on making the White Sox the losingest team ever, but he sounded surprisingly untroubled as his team trudged toward that destination. Part of it was that as long as he wasn't allowed to fire Grifol, the only rage he could've expressed would've been an impotent one. The other part is that the losing, while extreme, served as means to an end. After all, why go through the efforts of propping up a manager if the reward is being stuck with him for one more season?
It just happened to get out of hand when the White Sox tied the American League record with 21 consecutive losses. Grifol's seat had reached a boiling point and Getz was publicly passing on chances to offer votes of confidence well before he was actually fired, but the White Sox didn't want to contaminate a fresh start for Grady Sizemore by having him inherit a double-digit skid.
Alas, the White Sox kept losing. Only after they beat Oakland 5-1 on Aug. 6 and then lost to them the following day, did Getz have his opportunity to restructure the dugout.
Now, it's not like the Sox immediately rebounded to respectability under Sizemore. They finished the year 13-32, so while Grifol was terminated with the worst winning percentage for a White Sox manager regardless of games managed at .319, he no longer sports that particular blemish. The team was terrible, and given that they're on track to lose 100 games for a third consecutive season even with Will Venable in charge, it's probably premature to refer to "terrible" in the past tense.
But while Sizemore's .289 winning percentage is abysmal, his tenure was still viewed internally as a more palatable experience, if not an actually more successful one. More to the point, it still translates to a 46-116 over an entire season.The team had less talent than it did before the All-Star break, and Sizemore was barely a coach when he was asked to manage, but sometimes change for change's sake is a winning strategy, or at least a less losing one. Had the White Sox opted for it at any point before Aug. 8, the 1962 Mets still might be the absence-of-standard-bearers today
As easy as the 2024 White Sox made it look, it turns out it's really, really hard to lose 121 games in a season, at least without going the route of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders and undertaking tanking measures so egregious that they are outlawed soon afterward. Under conventional measures, I'm not sure how last year's Sox will be bottomed anytime soon. The Rockies had nothing going for them and took their worst shot, and they still came up long.
