The Woeful White Sox
Off the bat (pun intended), I would just like to say “thank you” to each of you that takes the time to read these pieces in part or in their entirety. I do love writing about baseball, and will continue to even when all four of you stop reading, but to those of you who text me or talk to me about what I write—it makes my day every single time. So again, and a million times over, thank you for supporting my little blog. Now, let’s get into the baseball.
As I am writing this, the Yankees and Dodgers have punched their tickets to the World Series, and Game 1 is tomorrow night. This postseason has already been one of the best that I can remember (and if you want to live through some of the games with me, you can follow me on Twitter @abaseballblog, I will definitely follow you back) and we are getting a matchup of the two best teams in MLB. Four of the ten best players in the game will all be on the biggest stage, representing the two teams with the biggest fanbases who have spent the most money to be the best. This is what every baseball fan should want. If you’re upset that your team didn’t spend as much as the Yankees or the Dodgers and you feel like that’s unfair, just remember that the billionaire that owns your team could spend as much as the Yankees and the Dodgers—and probably more—but they choose not to. And in honor of some of the best baseball of the year, I want to contextualize some of it for y’all by taking a look back at the single worst season of baseball that has happened in my lifetime.
Since 1998, the worst team in baseball, and one of the worst teams of all time, is the 2024 Chicago White Sox. That’s right! One of the worst teams of all time was playing baseball a month ago! And this team was not just regular bad, they were truly historically awful. In this article, we are only going to be looking at their offensive statistics, because they were truly abysmal. For the purposes of evaluating just how bad they are, I’m going to begin with a statistic called “WAR.” For those of you with regular lives and hobbies, WAR stands for “Wins Above Replacement” and is a basic value measure of a baseball player that takes into account their contributions offensively and defensively. In other words, the number of additional wins a team would accrue with a player over that of a replacement-level player, defined as a player who a team can add with minimal effort or cost. A general scale for understanding the statistic: negative WAR is very bad, 0-1 WAR is a bench player, 1-2 WAR is a below average regular, 2-3 WAR is an average starter, 3-4 WAR is a good player, 4-5 WAR is an All-Star, 5-6 WAR is a fantastic season, 6+ WAR is someone who might be among the top players in baseball. This year, just 11 players earned 6 or more WAR according to Baseball Reference and only 7 players accrued between 5 and 6 WAR.
One important thing to consider with WAR is that it is a counting statistic, meaning the more games you play, the more likely it is that your WAR will be higher than a player who doesn’t play as many games. Every game gives you additional chances to add or subtract value for your team. Of the 739 position players (non-pitchers) who accrued WAR this season, the lowest was Brandon Drury, who amassed -2 WAR in just 97 games for the Angels (which is its own impressive level of suck) and the highest was Aaron Judge, who amassed a whopping 10.8 WAR—an insane level of production. The most average player in MLB this year? Jake Cronenworth, who gave the Padres 2 WAR in 155 of 162 games. As for teams, the Dodgers led the pack with 39.6 WAR (thanks in large part to my favorite player, Shohei Ohtani and his 9.2 WAR) and you already know who was in last, the Chicago White Sox.
In 2024, the Chicago White Sox were the only team to produce negative WAR. They ended up with -6.8 WAR on their way to lose an unfathomable 141 games. Their final record on the year was 21 wins and 141 losses. For those of you who aren’t into baseball, there is a rule of thumb that every team will win 50 games, and every team will lose 50 games, it’s the other 62 that will decide whether you’re a good team or not. Did that rule hold up this year? Well, the next worst team, the Colorado Rockies lost just 101 games. 40 fewer games than the 2024 White Sox. The best team in baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers, won 98 games this year. The gap between the White Sox and the Rockies (40 games) is larger than the gap between the Rockies and the Dodgers (37 games). Yes, you read that right. The difference between the best team and the second-worst team is SMALLER than the gap between the second-worst team and the worst team. The chart below shows the losses for every team this year, and the White Sox stick out like a sore thumb. If the 2024 season were analogous to a science experiment, the White Sox sucked so bad that we now have to rethink physics. Time stopped, gravity turned off, and the world stopped spinning.
Over their 162 game season, the White Sox averaged 3.1 runs per game. The next worst was the Tampa Bay Rays, who averaged 3.7 runs per game. But over the course of the season, that allowed the Rays to go 80-82. They won 59 more games than the White Sox. To achieve this level of awful, the entire roster had to do a lot of work to be so bad. The most valuable player on their team by WAR was Luis Robert Jr., a 26-year old outfielder who played just 100 games and produced 1.4 WAR. If he had played all 162 games and kept that pace, he would have produced about 2.3 WAR. If the best player on the White Sox played a full season, he would have been average. Every. Single. Other. Player. Produced less than 1 WAR. Take a look:
Of the 28 position players that appeared for the White Sox this year, just 12 of them managed to produce more than 0 WAR. That is awful. Remember 0 WAR represents a player that a team can pick up off of the scrap heap. The White Sox managed to turn in 16 different players who wouldn’t even belong at the top of the scrap heap. Oh, and number 25 on that list above, Andrew Benintendi, just got the biggest contract that the team has ever offered a free agent. They signed him to a five-year, $75 million contract at the beginning of 2023. Yikes. That’s a lot of money to spend on a player who puts up negative WAR.
I still feel like I haven’t quite contextualized how bad this team has been. So, let’s look at every season played by every MLB team since I’ve been alive. From 1998 until 2024, 30 teams have played 27 seasons each worth of baseball. That works out to 810 team seasons. The best team was the 2001 Seattle Mariners, they won a record 116 games with one of the most talented rosters in the history of the game. Their offense produced an incredible 50.4 WAR, over 10 wins better than the best team from this year. If you’re curious, the 2024 Dodgers are the third best team by WAR in my lifetime. Of the 810 seasons, the 2024 White Sox are the worst. Number 810 out of 810. The only team that is even in the ballpark (another pun) of suck is the 2019 Detroit Tigers, who put up -6.1 WAR on their way to lose 114 games. The third worst team, the 2010 Pittsburg Pirates, did not even manage -1 WAR. Only 5 out of the 810 teams managed to put up negative WAR over the course of a season.
Looking at this chart, it is unreal to see two things: first, oh my word the 2001 Mariners were insane; second, the tail end of that graph goes into the negatives in a profound way. When we look at just the 100 worst teams, the picture gets a little more clear, and a lot worse for the White Sox.
Even more incredibly, in THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF BASEBALL, only 128 teams have managed to produced 0 or fewer WAR. The 2024 White Sox are the 123rd team on this list. Only five teams in the history of the game have been worse than the 2024 White Sox.
This was a bad, bad year for the White Sox. And unfortunately for them, their owner is unlikely to spend in the upcoming offseason to improve the team at all. And with most bad teams, their fans can take some solace in knowing that their players are young and are likely to improve in the upcoming years. For example, the Oakland Athletics, who I wrote about for the first post of this blog, have an average age of just 26.5! That’s the fourth youngest roster in baseball. The White Sox, on the other hand, have an average age of 27.8, which puts them right in the middle of the pack of the 30 teams. This team is not going to get better, and with the fourth worst attendance in baseball this year, their management group isn’t going to be spending a lot of money.
For those of you who want to see how bad this team has been, here’s a great video of their low-lights from this year. It’s a tough watch, but hey, at least you’re (probably) not a White Sox fan.
