SAN DIEGO — The White Sox will all but certainly go down in history as the worst team in baseball history. The only question is, just how low will they set the bar?
With games remaining Saturday and Sunday against the Padres, three against the Angels at home and three at the Tigers to close out the season next weekend, a handful of losses for a team that entered its game against the Padres Saturday with a 36-118 record should be expected.
The 118 defeats through Friday are the third-most by any team in the modern era. The 1962 Mets own the major league record with 120 defeats and the 2003 Tigers have the American League record with 119.
“I never thought I’d see this record broken in my lifetime, but here it is,” said former Mets pitcher Craig Anderson, 86, one of the surviving members from the 1962 team who is paying close attention. “We’ll see what happens.”
There’s a significant difference between the Sox and the ’62 Mets, an expansion team that had been welcomed with open arms in New York five years after the Giants left for San Francisco. Mets fans had low expectations and loved their team through the last day of the season, when most of the players went on the field holding a “We love you too, Mets fans!” sign, Anderson recalled.
Nothing like that is expected to happen after the Sox’ home finale against the Tigers Thursday. Sox players know where they stand with the fans, who are taking out their anger against ownership and management but are offering players little in the way of hugs.
Fans are up in arms over how far the Sox have sunk since they took the Central Division with 93 wins in 2021, posting winning records in every month.
Most players know what the record is but it’s not a topic of conversation among them.
“In the clubhouse it isn’t talked about at all,” Gavin Sheets said. “At his point, if we’re one game short of the record is it more of a success than breaking the record? Honestly, no. One hundred twenty losses or 122, there’s not a level of success from one to the other. In here it’s how do we get this behind us and what do we learn from it and make sure it never happens again.”
Former manager Pedro Grifol, who was fired on Aug. 8 when the Sox were 28-89, knows there is a personal side to the failure that can get lost.
“These guys try and you know, you’re there [with them in spirit],” Grifol said Friday. “And they hurt when they don’t get it done. Those players are good people, the Gavin Sheets’ and Andrew Vaughns. They’re just good people.”
Good people who collectively might not muster enough to win 40 games. The Sox were 0-3 in March, 6-21 in April, 9-19 in May and June, 3-22 in July, 4-22 in August and were 5-12 in September through Friday.
A 21-game losing streak that was broken shortly before Grifol was fired was the low point.
“You come out expecting to lose,” Sheets said of that staggering run that covered 26 days. “You got media all over and all this attention that we really didn’t need that was on us. An extremely difficult time. We’ve come a long way since then. It’s always a grind but this was uncharted territory for anybody since the Mets, you know? It’s something we’ll say we’ve done together, and we’ve really hung in there as clubhouse together.”
All for one and one for all, for better or worse. Probably worse than anyone — any day now.