You know the Chicago White Sox are bad. They defeated the Oakland Athletics on Wednesday to end a 21-game losing streak, tied for the second-longest by any MLB team since 1900.
But even removing Chicago’s recent skid, its 2024 winning percentage would still be just .295—the fourth worst in the past 50 years, and last in the big leagues by an enormous margin. The Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies are tied for second worst at .368.
Overall, the White Sox are on pace for MLB’s worst regular-season record in more than a century. Yet their troubles are concentrated on one aspect of their roster.
While you don’t have a 28-88 record without pitching struggles, the White Sox’s team ERA of 4.84 isn’t an outlier; the Colorado Rockies’ is worse this year, and four teams exceeded 5.00 in 2023.
Their batting, however, is miserable. Chicago’s 3.09 runs per game are the lowest in the past 50 years of MLB. The White Sox are scoring 1.33 fewer runs per game than the average club, with the second-largest gap since 1974 belonging to the 2019 Tigers at 1.22.
Chicago’s bats are dormant most of the time, but they disappear completely when the stakes are highest. The team has mustered just 0.85 runs per game in the final three innings. Just one other team since 2014 has produced fewer than one run per game in the final three innings (excluding the COVID-affected 2020 year in which seven-inning contests were played).
It’s no wonder the White Sox are 0-56 in games when trailing at the end of the 6th inning. It’s difficult to mount a comeback if you can’t even score one run.
Their batting woes have been, in part, a result of bad luck. The team’s slugging percentage of .341 is much lower than their expected slugging percentage of .379 based on historic outcomes of balls with similar exit velocities and launch angles, per Baseball Savant. In fact, that difference of .038 is by far the unluckiest gap of any team in the past decade.
A final factor contributing to the White Sox’s futility: They have a true case of the Mondays. Two-thirds of MLB teams have won a game on a Monday since the All-Star break. Chicago hasn’t done so since September 18, 2023.
An earlier version of this story had the incorrect date of the the last time the White Sox won a game on a Monday.
