The Chicago White Sox emphatically broke their franchise record for longest losing streak on Thursday, with their most lopsided loss of an already miserable season.
Chicago didn’t just fall 14-2 to the Boston Red Sox. It allowed Boston starter Tanner Houck to take a no-hitter into the sixth inning in front of a home crowd that likely entered the game with low expectations and still found a way to be let down.
White Sox third baseman Lenyn Sosa finally broke up Houck’s bid with a leadoff single in the sixth and even managed to score on a Zach DeLoach double, but the Red Sox responded by continuing to hammer away at the Chicago pitching staff with a Jamie Westbrook homer and a Ceddanne Rafaela RBI single.
White Sox starting pitcher Zach Woodford ended up taking the loss by allowing 10 hits, three walks and seven earned runs in four innings, increasing his ERA to 10.80.
Chicago’s record now sits at an absurdly bad 15-48. That’s the worst mark in MLB, well behind the second-worst Miami Marlins at 21-41. Previously, its franchise record for longest losing streak was a 13-gamer in August 1924, but this team has found a way to surpass that century-old misery.
The 2024 losing streak has had no shortage of low moments too. There was the loss via infield fly rule interference. There was Tommy Pham proclaiming how tough he is after getting thrown out at home plate by multiple steps. There were back-to-back comeback losses to the in-state rival Chicago Cubs, with the latter via a walk-off homer.
The White Sox are the worst hitting team in MLB. They’re also the worst pitching team
This is a team that went 61-101 last year and seems by every conceivable metric to have become worse, after trading away top starting pitcher Dylan Cease and adding only a couple decent players in Pham and Erick Fedde.
A .238 winning percentage, which the White Sox now hold, is on pace for the second-worst record in MLB’s modern era (since 1900), behind only the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics (.235). One more loss and they will fall to .234, good (euphemistically) for the worst ever.
Chicago ranks last in MLB in runs scored, with 186, more than 40 runs worse than the second-worst Marlins (227). It ranks second-to-last in runs allowed, with 338. The only team worse is the Colorado Rockies at 348. When you look at any stat that adjusts for park factor and the Rockies’ home of Coors Field, such as ERA-, the White Sox are by far the worst.
And we haven’t even seen the form of this team after it trades away producers such as Luis Robert Jr., Garret Crochet, Fedde and Pham, which Chicago is widely rumored to be interested in doing.
