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Jeff Passan, ESPN
CHICAGO — Last week, hours after the Chicago White Sox‘s latest attempt to win a baseball game fell apart in typically absurd fashion, Davis Martin could only chuckle. Every White Sox player has found a coping mechanism to endure the 2024 season, and Martin’s is laughter. Unlike much of the sports world, he’s not snickering at the team, but rather at how every day seems to invite something more farcical than the previous.
Martin was the starting pitcher in that game, looking to secure Chicago’s first win at Guaranteed Rate Field in a month. Going winless at home for so long is almost impossible for a Major League Baseball team. The White Sox seem to specialize in acts of futility: Sometime in the next 10 days, they could lose their 121st game and pass the 1962 New York Mets for the most losses in an MLB season since the dawn of the 20th century. Never in baseball’s modern history has the game witnessed a team like the 2024 White Sox, whose commitment to the bit of playing a positively wretched brand of baseball has not waned even as the season has.
In only the past month, they offered third baseman Miguel Vargas running into outfielder Andrew Benintendi, and infielder Lenyn Sosa not knowing a between-innings throw from a catcher was coming to second base and wearing the ball off his face, and Andrew Vaughn hitting what looked like a walk-off home run only for Texas outfielder Travis Jankowski to reach over the fence and yank it back for what may be the catch of the year. In Martin’s start, a 6-4 loss, the Cleveland Guardians twice scored a pair of runs on infield singles, a laughable way for Chicago to drop its 15th straight game at home.
“You have to have a sense of humor,” Martin said. “You walk that fine line of being on the edge of losing your mind — always on that razor’s edge. We’re just watching it all, and we’re like, oh my gosh, this happens and this happens. Truly, it’s so many things.”
For 5½ months now, the White Sox have redefined losing in sports. Five NFL teams have ended a season winless, and in the NBA the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers went 9-73, and two years later the NHL’s Washington Capitals won eight of the 80 games they played, but nothing compares to the march of doom that is a cursed baseball season: 162 opportunities to plumb the reaches of ineptitude. These White Sox are not powerful, and they are not fast, and they field poorly, and they throw recklessly, and they pitch inconsistently, and they bungle fundamentals. They are a bad baseball team. They have earned their 36-115 record. They know this. They have tried to remedy it. They have failed.
So they do what they can to avoid the vortex of losing, the inertia of it all, poisoning their futures. What it’s doing to their present, on the other hand, is surprising. Over two games with the team last week, the clubhouse of perhaps the losingest team ever was not dour or depressed — not like one might expect from a group transcending baseball notoriety and permeating the grander sporting consciousness. White Sox players were shockingly well adjusted. Angry at the results but not brooding. Embarrassed by the losses but refusing to roll over. Handling their misfortune in a reasonable, healthy, mature fashion and not like losers who would cast blame and fight one another, as have past White Sox teams.
“We’ve talked about like, oh, we’re having a good time. We are,” said Martin, a 27-year-old right-hander who’s thankful to be back after he missed last season rehabilitating from Tommy John surgery. “Really, these are a great group of guys. And I think if there was any other group of guys in here, it would be the most miserable existence ever. People are like, oh, how are you not losing your mind? We’re a bunch of young idiots just trying to make sure we have a job next year.”
Plenty of them will return, the consequence of a thin farm system and a team planning to devote its financial resources not to free agents who could heal some of the on-field wounds but toward fixing internal systems long ignored by ownership. Even with a surfeit of talent, the chances of the White Sox being this bad again are minimal. It is a generational sort of bad, the kind that has forced players to ask themselves: Where, in this cascade of awfulness, can they find some good?
LOSING AT ANYTHING takes a toll. It irradiates self-worth. It evaporates motivation. Athletes in particular spend their entire lives building up psyches strong enough to spare them from the vagaries of failure. Every major league player has been felled and gotten back up. Anyone who reaches the big leagues has inherently won. Which makes this all so particularly diabolical. The night before Martin’s start, Sean Burke, a big, talented right-hander, made his major league debut in relief. He allowed one unearned run over three innings, but the loss still gnawed at him.
“I’ve been all around winning teams my whole life,” Burke said. “I won when I was 9 years old in Little League. I won when I was in high school. I won when I was in college. This is kind of the first time I’ve been on a team that hasn’t been winning a ton.”
The White Sox have lost a ton. They started their season 3-22, then won 11 of their next 19 games and offered a sliver of hope. It soon vanished. They lost 14 consecutive games between the end of May and beginning of June. They one-upped themselves with a 21-game skid that started before the All-Star break and ended after the trade deadline. Another 12-game losing streak bridged August and September. At one point, the White Sox lost 45 of 50 games, the second-worst stretch ever behind the 1916 Philadelphia A’s, who went 36-117-1.
Before the game Martin pitched, left-hander Garrett Crochet — the leader of the staff and the lone White Sox All-Star, making him a likely trade candidate amid this rebuild — was talking with nearby locker neighbor Jonathan Cannon, a 24-year-old rookie who had started the night before and pitched well, only for Chicago’s offense to get shut out for the 17th time this season.
Cannon and Crochet started going back and forth about the season, and what came of it wasn’t just an examination of the White Sox but a treatise on the slow-burning devastation of losing.
Cannon: “When you’re having a season like this, it feels like nothing’s going your way. When we played the game the other day against the Orioles [an 8-1 win Sept. 4], it just felt like balls are falling, line drives are going to people when we’re on the mound. It’s like, wow, this is great.”
Crochet: “It seems like once an inning, we will give up the flare single and then every time that we hit the flare on offense and it’s like, ‘Oh, that one’s falling,’ someone dives and catches it.”
Cannon: “Even yesterday, the first inning, you get the first guy and then a little flare over the shortstop and it’s like, oh, not the cheap hit again.”
Crochet: “Then we had a guy in scoring position and [Bryan] Ramos hits a ball 106 and [Guardians third baseman Jose] Ramirez falls down catching it. It’s like, f—, man.”
Cannon: “The peak of that was when Jankowski robbed Vaughn’s walk-off homer.”
Crochet: “Yeah!”
Cannon: “Just the feeling in the dugout — I can’t even describe what it was. I think we stared at each other for 30 minutes after and then we come back and it’s all over Instagram and everything, and it was arguably, because of the situation, maybe the best catch I’ve ever seen. And of course he just got put in the game for that inning.”
Crochet: “It was just an overwhelming feeling of what the f—?”
WHEN THAT FEELING is at its most overwhelming, Grady Sizemore tries to minimize it. Sizemore is the White Sox’s manager, appointed to the job in early August after the team fired Pedro Grifol, who over his 1½ seasons on the job won 89 games and lost 190. Before this season, Sizemore had never coached, but he made a strong enough impression as one of Chicago’s five major league coaches over the first four months that White Sox general manager Chris Getz, himself in his first full season, did not hesitate hiring him in an interim role. Over the last 45 games of the season, Getz wanted a different sort of approach than the intensity with which Grifol led — something more relaxed and nurturing.
Sizemore is 42 but could pass for 30. He is the only manager in MLB who wears a mullet — and he pulls it off with aplomb, framing a face that 20 years ago made him the most eligible bachelor in Cleveland. No manager in baseball can match Sizemore’s talent when he played for Cleveland in the mid-2000s. He made three All-Star Games by the time he turned 25 and looked destined for greatness before injuries waylaid his career. He retired at 32.
“I’ve kind of been in every scenario,” Sizemore said. “I’ve come up as a rookie, I’ve had some success. I’ve been a veteran who’s been more of a leader, and I’ve kind of been a guy who’s struggled with injuries and seen his play decline. I’ve gone through the whole gauntlet of what a player could go through. So I feel like I can understand where all the guys are at mentally and what they’re thinking.
“And then I took time away, too, had a family. I had to go through all of that, what it’s like to be a parent. It teaches you a lot of patience, and it teaches you how sometimes you have to say things over and over again. As a parent, it’s very hard. Even after you’ve figured it out, you haven’t figured it out. So I think the best part about where I’m at is I know that I haven’t figured anything out and that every day is a new day to learn something new and to get better.”
Sizemore’s approach reflects the revamp taking place at the top of the organization.
When owner Jerry Reinsdorf promoted Getz to GM after firing longtime executive vice president Kenny Williams and GM Rick Hahn last August, Getz hired an array of outsiders, an unfamiliar approach for an organization that was as insular as any at the behest of Reinsdorf, whose loyalty to employees has been a hallmark as well as a detriment. Brian Bannister, Getz’s former teammate in Kansas City and a longtime pitching guru, took control of the system’s arms. Josh Barfield and Paul Janish, both former big leaguers, are central in player-acquisition and player-development roles. And Brian Mahler — a former Harvard lacrosse player who went on to become a Marine and Navy SEAL before earning a law degree from Georgetown — joined the White Sox as director of leadership, culture and continuing education.
Mahler, who came into the organization having never worked in baseball, is at the heart of the overhaul in Chicago’s front office, and a committee headed by Mahler is expected to recommend a suite of changes for the organization to institute in the coming years. It’s a multiyear project with a focus, sources said, on optimizing resources, scaling processes and connecting departments, and Reinsdorf, who is 88, is backing it after years of wanting to win now.
He understands that doing so with the sort of roster that Chicago currently has is simply untenable unless he wants to spend heavily in free agency — something he has railed against for decades and never himself done as an owner. In a rare public statement last week, Reinsdorf said: “Everyone in this organization is extremely unhappy with the results of this season, that goes without saying. This year has been very painful for all, especially our fans. We did not arrive here overnight, and solutions won’t happen overnight either. Going back to last year, we have made difficult decisions and changes to begin building a foundation for future success. What has impressed me is how our players and staff have continued to work and bring a professional attitude to the ballpark each day despite a historically difficult season. No one is happy with the results, but I commend the continued effort.”
Fans appalled by the degradation of the White Sox in the two decades since their 2005 World Series title focus their discontent on Reinsdorf. The White Sox hold a unique place in Chicago’s sporting landscape. Being a Chicago sports fan imputes a particular sort of pain; being a Chicago sports fan who roots for the White Sox is a special subset of masochism. Their fan base is fiercely loyal and protective — of a history with ugliness (the 1919 Black Sox) and oddity (Disco Demolition Night and the myriad ideas of Bill Veeck) and richness (Hall of Famers Eddie Collins and Ed Walsh and Luke Appling and Nellie Fox and Minnie Miñoso and Frank Thomas). The White Sox’s drought before 2005 dated back 88 years, and yet their wait and championship were overshadowed by the Cubs’.
Now they can’t even tank like the Cubs did. New rules instituted in the last collective bargaining agreement penalize large-market teams like the White Sox by keeping them from receiving a draft lottery pick in consecutive seasons. Consequently, following what could be the worst season in baseball history, the highest Chicago can select in the draft next year is 10th. Embracing awfulness doesn’t even pay anymore.
Which is why Sizemore’s desire to build up these players and prepare them to win appeals to the White Sox front office. They’ve got some minor league talent — 19-year-old Noah Schultz is the best left-handed pitching prospect in baseball, and Hagen Smith, taken with the fifth pick in this year’s draft, isn’t far behind — but with money that otherwise would have gone to payroll helping fund the recommendations of the Mahler-led committee, the players here now will comprise a majority of the roster next season.
“We were very intentional on wanting to create an atmosphere that remained healthy for players to show up every day even though we’re faced with challenges,” Getz said. “These guys have shown up every day looking to compete knowing each game may be an uphill battle. There aren’t a lot of wins in our record. We’re looking to find wins in development, and the best way to do that is to have the best attitude possible about where we’re growing and what we’re learning.”
That falls on Sizemore. He enjoys managing, really enjoys it, even amid all the losses. When he walks through the clubhouse after games and pats players on the back, they appreciate his demeanor. He is positive without sounding fake, simultaneously thoughtful and supportive. In the offseason, as Getz chooses a new full-time manager, Sizemore’s efforts over the season’s final two months are almost certain to earn him serious consideration.
“You can focus on the negative all day,” Sizemore said. “And I know we’ve done our share of that too, but at the end of the day, I think this team lost a lot of confidence. We’ve been told for so long that they’re not doing this right. They’re not doing that right. And I just think that this game is too hard to play if you don’t have confidence. So all I’ve tried to do is try to restore some of that with the guys by being positive.
“We’ve had some tough losses and I’m like, don’t put your head down. Turn the music up. That was a good effort. I don’t care that we lost, we still played hard and we fought. I know mistakes are going to happen. Let’s try to limit the mental ones and the physical ones are going to happen, but let’s get better at playing together, communicating and trying to just be the best version of ourselves that day.”
THE BEST VERSION of the 2024 Chicago White Sox showed up over the weekend. They finally won a home game after 16 straight losses, and then, for the first time in 2½ months, they won consecutive games, beating the Oakland Athletics, who themselves have known the feeling of ineptitude in recent years. On Monday, they extended their winning streak to three — one shy of their season’s best — with an 8-4 shellacking of the Los Angeles Angels. After wins, Nicky Lopez, the veteran infielder and a leader of the position players, assumes his clubhouse DJ role, cranks the music and relishes what victories mean when they’re in such short supply.
“We obviously cherish ’em a little bit more,” Lopez said. “The general public doesn’t know how hard it is to win a big league baseball game. The NFL, the NBA — it is hard to win a game, let alone consistently win games. But these ones are a little bit better. They’re hard to come by right now. And it always seems like there’s that one inning or that one play or that one moment just kind of gets away from us. When we put it together and get a win, we celebrate a little bit more.”
In the cascade of awfulness, this is where they find the good. In the positivity of Sizemore. In Benintendi, the veteran outfielder, winning Saturday’s game with a walk-off home run. In Fraser Ellard, the 26-year-old rookie reliever, recording his first major league save to close out Sunday’s victory and secure the win for Burke, who looked like an honest-to-goodness major league starter.
Five days earlier, Burke, 24, called his debut “the best day of my life” — a reminder that failure as a team and success for an individual are not mutually exclusive. Another awful day for the White Sox can be the best day of Burke’s life, and another loss for the White Sox can be another day that Lopez, a native of Naperville, a Chicago suburb, gets to play for his hometown team. There have been those moments for all 62 players who have worn a White Sox uniform this season, and as much as the world will remember 120 or 121 or 125 or however many losses Chicago ultimately books, the players themselves are not wired that way.
“I know what our record is, but we still expect to win,” Crochet said. “It’s not an overwhelming thing like, oh my god, we finally won a game. It’s not like that. We go into every game expecting to win. It’s just a matter of actually executing that.”
For at least a small stretch in September, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Suddenly their winning percentage has crept up to .238, better than the 1916 A’s. It’s the manifestation of Sizemore’s words. It can’t be this bad every year, won’t be this bad next year, even if the White Sox trade Crochet and center fielder Luis Robert Jr. and don’t spend any money this winter and waltz into 2025 with a roster even worse on paper than this season’s.
“Everything we’re learning this season is going to pay huge dividends for the young core,” Martin said. “It has to. Because otherwise, what’s the point?”