Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2225: The White Sox Unfun-Fact-Off

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

In (dis)honor of the 2024 White Sox displacing the 1962 Mets atop the modern-era single-season losses leaderboard, Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, FanGraphs’ Ben Clemens, and Yahoo Sports’s Jordan Shusterman conduct a draft of facts and stats about this record-setting Sox season, scored by Sox Machine White Sox reporter James Fegan, who also describes covering the […]

I'm sure Stats and Entry, they both mean a lot to me That's why I love baseball Special hits, history, series, pitching, and pure poetry That's why I love baseball Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. Meg, it's all happeningaf. Hello, Meg. Hello. Meg, it's all happening. There's a lot going on. We are recording on Monday afternoon. There's NL wildcard madness in progress. The Giants have fired Farhan Zaidi and replaced him with Buster Posey as their president of baseball operations. He will henceforth be known as Buster Poe Bo on this podcast, presumably. But we're not going to talk about any of that right now. And we're not going to talk about the playoffs because we're going to have our fill of that over the next month or so.

This is our last opportunity for a while to talk about something other than postseason baseball. And for our topic, we have chosen the furthest thing from postseason baseball, the Chicago White Sox. We've had this in mind for a while. I think this was initially proposed by Patreon supporter listener Andrew M, who back at the end of August, beginning of September said, I feel like once the season is done, we need a 2024 White Sox Fun Fact draft on the pot. And I've been thinking about it ever since. Andrew also

said that 2024 White Sox fun facts are the new peak PEDs bonds fun facts. There are so many fun ways to parse just how bad they are. Exclamation point. Now, I don't know if this would be fun for White Sox fans. And so I've kind of been referring to it as our unfun fact off, but hopefully it'll be fun on some level.

And so when Andrew invoked the bondsonds Fun Facts, I immediately thought of Effectively Wild episode 762 when the Cespidus Family Barbecue Boys joined me and Sam for a Barry Bonds Fun Fact extravaganza. And so we invited them back on for this exercise and one of them said yes. The other one very rudely declined, but Jordan Schusterman is here of Yahoo Sports and Suspitous Family Barbecue and the Baseball Barbercast, and he is joining us while we all watch baseball out of the corner of our eye. Hello, Jordan. Hello, friends.

Thank you so much for the invite. Boy, 7.62, that episode was a long time ago. I was going to say you're a Suspitous Family BBQ man now. Oh my gosh. A mere boy at the time, fully grown. Not even, that's exactly correct. So yes, while that is definitely a fond podcast memory for us as well, I'm happy to join in a very different venture as we talk about this special baseball team that we just witnessed for 162 games. And I got to say guys, I'm a little

sad that unlike the Mets and Braves, we don't get one more day, especially with how they finished. They were heating up here. We might have been really turned around. They hit their stride really just a little late, but if the season were three times as long, maybe they only would have lost 110 games, let's say, pro rated. But we did more recently do an exercise again with Jake Mintz and you, the Mike Trout 30th birthday draft episode 1730, which was sort of a similar exercise, better days slightly for Mike Trout. We are without Jake, your better half, other half. I was gonna call him that.

And then I figured you are actually literally married now. Yeah, that's a great point. Not to Jake. That's a great point. And Jake is too. True, yeah. Which is also, he's more recently married to someone that isn't me.

So that is an important distinction. We don't have to qualify better or anything. He's just the other one that's not here. That's okay. Apologies to your legally recognized better half or other half. So Jake is traveling for the postseason. He wanted to join us, but could not.

And so we will not be mincing words today. You like that? No. Terrible. No. My God. That's okay. We really won't be because we'll be talking about a truly terrible baseball team. No. Terrible. No. My God. That's okay. We really won't be because we'll be talking about a truly terrible baseball team. Filling in for Jake Mintz is the able other Ben Clemens of FanGraph.

Hello, Ben. Hey, Ben. How's it going? It's going all right for me. Better for me than for the White Sox. We are also joined by James Fegan, who has had the honor and privilege and no doubt pleasure of covering these white socks all season long for Socks Machine. James, condolences or congratulations, you're free

and you no longer need to cover the 2024 white socks. So stop me if I've misinterpreted the premise, but you feel that you're going to be overloaded with compelling high stakes baseball between good teams. And so now for a day on sort of a lark, you're driving down from your palatial suburbs to gawk at where I live on a day-to-day basis. Maybe there are some details of it for yucks. Is that about what we're going to do today? Just about. And the idea is that you will officiate this unfun fact off essentially, because you've had a front row seat for this White Sox season. And so you can assess how well each

unfun fact sums up the misery of the 2024 White Sox experience. And I thought maybe you could award points perhaps based on just how well each unfun fact encapsulates the season, maybe on a scale of zero to negative 121 where the worst the fun fact or the better it is at capturing what the season was like, the lower the score. And so whoever racks up the most negative score will win this exercise. I think that's the way this will work. I have my own scale. Um, if you're willing to hear me out, it's sure it's convoluted. The lowest is, is five 91, which is the lowest qualified OPS of a white socks hitter, which is Corey Lee. And the highest would be six 99, which would be

the highest qualified. Well, that's not a very wide range, is it? It's true. So between 591 and 699 is how I'd prefer. If that's okay with you, maybe one to five is a bit similar, but that was what I bring to the table. Well, just when you thought you were out, we pull you back in to talk about the White Sox even more. Although you had the chance to get out because the athletic, I guess, decided it didn't want a White Sox beat writer, but you decided you still wanted to be one. And so you took it upon yourself to continue to cover this team. And you were our White Sox season preview guests this spring, and we didn't do wind total predictions, so I can't say exactly how far off you were. I remember you being appropriately resigned

and it was bleak as I recall, and there was some gallows humor there, but if we had forced you to do a wind total prediction, I assume it would not have been 121. You can now claim that it would have been in retrospect and we'll never know the difference, but were you like Chris Get Chris gets a little bit surprised that the White Sox went to 121?

Did you think 100? Sure. 105. Sure. 110 even. I can see it, but this is lower than I would have set the limbo bar. I don't think I got harsher than 63 wins. Even like talking to people and knowing that they did not anticipate contending. It

was widely projected, I feel, to be at least average or better defense on top of like an offense that we knew was going to probably be bad, not necessarily worst offense in 50 years scale, but in a rotation that got a lot weaker when seats left, but you didn't think it would necessarily be the worst rotation in baseball. Once the defense was on the scale of everything else, of absolute the worst by maybe more than 30 runs by some scales, then yeah, everything became on the table. That was supposed to actually be the one thing they fixed very correctly because it's cheap to fix defense.

It turns out it can be cheap, but you can still do it really wrong. Well, I've read multiple postmortems about what went wrong. Everyone seems to be doing some long form deep dive into the disaster here. Are you at least going to get a book deal out of this? Are you going to get some sort of season in hell kind of story, the Chronicle of the 2024 White Sox?

Can you spin this into something? I can spin this eventually into not writing about them anymore. I don't know how big your publishing executive listener base is. I don't want to dissuade anyone out of trying to convince me with presumably tens of millions of dollars from writing a book about the White Sox. But it's not something to be like, oh boy, it's more like recounting trauma. It's not something I look upon like if someone would just give me that chance, it's more like will someone force me to do this? And that's why I'm here. That intimidated me.

Yep. Well, this will be sort of the opposite of the Bonds draft and the Trout draft. Those were saluting, recognizing, celebrating on field excellence. And yeah, this will be the furthest thing from that. I was looking up fan graphs coverage of the White Sox. And when I was Googling up posts, I found one that was headlined, the White Sox are utterly terrible. And I thought, when would that have been from? And then I looked and it was published by Jay Jaffe in April, 2023.

If they were utterly terrible then, then what were they now? Maybe we don't have the adjectives for that. So I figure we could just go around here and we could each just throw out a few facts slash stats and we'll see how it goes. There might be overlap here, I would imagine. So maybe we'll get some dupes

and we don't have to be super strict about the scoring. But Jordan, would you care to lead off here? I will say I took this exercise, this assignment slightly differently. I certainly have some, wow, they're so bad facts. But I also think that there's just some things about the season, facts about this season that aren't necessarily just like a stat

that shows how terrible they are, but I am also going to nominate, especially with James here, because I'm genuinely curious for some perspective on some of these storylines within. So I'm just going to preface that. What repressed memory will you trigger? Well, there's only one way to find out. And also, I tried to stay away from singling out individual bad players. It might be tough to do that. And if anyone did okay, I just figured they've suffered

enough and less we put a spotlight on. It was a team effort. It was really a collective kind of performance here. So I've gone mostly with team level stats. Yeah, same. So I'll start with one. The White Sox had a minus 306 run differential, which I mean, you look at that and you say, wow, that is so many negative runs, right? But then you pull up Pythagorean record and you say, wow, you know, they actually got kind of unlucky. I think the fact that they were there,

their Pythag with a minus 306 run differential was to only lose 114 games is going to be something I'm going to bring up here as my first one. And it makes me laugh. Would you say that they underachieved? I guess they, that's what I'm saying. They underachieved in being bad in some ways, or I guess they underachieved. Well, I guess there are multiple perspectives on this. Yeah, I was gonna say, shall we count the ways? Yeah, they overachieved in one sense, which is that they finished strong.

They did. Well, this is part of it. This is part of it too. It's the fact that they actually did manage to avoid having the worst winning percentage in modern baseball history is a true miracle, even as we look at the 121 losses. And perhaps that is a reflection of that Python

that told us they only should have lost 114 games. Yes, it was the correction. It was the positive regression to the mean happening very belatedly in the last week of the season. Exactly, finally we were catching some breaks in this final week. Yeah, that took a little wind out of my sails or lost out of my sails that they actually had

a pretty decent last week there. It was that there was some doubt about whether they were actually going to surpass the Mets 1962 loss total. And as it is, you kind of have to have some qualifiers and caveats now when talking about how bad they were, because not only do you have to say modern era to exclude the 1899 Cleveland spiders, et cetera, but you also have to say just most losses in the modern era, which is true, but I think only the fifth worst

winning percentage as it turned out. And in fact, the 1962 Mets had a worse winning percentage than the 2024 White Sox because they went 40 and 120. They had a tie and then they didn't play 162 games. So if you'd given them another game, they might have lost 121 too. So the White Sox just in their defense, which as James just said, they didn't really do very well themselves, but I'm standing up for them here and defending whatever scraps of honor they have left, even as the person who was the impetus behind this entire podcast dedicated to dumping on them. They actually did avoid the worst ignominy that they could have accomplished there.

So it doesn't make it that much better to be merely worse than any team since 1962 at the very least, especially given that those Mets were an expansion team and the Spiders had their stars transferred to a different team that was also owned by their owners and the Philadelphia Athletics before 1916 had undergone a payroll slashing fire sale. There were extenuating circumstances is what I'm saying. What was the White Sox excuse? James, I guess you can weigh in on Jordan's fun slash unfun fact there. James, did you watch his team thinking, ah, just some bad breaks. They're not this bad.

They're like the most preposterously unfortunate team I've ever seen in all time. Have they got bad breaks? Like, yes, in the sense that it's like stepping on rakes constantly, a level of chaos. Like a lot of the times these bad breaks, so to speak, like they manifest themselves in runs allowed or runs not scored that, you know, shows up from the course of a long season that it keeps happening. Like, do I think like they massively underplayed like their true talent level? Like, I guess that's harder to say, but like, as far as like, did they have things go wrong for them to an improbable degree that prevented them from just being like

an ordinary worst team in the league and winning 50 games or something like that? Like, yes, seemingly all the time, seemingly once this series, them getting just truly boat raced was way more infrequent than just like a shambolic like bullpen collapse, which like yes is with not good or name brand relievers, but is just often you could imagine these guys getting through innings in the major leagues, you know, once over the, and not stretching to a 21 game streak and just watching like them get undermined in the most cartoonish methods and surprise contributors at every turn. It defies belief. Yes, they got nothing but bad breaks. You just start to think associated with them. Like what are they doing? Are there rituals going down in the bowels of the stadium

as there occurs that's coming due after decades? Yes, they were unlucky. So what was it? Seven wins worse than their Pythag. I think nine wins worse than their base runs record. And yeah, they avoided having the worst run differential of all time too, at the end there. So that was nice. But yes, you have to be that terrible. You have to be bad and also very unfortunate and unlucky. And I guess they were unlucky in macro ways too, when it came to just injuries and players' development, stalling out or just never really launching and everything that could go wrong really did go wrong. So where are we going to put that fun fact on fun fact on the scale? I don't know if we want to do the negative 121. Do we have to grade them now? Yeah, well, we'll probably forget them as we go. What is this, gymnastics in the Olympics? Yeah, you got we'll probably forget them as we go.

Yeah, you got to put, you got to hold up your sign as we go so that we can remember and record. So I don't know if you want to do the OPS thing or just the negative, just the bigger negative number between up to negative 121, which might be easier to remember. I don't know. I'm going to give it a 642 OPS, a regular Lenin Sosa of facts. A little below average for the group, but certainly not the worst contributor by far. All right.

Lenin Sosa for Jordan and Jordan, you may recall way back on episode 762. I think the thing we said at the time was like just the ultimate fun fact about Banz is well, he hit more homers than anyone else. Yes. Which is the least creative kind of fact, and yet ultimately the winner, right? Which is the same sort of deal for the White Sox, which is just, they lost more games. They had the most fails.

Yeah. That's so true. I know. In modern era, but yeah, you don't get points for creativity there. Other Ben, what you got? All right. This one's slightly more involved. So I work at FanGraphs, so I'm going to use FanGraphs for this one. The best player on the White Sox, the best hitter on the White Sox this year,

because I want to focus on their historically bad offense, actually tied 2023 MVP Ronald Acuna Jr. in war with a 1.0. 205 players in baseball did better than that. So that's about seven per non White Sox team. That's how many players on each non White Sox team were better than any White Sox on the offensive side. I think the fun part about this is that the White Sox leader in FanGraft War was Paul DeYoung, who got traded away in July. And in fact, he was the 30th best shortstop in baseball

in his time on the White Sox. That song, you know, that's last. There are 30 teams and there were 29 better shortstops than him. He wasn't quite the best White Sox position player. That would be Gavin Sheets, who was the 28th best first baseman by Fan Graphs Award this year. So not quite last place, but these White Sox were truly without

stars. Their best player was someone who they traded away and again, who was not even remotely one of the best short stops in baseball or even an average one. Yeah, that's pretty good or bad, I guess. James, what do you think? Well, I have multiple notes here. One is that Paul DeYoung was, you know, given that his White Sox contributions ended at the end of July. I want to say Andrew Benentendi and Andrew Vaughn pulled ahead of him for the team home run lead in the second to last week of September. They ultimately both cleared them.

Andrew Benentendi, of all people, wound up matching his career high with 20 home runs in a season where it looked like he might be dying in the first half. So to Young owning the war component, that surprised me given that his, what was not league wide notable offensive performance was kind of pacing them in terms of power production long after he left. And Gavin Sheets ranking first baseman, it was notable for his offense, must be factored in. And as far as his work contributions, the White Sox once more found themselves playing him in the outfield extensively in the first half to typical returns for when you put a first baseman in the outfield. So I'm inclined because it hits upon my De Young fanaticism to rank this unfittingly.

I'm going to give it a Gavin Sheets of 660 OPS. Yeah. All right. Well, so in this case, okay, so higher is better then, right? Bigger is better in this case. So you want more cumulative OPS points, I guess. I mean, for most White Sox, 660 OPS is operational. So yes, I believe I agree.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, looking at that, I know there was a point where Yoann Mankata was maybe second, I think, and he finished third among White Sox position players in FanGraph's war. So it's Paul DeYoung who did not finish the season with the team. And actually, no, then it was Nicky Lopez was second. And then Luis Robert Jr.

And then Joanne Mikada who played 12 games for the White Sox was fourth in position player war for them. Pretty decent 12 games, I guess. He played 11, he got hurt. Right. He's late coming back and they activated him with like two weeks left in the season, and they let him pinch run in the 12th inning and pinch him. Yeah. So that was fun to follow throughout the season because I think he was the leader

or close to the leader for like a large portion of the season or second or something. And then it was like, can anyone catch Yoann Mankato who's been idle since April? And it wasn't clear that that would happen though ultimately it did. All right. I guess I can go next. I think what I wanted to highlight here is the way that the White Sox were the punching bag for the rest of the AL Central. So I think the combined record when the dust settled and all was said and done, I think the White Sox went 10 and 42 against the Central. And again, that's the AL Central that they went 10 and 42 against, which not typically the powerhouse. that they went 10 and 42 against, which not typically the powerhouse.

And to the extent that it was a powerhouse this season, that wasn't entirely a mirage or a product of playing the White Sox a lot, but that didn't hurt. In fact, that helped all of the other teams. It may have hurt White Sox fans. So the Guardians went a mere eight and five against them, which is pretty pedestrian performance.

This was on my board. This is on my board. Oh no. This is, yeah. Their best record against any team and granted major grains of salt, but it was against the AL Central champion guardians. That was their best effort.

Yeah. Wild. Of course, 12 and one, the Royals against the White Sox, 12 and one, Twins against the White Sox. And then I think the White Sox brought their record up to a 10 and three, three and 10 against the Tigers with those couple of wins the last couple of days of the season.

So that is, I think, a combined winning percentage of 192 against the Central. And I believe that is by far the worst in the three division era, certainly. I asked frequent stat plus correspondent Ryan Nelson about this. And he thinks that in the three division era, the worst inter division record is the 2004 Diamondbacks at 22 and 55, which is a 286 winning percentage, almost a hundred points of winning percentage better than these White Sox were.

And I don't want to detract too much from the three AL Central playoff teams, but I think you could conceivably argue and plausibly argue that the Royals might not have been a playoff team if it weren't for the assist from the White Sox. Now granted, they still had to beat them. You have to beat up on the bad teams and they did, credit to them. But if you compare to say Meg's Seattle Mariners,

who you predicted they would finish one game out of the playoffs and indeed they did. And I think we could kind of attribute that to the fact that they didn't get to play the White Sox as much. And the fact that I'm a very powerful witch. Yeah, that too. Mariners went six and one only against the White Sox. So they just didn't have as many opportunities. So the Royals going 12 and one, that's a lot of extra wins.

And even if you replace some of those games against the White Sox with other bad teams, they'd be normal bad teams, respectable by comparison, bad teams. So maybe that made the difference. James, what do you think about the intra-division dominance of the White Sox? I do think two of the Mariners wins over the White Sox were a walk off. The White Sox are combusting in absurdist fashion type of victories as well. The AL Central mark dovetails really well with the white Sox kind of front office or preseason

rhetoric, which was that maybe this wouldn't be as long of a down cycle for them because the AL Central is never that good. And so they don't necessarily have to become a super team to get back to contention. So to take the legs out of their own argument by being so terrible to pump up the AL central into a division that had three playoff teams and nearly a fourth, all of the strength of just thrashing you. I think the irony purity of this election and the fact the reception it gets, it's on multiple boards clearly. I think this is the Andrew Vaughn on the club purity of this election and the fact the reception it gets is on multiple boards clearly.

I think this is the Andrew Vaughn on the clubhouse of White Sox back to it. I'm willing to bestow a 699 on it. I wanted to hold back and just give you Ben and Tendi, but hearing the outcry from others pushed over the edge. Wow. Thanks. Yeah. Because this is not the Orioles of a few years ago getting trounced by the AL East.

The AL East, you know, all those teams are very good. Again, you know, don't come after me AL Central stands here, but you know, it's not quite the caliber of competition necessarily. And yet the White Sox made it look like it was. So yeah, I think that was a big part of the story here. Meg? Okay. So my unfun fact is that before the season, we projected the White Sox to win 66 games. They did not have the worst projection in baseball. We projected the Rockies to only win, well, 62 when you round up. And yet they managed to underperform that so dramatically

that I worry it will sort of alter people's expectations when it comes to preseason projections. Because like, and Ben, you've written about this, Ben Clements, not other Ben, a good bit. Like 60 is really the floor a lot of the time when it comes to what our preseason projections are going to come up with because you have guys who aren't projected to be very good, but we still just bake in so much regression.

It's hard to go lower than that. And I worry that people next year are going to be like, oh my God, the White Sox are projected for 60 wins. They're so much better. And, or, Oh my God, your projections are fundamentally broken. Basically, my fun fact is if the White Sox mess with people's perception of our projections, I'm going to be very frustrated. And I worry it'll happen because how many times have you had a team get projected for 66 wins and they only win 41? I mean, I can tell you,

never many as evidenced by us doing this episode. So, how? How? CB Yeah, they broke the scale. And throughout the season, we were tracking the rest of season projections, which remain sort of stubbornly within the realm of respectability. And we kept taking the under on that because we watched the White Sox. It just didn't seem like it was in the cards there. So yeah, I guess the fact is that they basically defied the projections, broke the projections. I don't know how you want to formulate it there, but James, what do you say? JS say they retain Grady Sizemore as manager next year.

Okay. And they win 66 games. Is he automatically manager of the year? That's a 25-winner perfect. That's nearly unprecedented. That's a good question. Yeah. I mean, the Royals just got 30 games better and they're in the playoffs. But if the White Sox got 30 games better, they'd be merely regular bad,

but it would still be just as impressive in a sense. I would go to calibrate like improvement to just normal standard bog issue, worst team in baseball. It's something that weighs on me considering next year's coverage a great deal. Yeah, what's the worst records for a team that had a manager of the year winning manager. Usually you have to make the playoffs at least, so I don't know. But that would be impressive in a way, especially if

they do indeed lower payroll significantly. So, okay. Right. This felt a little bit more like less a fun fact and more a plea for sanity in the future. bit more like less a fun fact and more a plea for sanity in the future. But it did get me thinking on an existential level. So I do want to bestow a 657, a Lewis Robert Jr. on this. Oh, that's generous of you, I feel. Yeah. You know, another kind of corollary to my fun fact a moment ago, and if this is anyone else's, you can claim it, but just to piggyback on myself, I think Grant Brisby initially formulated this fun fact, which was that the

entire AL Central was under 500, even though four of the five teams were over 500, and three of them made the playoffs and one just barely missed after a historic collapse, which I guess enabled one of the others to make it if not both of the others. But the fact is the entire AL Central had a 480 winning percentage or 479.6 and that is all White Sox because all the other teams were on the positive side of the ledger. And then the White Sox all by their own some just dragged down four winning teams into losing territory. So I don't know whether it would have been better for me

to use that than the one that I use, but they kind of go hand in hand. Just, yeah, that's quite an accomplishment there. So I don't know, we don't need a separate ruling on that one, I don't think, but didn't want it to go unmentioned. All right, back to you, Jordan. All right. I'm excited for this one. So I had some on my board, you know, involving the minutia of how horrific the offense was, but I'm going to lean back into just the losing. And this is really

something I'm excited to hear Mr. Fegan talk about. And I am going to nominate the fact that the White Sox accounted for the three longest losing streaks this season by themselves. This is an astonishing achievement because we know they lost 21 in a row. I don't know if you guys missed that one. That was a tough little stretch there.

But that they also lost 14 in a row in May and June and that they also lost 12 in a row separately in August and September is hard to really fathom. For those wondering, the next longest losing streak belonged to the Pirates this season who lost 10 in a row in August. But other than that, no, you know, you got a couple of nine, couple of eight,

you know, the White Sox have another, you know, seven one, seven game skids, you know, sprinkled in there, but that's, that's practically nothing. At the same time, think about what losing seven games in a row means, right? A whole week of L's that goes by where you have failed to slap hands and have a nice, enjoyable, victorious beverage

in the clubhouse after the game. No, that was just, but for them to have three different losing streaks of this caliber is really, really something to behold. And the other formulation of that that I saw was that they were the third team to lose 12 straight decisions three separate times in a season and the first since the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

It was the Spiders and the 1889 Louisville Colonels. So no other modern era team had done that. But I kind of liked your version too of just surpassing every team this season. Listen, we could probably do a whole show on just them losing 21 in a row. That streak on its own is probably worthy of a selection and further observation. And if Mr. Fegan wants to comment on that, I'm sure he can. But again, having the three longest losing streaks of this magnitude, as you just mentioned, is obviously historic.

And that is what we are talking about here. I just feel like I have to note. So they had the 21 game guy, right? They only won 23 games at home the whole season. I know that they're not exactly parallel stats, but it does feel important to me that like at one point they were on their way to losing as many games as they ultimately won at home in front of the few faithful who bothered to show up, many of whom showed up to see losses toward the end there. Right? I'm sure people, James, you can probably speak to this, like were people

pissed when they went to a game and they didn't set the record like when they had that little run at the end where people Frustrated that they weren't seeing losing or were they relieved some are relieved Some of the booze may have been like tongue-in-cheek Some of the people I would describe as deranged by grief To a level that I believe they were genuinely upset changed by grief to a level that I believe they were genuinely upset. The sort of people who introduced themselves to me by then immediately stating their credentials, like I've been a fan since 1979, like the polling rank, it's always very intimidating.

They made it clear to me they were rooting for this as something that would stay in the franchise forever, which is something they wanted as a rhetorical device, almost against ownership. I think something that we're still in the beginning stages of being able to quantify is the value of sequencing. And mostly we're talking about pitching, but I think that really definitely plays here. The 14 game losing streak was the first one and it was in the first half. And it broke the franchise record at that time. And even

the point where they finally ended it against Boston, they're winning by five runs and there's this fly ball hit to this new guy they called up, Duke Ellis. And John Triffin is soaking in this moment of the streak is finally over. And then Duke Ellis dropped the ball on the other way for the next out to actually do it. They're really good at denying their fans catharsis, but like the 14 game losing streak becomes a quick like reference point about like what's the worst things can possibly get and look and feel. This is when Pedro like calls the team flat because they can't hit against Kyle Bradish irrespective of the fact that they couldn't hit against far inferior pitchers. Why would they hit against Kyle Bradish, irrespective of the fact that they couldn't hit against far inferior pitchers, why would they hit against Kyle Bradish?

When they're trading everyone at the deadline, they trade six players, not like, you know, they didn't trade Crochet and Robert, but you know, losing six players, especially good performing ones that the team doesn't have any, you knew that they were going to be worse, but you didn't necessarily know how and it's like, well, everything, you've got the worst possible version of everybody in the first half, maybe like even some inferior players, which is that better luck. And the 21 game win streak came to really assert business. Like you did not even have a concept of how this could look or how this would be. You did not have a concept of how bad a team could look. You're, you're only at the beginning of your education. And then that like flips to a head. It basically

ends Pedro Grafol's managing career. And the type of fan that emerged from that to then have a third 10 game losing streak. They've seen themselves making assumptions about how bad things can get, then have every like point of understanding they have about the game destroyed by the sheer horror of the 21 game losing streak. So then when the third street comes along, this is like, this is nothing to me. I'm not feeling creature. I wander in search of answers, but there's no meaning here. There's no nothing for us to be gained. We are only bought on this earth to toil. So that third streak, the, I think a 15 game home losing streak, which was another franchise record, at which point, like everyone had become extremely desensitized to the term franchise record. It's just like, well, yeah,

this is the worst thing we've ever seen. All we're debating now is whether it's comparable to some horrifying thing our grandfather saw. But obviously our scale of horror has already been breached and everything is just setting a new record from here on out. So I thought we Everything is just setting a new record from here on out. So I thought we kind of build up the big knockout punch and then, you know, experiencing life completely numb to everything going forward as kind of a kind of a little, you know, primer for living in the future for all of us to experience. I thought it was really majestic. Yeah, once you're talking about all time league wide records, the franchise record is kind of baked in at that point. That's just assumed. That's implied. It's funny you mentioned Duke Ellis, because I remember when I saw that, I was like, is that a real guy or is that like-

You didn't sound like a real guy. No. Is that like Duke Silver, Ron Swanson's alias when he wants to play jazz incognito as this is someone else who's like moonlighting as a White Sox player and doesn't want that stand attached to his record or something. We definitely wanted that. We wanted them to play Duke Silver clips on the Jumbotron when he stole the bass, but then like most White Sox call-ups, he lasted like a week and a half and then he made one. Yeah.

I did wonder about that because we talked a lot at the deadline and leading up to the deadline about the White Sox. And what do you do here? Because do you subtract from this roster that is already terrible and already bereft of good players, knowing that it will increase the odds that you will end up as the losingest team of all time? And they had to do that calculation. And they did. And obviously they decided that replenishing the farm system and getting a bunch of prospects was worth that risk. And I guess you could say in retrospect that that may have made the difference. Who knows what would have happened differently. And I haven't looked to see the war produced by the players who replaced the players who were traded. But if you just add up the fan graphs war of Paul DeYoung and Michael

Kopeck and Eric Fetty, you're at two or three wins right there above replacement and above white socks, I guess we could say. And so you avoid two or three losses. Well, suddenly you're just another really terrible team. Now we talk about the 2003 Tigers and reminisce about how bad they were, but it's just not quite the same to knock off the 62 Mets. So do you think that Getz and Reinsdorf, et cetera, like would they do it all over again?

Was it worth it to have that mark on your record in order to replenish and hopefully get better a little bit faster. I don't think Jerry would do it. Yeah. See, he put out a letter and like his letter, look, I'm sure it didn't assuage any feelings about Jerry Rinsor very much,

but compared to say John Fisher's letter, I believe that it's more sincere. Like he likes baseball, you know? Like he watches baseball games, which is, I think more than you can say for John Fisher. He's like a throwback owner in ways that are largely bad, I guess. But also in that sense, like he kind of cares about the baseball team, which is usually laudable if you don't get in the way in so many other respects, right?

So, so yeah, maybe like he might have wanted to avoid that, I guess, but you know, I don't know cost benefit analysis. I think there's a split where, yeah, the front office, I don't think is a cheesed about having that on the resume. I think there's definitely a side of them where it's like, yeah, we chose you. How much we need that new international Academy, Jerry type of, uh, uh, energy, or this is why we need to like, uh, hire Jerry type of energy or this is why we need to like hire more analytics people or this is why you should let me replace the international

scouting director is sort of the vibe. So I think there's some means to an end for people who kind of took over the team last August and looked around and said, yeesh, there's a lot to do here. It didn't get, say literally, I don't like our team or something to that effect. Yeah. Like last November. He didn't even realize how much he meant that at that time. That was GIA meetings last year. He had to begin to learn how much he didn't like that team. I think that they could probably spin it as like this and they really have just some to read like this is I'm Dave Vembrowski and this is the my 03 Tigers type of a lot they're

making like this will show why we need to make all the changes that I wanted to do anyway. I was going to invoke the Ron Washington quote from the other day, which we didn't discuss on the podcast, but he's kind of made a habit of throwing his players under the bus at various points of the season. And this one was the biggie. We're going to get some baseball players who may not be superstars, but they know how to play. We forgot to bring real baseball players into the organization. Nothing against those guys here, but they're not big league baseball players.

And they certainly can't help us win a championship. I've been no lies detected, but as someone who watched Ron Washington's team get swept by the White Sox, very recently. I would say, why are you booing Ron? He's right. Yeah. And yet, I mean, what are you thinking if you're in that clubhouse? Thanks, Skip.

Tough love, I guess. What did you think you were getting into when you took this job, Ron? But if he thinks that those aren't big league baseball players, real baseball players, then imagine what the White Sox managers think at this point. All right. Did we assign an OPS to Jordan's stat there? I got way too caught up, but I'm willing to give him a 685, a real Andrew Benatendi. Oh, that's an honor, man, to be associated with 2024 Andrew Benatendi. Thank you. honor man to be associated with 2024. Andrew Benatendi, thank you. There was a, another fact I was tracking as the season went on because the, the

Rockies home record was rivaling the White Sox overall win total. And again, the White Sox just barely ended up surpassing that and they won 41 games to the Rockies 37 home wins. That would have been pretty special, but that didn't quite come to pass. All right, Ben. All right, this one's one more straightforward. It is also about losses. So, and wins, but mostly losses.

The White Sox went 23 and 90 against teams, the winning record. I mean, that's really bad. That is like unbelievably bad. 23 and 90 is a 203 winning percentage, I believe. Yeah, 204, I rounded the wrong way. But that's not the fun fact. The fun fact is that that means they went 18 and 31 against everyone else.

Yeah. That's a 367 winning percentage or a 60 win pace. So the White Sox against teams that did not have winning records would have still finished as the worst team in baseball. That's a good one. I like that one. James. I mean, that was kind of, I guess the plan is that since they play in the AL Central, they were just going to play teams without winning records. Yeah. And maybe they did. It just didn't go the way they wanted. I would go on a limb and say that when the dust settled, they were the worst team at baseball. I think

the numbers bear that out. Well, yeah, I guess you've already, you've used all of the higher OPSs, haven't you? You've used like the top of the scale. If someone really wows me, I'll cheat and give them yon-y-gata. Okay. What does Ben get for that one? BF I mean, I think it's a fine fact. It wasn't particularly specifically inspired by it. It's a 650 Kevin Pilar for me. CB Yes.

CB Okay. 650 Kevin Pilar. All right. Another guy who got better once he left the White Sox, at least for a while there. Okay. Well, I kind of feel like, all right. So I had one I was working on, but I'm not gonna steal it from Mick because you've just messaged me. Okay. And I think I know which way you're leaning with this one. Okay.

But I'll leave it on the board for you. I think it's a good one. Thank you. I think I'll go with the fact that the White Sox had a team WRC plus of 75, which again was boosted a bit by their late season performance. But of the 129 players who qualified for the batting title across the league this year, only two were worse than the White Sox were as a team.

So the White Sox, 75 WRC+, Orlando Arcia and Michael Garcia of the Braves and Royals, respectively. And again, these are like glove guys on playoff teams and you can kind of carry them and RCA plays a premium position and everything. And you can kind of get away with that, I guess. But no other individual player was as bad as all of the White Sox were collectively, which I guess in a sense kind of tracks because like the entire team was so bad that they couldn't really have had good hitters who spent any significant amount of time with them or it would have pulled up their overall numbers a little bit. But there's just really no one who was like even one guy. I mean, the White Sox only had two qualified hitters and I use qualified in the batting title sense, not in any sort of like

subjective quality based way. Andrew Benatendi and Andrew Vaughn were the lone qualified hitters on the White Sox and they were both below the big league average. So the fact that you had 129 qualified hitters and 127 of them were worse than the White Sox as a team. That was pretty special to me. Now at one point, I think they were tracking to be worse than all of them, which would have been just really a fantastic fun fact. And they just barely pulled out of the skid enough to avoid that. But I don't know if that one still speaks to me.

What about you, James? It got a little rambly, but the one thing I connected with is that at least for a lot of the second half, certainly in 21 game losing streak, you gave me the option of, you know, what the, what the white sacks going to throw out there and say, you got nine Orlando RCOs ready to go. I say, let's, let's light them up. Let's go Orlando. If we got a chance to win a ball game tonight.

So I feel like I take that. Um, I bestow on you a rare Zach Remmellard at 675. Oh, wow. Nice. Maybe I should get an Orlando RCOPS for this maybe, but I guess that wouldn't quite, wouldn't quite fit. But yeah, I mean, they were in contention for like just worst on base percentage, which would have been one of those like, well, this is so basic,

but also kind of takes the cake because they ended up with a 278 OBP, which was the lowest of anyone since the 65 Mets. And other than that, you have to go back to dead ball era, basically, like first decade of the 20th century. So, you know, that's just another way of saying that they couldn't hit, they couldn't get on base at all. But I guess if you era adjust, if you did like OBP plus or something, then it wouldn't be quite as dire because the league OBP was pretty low. So that maybe bails them out a little bit. I guess they were merely 63rd worst in the modern era if you go by

OPP plus, but yeah, you know, they couldn't get on base and also they couldn't really do anything else well offensively, but Meg, I believe you've got a pitching related one. I want to preface this by saying that this is a good opportunity to remind everyone that like there is that blown saves are not an official statistic. They're subject to interpretation. We have an entire Hardball Times article about the blown save and its varying definitions. And so if you're wondering, hey Meg, you're about to use the number 37, but your leader boards at FanGraphs have the number 36. I'm here to say that, you know, nuance and differences in interpretation make life interesting.

Don't complain. It's exciting. Let me do my little mini-step last year. The 2024 White Sox had 37 blown saves by baseball references reckoning of that. And you know, the spread on blown saves is narrow and good teams can still have a lot of blown saves. That happens. But the part of this that I find fascinating is that in the depths of the tanking Astros, the very, the worst Astros,

right? The Astros winning 51 games in 2013 or 55 games in 2012 or 56 games in 2011, these White Sox, more blown saves than any of those teams. And those teams were losing on purpose and as much as they possibly could. And they still won more games, A, than these White Sox and blue fewer saves than these White Sox. And so I feel like in addition to being bad and really horrible to watch, to James' point, just denying any feeling of catharsis to their fans. And one of the manifestations of that was how many blown saves they had. They had as many blown saves,

again, by baseball references reckoning as the 2021 Nationals, who we can also remember, not a very good team, although still a better team than these white socks. So blown saves, yikes. That's my blown saves fun fact. Ben, what was your blown saves fun fact? You had a blown saves one. Well, I'll let James weigh in on yours and then I'll share what I had. If I'm reading fan graphs correctly, split as relievers, they do not,

they have the third worst bullpen ERA in baseball and they're actually above replacement. I think that that's right. Yeah, they had the third worst bullpen war 0.6 wins above replacement. Yeah. Yeah. So like they weren't good, but they managed to make blown saves clearly to their fan base and offensive stat because of your volume of blown saves that

were like, well, we scored two runs in the second hope, hope the pen can hold this lead. Especially after we pulled their crochet after for a innings nail it down. Jared Schuster. Here's something to work. It's like, all right, like, yeah, we don't, they don't have maybe the horses that used to have Liam Hendricks isn't walking through that door, but being sent to like a gun battle with the, the knife, they let you scrub cream cheese on your bagel only after you've gotten through TSA security in the airport. It was kind of a routine thing for that bullpen. Also pitching in front of like the league's worst defense. You felt bad for, you know, generic quad a guy being sent to like set down Jose Ramirez with the bases

loaded in the eighth, like, Oh, I didn't know it worked. I don't know if any, if any blown save is that an any stat that leads you to just kind of explain why it's wrong over and over again, or why it's not is ideal, but it is, it's especially evocative for, for watching where you could see factions rise up within the fan base arguing about whether you truly understood why they stunk at this particular thing. I want to give it something good, but I've also given out all the good hitters, other than speaking of scale. So the season wasn't fair to the White Sox, so why should this draft be fair? A 706 Paul DeYoung for Mike.

Ooh, wow. That's a big number. Nice. Okay. Also, just, can I just say Ben, before you do your bullpen save related thing, man, what's going on with Toronto's bullpen this year? Good God. Cause when you look at that bullpen leaderboard at RSA, things were bad

north of the border, it seems. Yeah. Anytime you can toss out worse than the white socks. Yeah. Yeah, Colorado you understand, right? But Toronto, yeesh, yeesh. Wow, we got more Pobo news while we've been recording. The Cardinals announced that John Moselek

will be replaced by Heim Blum as Pobo after 2025. Not next year, but after next year. I'm sure you have thoughts on that, Ben Clemens, that's your team, but we don't have time for those thoughts. On with the White Sox. We'll get to all this other news on some future episode. The version of that that I saw, it wasn't really an original by me,

but Bradford Doolittle at ESPN had that the White Sox save percentage was 35%, which was the worst in baseball by a lot. The Marlins were second worst at 53% and the MLB average was 63%. And Bradford said that this was the worst save percentage in a full season of the expansion era. Since World War II, only the 1949 Cincinnati Reds

at 33.5% were worse. And of course that's an entirely different era of bullpen usage, right? to only the 1949 Cincinnati Reds at 33.5% were worse. And of course that's an entirely different era of bullpen usage, right? So probably more costly to have that now. And yeah, I thought that was a good stat and just the ultimate demoralizing stat because we've covered their offense and how hapless it was.

And so they had a hard enough time getting leads but then also couldn't keep the leads that they had. Could not keep them. Yeah, that's just, that's extra pain I would imagine. All right, one more round, Jordan, you have another one? Yeah, I have, I got one more. That's not really just like they suck, but it's something I really wanted to bring up

particularly to get James's perspective on this. So this will be my last one here and then we can go watch the end of this absolutely outrageous baseball game that's happening right now. Oh my God. Wow, Matt. Anyway, so let's we can go through this quickly. I am going to go, this is like an actual compliment, but I want us to think back to March, right? And this whole season has been spent making fun of the White Sox, right? And I think back to March and I think back to opening day. And I think about one of the first things that we were all pointing and laughing at the White Sox for, and that was Garrett Crochet, opening day starter.

What? And yet they were right. And so amidst the disaster of this season, to have this pitcher emerge as one of the best left-handers on earth, when it began with us pointing and laughing in a way that we didn't know we would be pointing and laughing at them all season.

And this was the thing that they, and obviously credit to the player, absolutely nailed, is astonishing. And so I bring that up as a way to get James's perspective on how much that took him by surprise as someone who was actually watching very closely before he made that opening day start. How surprised were you?

Pretty surprised. I was Um, pretty surprised. I was down on the project. Um, you know, he didn't walk anyone in his 2020 cameo, but you could tell he was just kind of like pumping a hundred a lot and just throwing wherever. He was a 12% walk rate guy as a reliever in 2021. Then he gets hurt. It looks really good in spring of 2022 and he blows out. He comes back and he's rehabbing. He's the only shoulder stuff and like his velocity isn't all the way back. And

these, I think he walked more guys than he struck out in a little major league time he got. And spring, it just looked like guys like he could throw really hard. He had good stuff again. It looked like his arm strength was back, but I just didn't think he was someone who had command. You can talk to Garrett about this a lot, but you know, the cutter is probably his breakout pitch that, um, really emerged as his dominant secondary of the course of the season. Like he didn't really know he had that until at least certainly not to that degree, uh, until maybe the very end of spring and you know, the, when it stars and dominates in his first start, like that's kind of like a new thing

that he'd ever used it that much. And then the brave start was the next most he had used it. And he was, he had like a six year at the end of April because he was getting whacked on his sweeper every time he tried to back foot him to righties. You saw like his pitch mix like really rapidly evolve over time, where it's not like someone you could really see in spring training and say much more than like, ah, he's throwing hard again or like his stuff's back, he's healthy. But the pitcher he is, and especially even the pitcher is now like, he stopped throwing that sweet for a long time.

He threw one for a back door strikeout looking, which is not something you do a lot of at all, working the outer half of the plate. In his final start, and he was throwing a bunch of sinkers because he liked the way Lance Lin pitched and kind of thought it'd be cool to have two different fastballs. And so it's been surreal to watch him and surreal to have any expectations of him because he's been changing so rapidly over the course of this year. I think the only really consistent or through line I can say is that it seems like he's pretty good, but I don't know what it necessarily will look like next year because it changed so much this season.

It was interesting to see this get circulated a lot as the thing the White Sox did right developmentally. There was stuff they did right, like Eric Fetty worked out pretty much. Paul De Jong, someone who wasn't going to get a major league contract pretty much for many miles, he worked out as well as he could have for them. Garrett really advocated for himself there a lot. It was something he wanted. And certainly with the team being wide open, something he could

aggregate for himself for. And they kind of came to spring training like, sure, let's give it a shot. Like they weren't super committal of it to it at the start. They're like, let's see how far you can go. We didn't know if he'd necessarily start on the major league roster. If they did this, maybe you'd have to go back to the Myers develops. No one really saw it coming, but Garrett was a big self-advocate on this one. So to see it pitched as like, I think I'd asked him, you know, at work, like, aren't you thankful

to White Sox gave you the shot to start? And he's like, you mean this thing I kind of demanded? So it's like any individual player story in a difficult year. I think Garrett worked really well at Brian Bannister, Ethan Katz. So it's not really analogous to maybe Lucas G. Alito getting better on his own, but it's like this player who kind of willed this season to a great degree, at least in the shape it took outside of the dysfunction of the team as a whole that didn't seem to be able to get the best out of people broadly. This was kind of a triumph of Garrett's will. And as a result, Garrett, like in the clubhouse, is probably the most boisterous, confident

guy. He'd always been funny or nice, but this was his most outgoing because it seemed like he was finally, while everyone else was going through the worst baseball experience of their lives, Garrett's kind of finding himself in this way. So he was probably someone I wrote about way too much over the course of the season because like, here's this little beacon of light in the darkness of this guy who's kind of like having a self-actualization discovery while everyone else is, you know, did I die and wake up to hell? Right. So that narrative just compels me to no end. And I'm glad you clarified where the credit should be directed because that also is amusing

in the larger context. I meant to mention when we were talking about what White Sox fans wanted by the time the end of the season rolled around and the booing that was happening and how sincere it was. There was also a poll in the Sun Times when they were at 114 losses. And the question was at this point, are you rooting for them to break the loss record? And 81.7% of respondents said yes. Again, I don't know how scientific that was, but I feel like if I were a White Sox fan and I suffered through that entire season, I don't know, I'd want to go all the way.

I think just like make it official that I got through this thing. It's a badge of dishonor for the team, but it's almost a badge of honor for a fan. If you actually suffered throughout that thing and saw it all, you might as well be able to say you saw history, even if it was the worst kind of history. Because it's not like losing merely 119 would make it a much more positive spectator experience. Might as well just get to claim that no one saw more losses than you did. All right, other Ben? I like to think of players who bat 300 times and are worse than replacement level as guys who have earned a chance to fail because if you're just bad, you probably won't get there.

So there's a lot of players I think I was pretty decent in this list this year. There are 29 across all of baseball, but you know, you got Candelario, Anthony Rizzo, Adelise Garcia, Christopher Morrell, like Ty France. Like plenty of these guys had bad years. Brian Dale Cruz is in there, but I think of as essentially good baseball players. So these are guys that you can imagine being on your team and, you know, that having it down here, Mitch Garver is in there. He he was a big free agent acquisition this off season. That said, it could also just be that there's

no one else to play. So there were 29 of these players, six of them spent time with the White Sox this year. That's a lot. It is a bunch. It also does not include the two players who accrued the most negative war for the White Sox because they didn't stick around long enough to get to 300. So this is just a symptom of the fact that the lack of enough major league level talent was really pervasive. It wasn't that they had one or two positions that were a problem. It was everywhere and they were forced to play guys who were just not quite up to snuff at a lot of different places out of sheer necessity. Yeah, that's a bad one or a good one as the case may be. So James, I guess I neglected to ask for an OPS

for Jordan's stat or fact, which was really a positive one. And thus probably failed this exercise because it was about one of their- That's fine, I wanted to go low. I wanted you to give me Miguel Vargas. Let's do it. Yeah, you need a low OPS, a low PS for this one. And then we also, we need a-

Low PS. We do not take requests here. You get a Benzl, a 262. Ouch. All right. And now we need one for Ben as well. And in recognition of the White Sox had a lot of bad players, we could give you one that maybe got lost in the shuffle because they didn't really get much opportunity.

A 641 Oscar call us for that fact doing. All right. Well, one more from me. I wanted to do one that was about how much worse they were than the next worst team, which I think is probably a pretty fertile genre, but I'm not positive that that's unprecedented. I know that the 2003 Tigers finished 20 games

behind the 29th place raise. So I guess it has happened. They kind of tied the Tigers at least there, so they're not, not unique. And so I think I'm going to just go with a really simple one, which I guess was alluded to earlier. And that's the fact that the White Sox had the 16th highest payroll in the major leagues as they were losing the most games that any team in the modern era ever has. And I don't want to slight them for spending because I don't know that morally or ethically it would be any better if they had lost a lot

and had not spent. And in fact, you could even say that it's better this way because at least in that sense, they tried. And yet it is maybe a marker of just how thoroughly they failed that even though they were middle of the pack in spending, just below the playoff bound Padres, just below the Diamondbacks, just above the Mariners and the Twins and the brewers and the Royals, like the Tigers, you know, like they had the highest payroll in the AL Central, despite, I mean, this is kind of a

compliment to my earlier fun facts about how much they dragged down the AL Central and yet they were the biggest spenders in the AL Central. So it's not like the A's of the last couple of years where they were truly terrible, but they also didn't spend anything where, again, like that didn't reflect any better on their ownership. Maybe it reflected worse, but I guess did not reflect quite as poorly on their front office because at least they like managed

to use that amount of money to put together a semi-com semi competent and competitive baseball team. Whereas the white Sox had that money to spend and spent it extremely poorly. And if you wanted to say like per win, I guess, you know, they, they spent more per win than I think any other team than the Mets maybe. So that's just not great. So that's my unfun fact, my final unfun fact.

So a lot of that money you'll be unsurprised to learn is mostly non-functional on this roster. Yeah, exactly. I guess to some degree like blunts, I mean, I find in general reaction to it, it does not much blunt the outrage over them playing to cut payroll next season. Cause a lot of it is just letting people who weren't playing and they, yeah, it's just coming out the books. Yeah. So Yom Magadha was the, you know, highest paid player, $24.8 million. I believe we've discussed his

workload at previous intervals in this podcast. Eloy Menez was a 13.8 and change. He lost the ability to hit the ball in the air at some point early in the season and wound up taking that act to Baltimore. Max Stasi lost the entire season to a hip injury, did not play a single game for the white Sox. I believe he's tied for, or he's right in there at six. Martin Maldonado seemed to no longer be able to hit anymore. Very unfortunate to learn that at the juncture of the season they did. There's no reason to suspect that prior to the season.

There was so much argument with Maldonado. He wasn't brought here to hit. Why are people freaking out was sort of the party line. Do you know how hot he'd have to get up to get back to like one 80 where he normally is like the guy who can't hit like that's like, you know, scare quotes in terms of major league quality. Like that's how we rank it. We're not talking about this. We're not talking about literally makes it out every time. What was it? Carlos Correa estimated. Melonado was worth 10 wins or 15 wins or something

just through his presence or defense or game calling or whatever. So if that's the case, then, uh, then the white Sox were even worse. If you have paid him at the All-Star break and the 21 losing streak commenced right after that. I can't believe that we're podcasting about the white Sox while this game is happening. I cannot believe that we're doing that. It is easily the dumbest thing we've ever done in the history of the podcast. And we spent an entire pod talking about horny fish related to the Rockies. I cannot believe it. I just, what a choice. All right. What's my fun fact? What's my OPS?

Out of defiance, this is where the focus should be. This is America's baseball team. This is where we should ground our interest. That's a 7'10", Tommy fam, because I'm asserting business and making things as capricious and unfair as the White Sox. All right, Meg, take us home. You got anything left? I'm going to end on an optimistic one. I'm going to give you an optimistic number. Are you ready? That number is two.

That is where the White Sox farm system currently ranks by our estimation at Fan Crafts. And look, I might move around a little bit. There might be graduations that I'm not accounting for. I don't think so though. It's not that things are going to be better soon. I don't think they will be. I think it'll take a long time and it may require a change in ownership, but at least some of the kids on the farm are doing stuff that merits being a, you know, 55 future value prospect. So, uh, two is the number I want to leave folks with. How about that? Hmm.

There are, um, what I would consider less reputable outlets than, uh, graphs that have ranked the white socks high, uh, in farm systems, uh, other the season and the frequency to which I heard that used as a talking point. We're trying to minimize the struggles that we were witnessing on the major league level. Makes me know that this is only one of maybe 170 to 180 times. I will hear this over the course of the next four months. So yes, it's, it's, it's, it's optimistic. It's what's, it's the only thing that's keeping me going, but I feel that this is going to become worn out at some degree. So I'll split the difference between my outrage and the

actual optimism and give you young Brian Ramos' 586 OPS. Aw. That's nice. Okay. Well, I have unofficial figures here, but James, if you have the official tabulation, I may have messed up along the way. I never actually added anyone. I just missed the names and then I thought I'd hand out the names to everyone like they were Poke cards or something.

Okay. All right. Well, I think, so Jordan got Lenin Sosa, Andrew Benentendi and Nick Senzel, right? Senzel being follow-up means he almost automatically loses. Yes. So Jordan brings up the rear, the white socks of this draft with a 1589. That's great. That's the white socks.

Let's do it. I thought we were going to be aiming for the lowest number initially. And so then you would have won, but I guess we didn't do that until you lost. But you, you, I guess fulfilled the spirit of the exercise, maybe better than anyone else did. So 1589 OPS for Jordan and then other Ben had Gavin Sheets, Kevin Pilar and Oscar Collas, which I think is a 1951 OPS total. One Aaron judge.

Not quite that good, but yeah. Not quite that good, but yeah. And then I had Andrew Vaughn, Zach Remillard, and Tommy Pham. That is a resounding 2084 OPS, I believe. And then finally Meg had Luis Robert Jr., Paul DeYoung, and Brian Ramos at 586. So that is a total of 1949, I believe. So that means that I'm on top. Other Ben beat out Meg by two points of OPS. Came down to the wire there.

Really am the mariners of this one. Barely missing, aren't I? Yeah, and then Jordan, a distant fourth at 15.89. Better than a distant fifth with 121 losses. True, did Jake in absentia have anything that he wanted to share, fun factors that wise? I think Jake won, because Jake's locked into this meds braves game.

Yeah, I mean, in a way we've all lost during this exercise. This is us, the pittance we've paid. Channeled the White Sox. We were talking about the worst possible baseball during some of the best possible baseball. So again, I think this was timely and we will return to talk about that baseball and also the playoffs and the po-bos and the uniform changes. They're changing the uniforms. Meg, you did it. Your constant tweets and reminders on this podcast, I think that was what changed mindset MLB. James, thank you, I suppose, for suffering through this draft on top of the entire White Sox season that you just covered really the day after that ended.

We called you back in to just wallow in what you saw all year and you really, you know, you took one for the team, I think, and it was just a really bad team. And I don't know whether all that losing built character in you specifically, or whether you learned anything about baseball or beat writing, or whether you feel good because it has to be all uphill from here. I would imagine, farm system aside, it just can't be that bad again, I think. Although there was a tweet that was going around, a White Sox fan who tweeted that at the end of last year said that it couldn't be worse. That was the consolation. It got a lot worse. So any parting thoughts or lessons having been through the crucible of covering the 2024 White Sox start to finish? I know the saying is that it's all downhill from here is that's when

it's bad, but it's all uphill from here. Sounds like a tremendous amount of unenjoyable walking. And that feels apropos. It's true. Hey, the White Sox deserve their day on the podcast. I mean, they had a bunch of days. We talked about them many times, but when you are the worst, at least in the modern era, you know, you kind of have to clear out

and recognize that before we move on to focusing on the good teams. The good teams will have their days. They get another month in the sun in the spotlight, whereas the White Sox get to slink off to their off season sadness. But at least they go with this. And I hope that White Sox fans take this in the spirit

in which it was intended, which is, I think that we feel for White Sox fans. I mean, condolences to them. It's not their fault. Yeah, they didn't do this. Unequivocally. Yeah, so I'm not condolences to them. We definitely feel for white socks fans. It's not their fault. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't do this. There's no, unequivocally. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not trying to pile on them. I hope if anything, they find this cathartic

and feel like we're commiserating and that we recognize what they went through. Because the worst thing of all would be if we neglected their pain or didn't acknowledge their pain. And I think we have, we've recognized it. And in fact, I'd go so far as to say that this really has brought attention to how long suffering that fan base has been. Because yeah, this year was the worst, but they have had a claim to maybe the most hapless franchise for quite a while.

And I don't think they get credit for that. And I don't know, James, you would know, like do White Sox fans feel aggrieved that they don't get enough attention as like the team that has lost a lot and they've suffered through all this because like their 2005 championship and what was it, the 88 year drought,

almost an afterthought after the Red Sox 86 year drought was snapped and then the Cubs 108 year drought and just both more famous and the curse and just more lore around those. Everyone just almost forgot about the White Sox and meanwhile they've been around forever. And the only time that they've had back to back postseason appearances is with the pandemic

aided short season. So I think their claim to infamy is as strong as anyone's. And I see that white Sox fans and I recognize that and I realize your pain. So I don't know, James, did the white Sox fans feel like they don't get enough credit for what they've been through? White Sox fans are like a rabid raccoon with a broken leg. Um, we all feel for them. We can see horrible things that happened to them.

I wouldn't approach them under any circumstance. They've lived a life you can't relate to. Your sensitivity will not be responded to with what you're anticipating. Keep your distance and call it a profession. Like they're beyond your help. Your sympathy is only going to end in more wounds. I guess we can end on that note.

James, thanks for your coverage. Thanks for appearing on here. We recommend your coverage on Socks Machine. Despite the fact that we just covered how unwatchable the White Socks have been and maybe for some time, your coverage of them, it's a light in the darkness. I know you don't get Jason Benetti's commentary, which added insult to injury that might have

made all the losses more tolerable, but at least you have one of the best beat writers in the biz on hand chronicling the depths of the abyss. I did just publish an interview with Jason about how happy he is with his new team. I'm sure that will get everyone's. Yeah, I'm sure it really helps that the, the all time loss Mark was set against the Tigers with Jason Benetti and the other booth riding the high of the Tigers on their improbable Cinderella run. Yeah, I'm sure that didn't make anyone feel any worse at all. Jordan, thank you for doing this.

We look forward to all of your postseason coverage at Yahoo Sports and on the baseball Barbecue cast. Always a pleasure. Thank you gentlemen. And Meg, why would I say that was terrible? Shame on me. This Francisco Lindor guy has me shook. Yeah, this was a delight even within the absurd context and timing.

Thank you all. And other Ben, always wonderful to talk to you and read you as well. Yeah, thanks. I can't believe this game. I can't believe this game. Why are we still talking? Let's be done. Well, one thing I meant to bring up on this episode that I neglected to, possibly because I was distracted by everything else that was transpiring as we were recording was whether these white socks will be the thing from this season that's most remembered.

Sam Miller usually writes about this at the end of each season, we often discuss it on the podcast. What's the one thing that is most likely to stand the test of time from this season? Is it the White Sox? Well, what else would it be? Aaron Judge had his best offensive season this year, but I kinda doubt it will be as well remembered as his 62 homer season. So to this point I think there's only one real rival to the White Sox, and that is,

as usual, Shohei Otani. Now this hasn't been his most valuable season yet, perhaps it won't be as valuable as other seasons still to come, but first MVP as a dedicated DH and of course 50-50. Even if someone else gets to 50-50, and I would bet that a player will before another team loses 121 games or more, Otani still will have been the first. People still remember that Jose Canseco was the first 40-40 guy. Then again, how many of you remembered that Ken Williams was the first 30-30 guy until I brought it up the other day?

Of course, everything about Otani will be extra memorable. Then again, so much about him is memorable that maybe the power-speed combo won't prove quite as enduring in the popular imagination as the hitting-pitching combo. Now for me, it's either the White Sox losing or Otani's 50-50 so far, but we still have a whole postseason in store, so maybe we can revisit and discuss this at greater length at the actual end of the season. The Braves' Mets finish will be remembered for some time. I don't think it'll quite rise to that level. However, in our bold preseason predictions pod, I nailed the one where I predicted that

the regular season schedule would end with the first ever three-way tie for a playoff spot. That happened. Braves, Mets, Diamondbacks all finished with identical 89-73 records, and of course we were deprived of a tiebreaker that we would have gotten in an earlier era. Now what we did get, because of the hurricane and the postponement and the end of season excitement, that was not a bad substitute, though that was not the plan. And I think that distracts somewhat from how annoyed we might be if we had gotten

that three-way tie and had not gotten to see what kind of felt like an extra game played, even though it wasn't, it was a make-up. It still had the spotlight all to itself, the double header did, that is. So first ever three-way tie for a playoff spot, that might have been remembered if there were actual tiebreakers. But, eh, that one may fade away. Even though we still remember that wild finish to the 2011 season, that has proved to be pretty indelible. And as Sam noted, the Lindor Homer was the most consequential regular season hit since 2011, according to Championship Win Probability added.

So who knows, maybe the Lindor Dinger, especially if the Mets go on to win the World Series. Anyway, this is always a fun thing to mull over, and we will return to this topic. But yes, it is quite something that we were talking about the White Sox on the day when the Mets and Braves played incredible baseball, when Pete Rose died, when there were multiple front office shakeups, when there was an announcement about the uniforms changing. That by the way might be something we remember from this season. The transparent pants, the mismatched tops and bottoms. That's a contender.

Anyway, we will cover all of that in the future, much as the pants will cover the players in the future. Of course, if not for our White Sox podcast plans, we wouldn't have recorded on Monday at all, so it didn't really affect how soon we would be able to discuss those developments. But since this was a regular season-centric episode, two quick updates for you. One, back in mid-May, episode 2163, we did a stat blast, prompted by listener Joel, who wrote in to note that the Tigers to that point were 1-3 when entering the bottom of the ninth ahead 1-0

and frequent stat blast correspondent Ryan Nelson noted that it was odd that the Tigers had already played four such games where they entered the bottom of the 9th ahead 1-0 by mid-May because he found no team had had more than five such games in a season. Well, listener Joel, who sent that original email, followed up to say that the Tigers had two more of those games, so by his count they had six on the whole this season, and that is the most ever. They won the last two to go 3-3 in those games, which is not great, given that historically the winning percentage of teams that enter the bottom of the ninth up 1-0 was 8-19. Still, they lost a bunch of the early ones, and they won the late ones, because of course

they did. The Tigers very rarely lost late in the season. And finally, let me play you a clip of the last out of the Nationals and Phillies regular seasons. This was on Sunday. Bottom of the ninth, the Phillies entered that bottom of the ninth up not 1-0, but 6-3. Then the Nats loaded the bases with no outs, followed by two strikeouts, and then with two outs, bases still juiced,

this happened. What a way to finish off the last game of the 2024 season. Little excitement at the end. Little pitter patter in the heart. And the Phillies hang on and win it. Well the kid rakes, but he also saves the day. Yes, Cody Clemens, not Ben Clemens may have saved that game, but you know who else did? Jose Ruiz. Ruiz, the right-handed reliever, was on the mound for the Phillies, and that Cody Clemens catch sealed the 97th game finished of Jose Ruiz's major league career and the first

save. If Clemens had missed that, if that ball had gone over his head or off the wall, it could have been bases clearing and Ruiz might have blown the save and he might have retained his place at number 2 on the all-time Games Finished Without a Save leaderboard. Instead, he got the save. So 96 Games Finished Without a Save was as high as he got, 10 away from breaking podcast legend Ryan Webb's all-time tally of 105, and I gotta imagine that if Jose Ruiz was aware that he was approaching record games finished

without a save territory, which in itself is doubtful, he's probably pretty happy to be off of that leaderboard and to have gotten a save. And I'm trying to be happy for him, but I'm a little disappointed for myself. The last gall darn day of the season. It's deflating because I'd been following and savoring this pursuit for some time, and if he had just entered the winter with an active streak, then I could have anticipated all offseason that next year he would break the record and I'd be able to follow that story.

But no, that was taken away from me just as an extra base hit was taken away from Juan Yepez by Cody Clemens' catch. Congrats to Jose Ruiz on his first career major league save, and congrats to our man Ryan Webb for retaining his stranglehold at the top of that leaderboard. I imagine it's kind of a 1972 Dolphins sort of celebration that he's having. Once the last undefeated team in an NFL season loses a game, the 1972 Dolphins place in history is secured. Well, now Webb has no one to worry about. This leaves Carlos Almanzar at 63 in second place, and among active pitchers I believe

Nabil Crismont is in a distant second with a mere 42 games finished without a save. Well this is our collective 2225th podcast finished here at Effectively Wild, which has long been saved by the generosity of our Patreon supporters. You too can go to Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. Andrew Schoon, Bonk, Craig W, Tritus, and Matthew Knudson, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord

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Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show page at FanGraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. I'm just a man who wants nothing less than effectively wild. Oh, wild, oh wild.

Nothing less than effectively wild.