White Sox Become a Punch Line

By: Jim McGuire

I heard something from the White Sox-Orioles game on September 3rd that perfectly summed up this 2024 White Sox season. First, a little build up. The White Sox were in the middle game of a three-game set at Camden Yards, already in the midst of an 11-game losing streak. It was the bottom of the second inning, and Baltimore had the bases loaded. I won’t get into the specifics of who exactly was on base, but I will tell you that Eloy Jimenez was at the plate. He hit a routine pop fly down the left field line, past third base. You look at the highlight, and you can see White Sox left fielder, Andrew Benintendi, had a beat on the play. Third baseman, Miguel Vargas, also went down the line to pursue the ball. Common baseball logic would dictate that the left fielder, Benintendi, should have called off the aggressive 3rd baseman, Vargas. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, both players collided, the ball dropped in, all three runs came in to score, Eloy was on second, and Vargas’s night ended with a welt on his eye. The White Sox television announcers, John Schriffen and Steve Stone immediately expressed concern for both players, and rightly so. You never want to see collisions like that. It was on the Baltimore feed, though, where I heard “The White Sox have just gone full White Sox!” That was it. The 2024 White Sox just became a punch line.

Subtle digs were taken at the White Sox before. The ESPN telecast of this year’s Little League World Series made mention of how no player on the Illinois team wanted to say if they were a White Sox fan. Jon “Boog” Sciambi, television voice on the Marquee Network for the North Siders, has joked about the White Sox on multiple occasions this season. Never, though, at any point during this season had I heard something quite like what was uttered on Baltimore television.

I can’t say I am shocked or surprised at that statement, though. This 2024 season has been a colossal disappointment for the White Sox and us fans. We came into the season with heightened hopes. No, our hopes were not on being AL Central Champs. We knew we weren’t going to compete for the division title, especially after the trade of Dylan Cease to San Diego in Spring Training. Our hopes were more along the lines of this season could not be any worse than 2023. We remember the 2023 White Sox, so defined by the image of Tim Anderson squaring up to fight Jose Ramirez of Cleveland, only to be dropped by a right hook from the Guardian’s 3 rd baseman, as Cleveland radio voice Tom Hamilton exclaimed, “Down goes Anderson! Down goes Anderson!”, seemingly channeling Howard Cosell. Surely, 2024 couldn’t be worse than that, could it? I didn’t think it could be, and I even said as such on a TFR podcast. Yeah, my bad. 2024 was worse, telling 2023 to figuratively hold its beer.

The images and moments of why this season was worse are many. Our offense was beyond bad to start the season, seeming nonexistent on some day. Our first 30 games saw us nearly get blanked in half of them. It led me to say that our offense was, well, offensive, with me channeling former Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach John McKay, who famously quipped about his offense’s execution on the field by saying, “I’m all for it.” Our bullpen could do anything and everything but hold a lead. We lead all Major League Baseball in blown leads this year, and close games by the 5th inning, seemed to become decisive losses by the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th innings. We had a manager at an obvious disconnect with the team, never more obvious than after a lopsided loss at home on a May afternoon, again to the Orioles. We seemed to look for ways to lose, to find ways to lose, heck, to invent ways to lose. No clearer example of that than two early evening games on June 4 & 5 at Wrigley Field. Yours truly had a front row seat to two respective White Sox leads of 5-0 and 5-1 evaporate into two gut-punching 7-6 losses to the Cubs. We had three losing streaks of 10+ games this year, including an American League-tying 21 game losing streak. Three losing streaks of that magnitude had no been seen in baseball since the 1965 New York Mets. We had two homestands of 7+ games, with our win total being 0. This year’s ad campaign for the team was “Better at the Ballpark.” Winless homestands certainly did not make things better at the ballpark.

So, what am I getting at here? What is the point of dredging up all this pain of the 2024 season? Speaking for myself, it doesn’t matter if the White Sox tie or break the 1962 Mets record for Major League futility. It may matter to the front office if they don’t, but as a proud and passionate fan and season ticket holder, I can tell you that this has already been a historically bad season for my team. We can all pretty much say with fair amount of certainty that this year’s White Sox team is the worst we’ve ever seen. After all, most of us only hear stories of those Mets of ’62, led by Casey Stengel. But just as I had a front row seat to those debacles on the North Side of town, I’ve had a front row seat to my 2024 White Sox. I won’t apologize for that. I accept that. After all, as I said, I’m a proud and passionate White Sox fan and season ticket holder.

Now you may ask if there is any hope for us on the horizon. Hey, as we sit here on the morning of September 17, the White Sox have won 3 games in a row. Yes, that's called a winning streak. It has happened before, even for this year's White Sox team. You may even ask if 2025 can be worse than 2024. There is some hope. We have a foundation of young pitching, particularly left-handed pitching in our farm systems. We have the top two left-handed pitching prospects in baseball in Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith. Our low A ball team, the Kannapolis Cannonballers, are playing for the Carolina League Championship. Our AA team in Birmingham is in the Southern League playoffs. Where we need to get better is getting high end talent in the field and at the plate, and to thoroughly mold and develop such talent as they move up in the system. We also need to replenish the system, to ensure that our cupboard does not get bare like it did after our first attempted rebuild. It comes down to our ownership, our front office, and our management team. It is incumbent upon all of them to set the 2025 White Sox and beyond so that they are “Better at the Ballpark” and are not going “full White Sox.”