The NFL loser update won’t post until Tuesday. (0-3 Tennessee plays the early Monday night game.)
But the MLB season mostly wrapped up today.
How did the White Sox do?
Shockingly well down the stretch. They swept the LA Angels Tuesday-Thursday of last week, and won two out of three against the Detroit Tigers (who ESPN had as heavy favorites for all three games). Where was this team earlier in the season?
But they did manage to drop one to Detroit, and you know what that means…
…their final record was 41-121, breaking the mark set by the 1962 Mets, and making them arguably the worst team in the modern (1901 and later) era of baseball.
“arguably”? Well, 121 losses in a season is a record. But 41-121 works out to a winning percentage of .253. That comes in fifth on Wikipedia’s list of worst MLB teams if you sort by percentage. Ahead of the Sox are:
- The 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, .235 (36-117)
- The 1935 Boston Braves, .248 (38-115)
- The 1962 Mets, .250 (40-120)
- The 1904 Washington Senators, .252 (38-113)
So what’s the best way to determine the worst? Sheer number of losses, which puts the 2024 Sox at the top of the heap? Or does it make more sense to use winning percentage, which evens out the fluctuations cased by the variable number of games per season over the past 123 years, and by some games being cancelled and not made up? (If you notice, none of those numbers adds up to 154 or 162. I haven’t looked at the other records, but as I understand it, one of the 1962 Mets games was a tie, so it should be 40-120-1, and one was rained out and not made up.)
I don’t know. But I think in any case, the achievement of the 2024 White Sox is worth celebrating, even if they didn’t remove all doubt about who is really the worst. There’s always next year.