With only 21 games remaining in the 2024 MLB season, it is clear that the Chicago White Sox are not just the worst team in MLB history, but one of the worst teams in all of sports history. In a season that is not even a worst-case scenario (Garrett Crochet pitched like a true ace and Erick Fedde provided 21 borderline all-star quality starts), the team is on pace to have the worst record in MLB history. Without Crochet’s breakout or Fedde’s surprising performance, would a 25-win season have been feasible?
Regardless, it feels like the White Sox season should be a bigger story, especially on a national level. It’s not just that the White Sox are bad, but the lack of a long-term plan is alarming. The front office may act like this was always the plan, but prior to the season, GM Chris Getz stated “I don’t like our team,” acquired several players that he believed would at least improve the defense, only for the defense to get even worse. A winning season was certainly not in the cards, but anyone claiming that being the worst team ever was all part of some master plan should not be trusted.
Pedro Grifol was fired as manager in August (and the team has been markedly worse since, for whatever it’s worth). But the lack of accountability elsewhere is appalling. When Getz was hired last summer, chairman Jerry Reinsdorf stated that he chose an internal candidate in lieu of a more thorough search process because Getz would not have to “waste a year” evaluating the organization and could get the team back to relevance quicker. Unfortunately, the 2024 White Sox season may be best described as a waste.
White Sox fans have very few reasons to believe that anybody currently making decisions for the organization is qualified or equipped to improve the situation. A massive 20-win improvement in 2025 (which seems unlikely given the likely lack of significant free agent signings forthcoming) would result in another 100+ loss, last-place finish.
And while it may be unfair to pin it all on Getz considering he inherited the mess from the last regime, he has not exactly come off as a shrewd executive in his first year. All of his moves have either backfired or resulted in zero real promise. The Erick Fedde signing was fantastic at first, but all that mattered was the trade return he would command, and that is already looking like a swing and a miss.
Fans have joked — well, some of them are serious — that the commissioner’s office needs to step in and do something about a White Sox organization that clearly does not prioritize winning in a major market and is unwilling to take the necessary steps (or any steps, really) to fully evaluate what is wrong. While this will not happen considering the relationship between the commissioner and team owners, it is a perfectly reasonable request. A 120+ loss season should not be normalized. Firing the manager is not enough, especially when the primary problem is a largely talentless roster and most of the players on it were acquired within the last year.
The 2024-2025 offseason moves (or lack thereof) will reveal a lot about the future of the White Sox. But as long as Chris Getz remains in charge, enabled by an owner in Jerry Reinsdorf who clearly has little interest in winning games, it is very difficult to even squint and see a bright future. The 2024 season will be retroactively labeled (perhaps a nice way of saying the organization will gaslight fans) as “just a bad year,” but the worst team in baseball history and one of the worst in sports history cannot be let off the hook, and the architect of the team should not be able to deflect the blame to a now-fired manager.
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I believe Getz is nothing more than a puppet. The true culprit in all of this is La Russa. The fact he is still apart of the organization is appalling. His influence with Ebenezer Reinsdorf is a major reason why the Sox are continue falling further into the abyss.