Chicago White Sox lose 120th game of the season, ties modern MLB record

The 2024 Chicago White Sox have made history, but not in a positive way.

They lost their 120th game of the season on Sunday, tying them with the 1962 New York Mets for the team with the most losses in a single season since the modern era of baseball began in 1900. With six games left in the regular season, it’s more than likely that the Sox will set a new record in the coming days.

For the White Sox, it was a loss much like the 119 others they have suffered this year, albeit a close one, falling 4-2 to the San Diego Padres.

The White Sox get a chance to break the record on Tuesday in a home game against the Los Angeles Angels.

But first, let’s talk about the team the White Sox just played. The 1962 Mets were a brand-new team, created as an expansion franchise after the Brooklyn Dodgers packed up and moved to Los Angeles and the New York Giants moved to San Francisco. Expansion teams draft players from other teams, so they’re not expected to be good right away. The Mets were particularly bad, but badness on some level was to be expected.

The White Sox have been in Chicago since 1900. Jerry Reinsdorf has owned the franchise since 1981. They lost 101 games in 2023, then fired their general manager and promoted farm director Chris Getz to the position. With the farm director replacing the GM, there was some hope that the on-field product would improve a bit, or at least not get worse. Badness was expected, but certainly not at this historic level.

In a season filled with humiliations, the past two months have been particularly tough on the South Side. Here’s a look at what’s happened to the White Sox since August 1.

Monumental losing streak. They lost 21 games in a row, one loss shy of the all-time American League record.

Manager fired. The day after they ended their losing streak, Getz and Reinsdorf fired embattled manager Pedro Grifol, who had a shocking 89-190 record in less than two seasons at the helm. The White Sox were 28-89 when he was fired.

Incredibly early elimination. The White Sox were eliminated from the playoffs on August 17, the earliest team to be eliminated since divisional competition was introduced in 1969.

Lost 100 games for the third time in six years. On August 25, the White Sox reached the 100-game losing streak, marking the sixth time in franchise history that the team has lost that many regular-season games.

Equaling the franchise loss record on September 1. The record for losses in a White Sox season was 106, set in 1970. The 2024 team tied that record with a full month left in the regular season.

Received condolences from surviving members of the 1962 Mets. Three members of that infamous 1962 Mets team publicly expressed their sympathy for the 2024 White Sox, including pitchers Craig Anderson (who went 3-17 in 1962) and Jay Hook (who went 8-19). The late first baseman Ed Kranepool also felt bad, but had a slightly different take on the matter: “Better them than me.”

Jerry Reinsdorf “thinks he knows it all” and is accused of leading the White Sox to ruin. The Athletic spoke with more than 40 current and former White Sox employees. The prevailing consensus was that Reinsdorf, with his blanket refusal to modernize and accept dissent, bears the blame for the White Sox’ historically poor 2024 season.

With just one loss between them and history, the 2024 White Sox are about to enter uncharted territory. If they set the MLB losing record, they will go where no modern baseball team has gone before. It’s lonely out there on the edge of history.