The White Sox Can Always Find A Way To Get Lower

For any other baseball team, the events of last night's 9-0 loss to the Baltimore Orioles would represent the nadir of a season with no hope in sight, as a wayward and overmatched team trudges through its agonizing final stretch of games. For the Chicago White Sox, it was Tuesday.

The Pale Hose were already down 4-0 in the second inning when former teammate Eloy Jiménez stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded. A grand slam would have been too trite an outcome. Instead, the White Sox made it interesting by having two of their players run into each other as three runs scored. The home broadcast booth was astonished:

That would be left fielder Andrew Benintendi and third baseman Miguel Vargas, who was charged with the error, running into each other as a fair ball rolls away. Vargas left with an eye abrasion, while Benintendi, physically fine, was ejected in the sixth inning for arguing balls and strikes, two pitches after his manager, Grady Sizemore, was tossed for the same reason. In their defense, umpire Hunter Wendelstedt's strike zone wasn't helping, but it's hard to view calling generous strikes in a White Sox game as anything other than a mercy.

There were other lowlights. In the fourth inning, Jiménez was pegged in the head by White Sox pitcher Jared Shuster's throw to first base. Vargas's replacement, Lenyn Sosa, was part of a three-man fielding squad that let a fly ball drop in for a single in the eighth inning. “There was balls that were being called strikes and strikes being called balls, for both teams,” Sizemore said after his first ejection, via the Associated Press. “I get it. The game’s getting out of control, we’re down a lot. But our guys are still hitting. They’re not trying to give up their at-bats.” That's hard to believe.

The 2024 White Sox have now lost 12 in a row, which is different from the time when they lost 21 in a row, and the other time when they lost 14 in a row. They have won just one series in their last 31. They are 31-109, and 5-45 in their last 50. The most horrifying stat of all might be that this team still has to play 22 more games.