The theory is that you never know when something bad is going to stop happening, but if you mention it enough times, it will stop soon. It's jinx worship, it's faulty logic, but it's all we have, and we've certainly tried it for the White Sox, given that we've written about them more than anyone but the Chicago Sun-Times.
None of it has mattered. The White Sox are hell-bent on being the kind of bad baseball team seen only during world wars. There's nothing we can do to stop them except maybe to spirit them on their way to their true level, as horrifying as that might seem.
The Blank Feet turned in another abject surrender Saturday night against the Minnesota Twins, 6-2, reaching a 19-game losing streak that is approaching the longest in the game's history. Manager-turned-babysitter Pedro Grifol trotted out a lineup with batting averages of .232, .232, .218, .217, .216, .210, .205, .193 and .159. That starting nine's best OPS, Luis Robert's .716, ranks 206th among all batters; he isn't a qualified batter because he's spent about half the season mercifully injured with a hip strain. As a result, the Sox amassed three whole hits, one of them a homer by fresh-from-the-minors shortstop Brooks Baldwin, who entered the game with 46 plate appearances and a slash line of .159/.196/.250.
Earlier in the season, Chicago had a 14-game losing streak, meaning that if not for those two mildly unfortunate stretches, the team would be 27-53 and still have the worst record in baseball by more than a week's worth of games. As it is, they are 27-86 and have the worst record in baseball by a month and half. They won a total of three games in July.
But you know all that if you're the sort who likes to take your lunch outside by walking to the local graveyard. And if we can't shake them out of their industrial torpor by continually mentioning their industrial torpor, why do you think they would? Since the last time we wrote about them, they are 0-5. They have been swept in 17 of their series this season and have lost the series opener 31 times. The most recent team to flop 19 straight was the 2021 Baltimore Orioles. The only longer streaks since 1901 are the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies (23 games), the 1988 Baltimore Orioles (21), the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, a World War II version of that same team in 1943, the 1906 Boston Americans, and the expansion-year Montreal Expos (20). These White Sox are on the cusp of becoming a national story and taking attention away from Pommel Horse Guy.
The White Sox might be the one team immune to jinxes referencing their monomaniacal devotion to failure. Normally when you bring up a team going well or poorly, God has a laugh and allows the poor to succeed and the rich to fail, at least for a day. It's a reminder that we're not as smart as we think we are, even if we think that we're idiots. The White Sox have not yet regressed to the mean; they're still stuck on that first word.
Baseball is a coin flip every day, but the White Sox cannot keep flipping that coin and watch it roll down a sewer grate, no matter how many .207 hitters they keep inflicting upon themselves. The law of big numbers may currently be suspended in their case, but it still applies. In other words, they will not lose all of their 49 remaining games, although we have boundless faith that they will give it what passes for their best. And if they can stink enough to make it worth our while, we'll be available to tell them what they already know.
