“Besting” the 2024 White Sox
Anything worth doing is worth doing right, and when it came to losing games, the 2024 White Sox were the grandmasters of the art. Sure, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders had a worse record, but that was an intentionally terrible team thanks to an owner who sent the club’s good players over to another team they owned, the St. Louis Perfectos. The 1962 Mets edged the Sox in win percentage, but that notorious team had the advantage of being an expansion club in their first year after an expansion draft that was so short on talent, it resembled a grocery store’s toilet paper aisle during the height of COVID. Last year’s White Sox were just two years removed from a .500 record, and by all accounts, ownership and the front office intended to actually win games. A strong record, however, needs to be forged in the fire of new challengers, and this season, two early contenders have emerged: the Colorado Rockies and the reigning lastpions themselves.
The Rockies are off to a blazing cold start and are the current frontrunners with a 4-20 record. For a team with a winning percentage short of .200, Colorado has received some surprisingly competent pitching performances, with the two main splats being former Cy Young contender Germán Márquez and top prospect Chase Dollander. Where the Rockies have been stunningly poor is on the offensive side of things, with the team hitting .213/.287/.345 and just barely averaging three runs per game. Fourteen hitters have at least 20 plate appearances and more than half of them have a wRC+ below 70. Ryan McMahon’s performance is a particularly low lowlight; the third baseman has 39 strikeouts already thanks to an out-of-zone contact rate under 20%, a number so bananas that it looks like a programming glitch that proves our existence is actually a simulation.
ZiPS thought the Rockies would struggle in 2025, but not to this level. The system’s projection, for a mere 99 losses, even came with a (very) small chance of Colorado making the playoffs as a Wild Card team. After Thursday’s games, I did a full re-simulation of the 2025 season to get a projection for what the Rockies could achieve if they fail to get the wheels back on the cart:
| Wins | Percentage | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|
| 28 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 29 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 30 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 31 | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| 32 | 0.1% | 0.2% |
| 33 | 0.1% | 0.3% |
| 34 | 0.2% | 0.5% |
| 35 | 0.3% | 0.7% |
| 36 | 0.5% | 1.2% |
| 37 | 0.7% | 1.8% |
| 38 | 0.8% | 2.7% |
| 39 | 1.0% | 3.7% |
| 40 | 1.5% | 5.2% |
| 41 | 1.8% | 7.0% |
| 42 | 2.0% | 8.9% |
| 43 | 2.6% | 11.5% |
| 44 | 2.9% | 14.4% |
| 45 | 3.3% | 17.7% |
| 46 | 4.0% | 21.7% |
| 47 | 4.1% | 25.8% |
| 48 | 4.4% | 30.2% |
| 49 | 4.7% | 34.9% |
| 50 | 5.2% | 40.1% |
| 51 | 5.0% | 45.0% |
| 52 | 5.4% | 50.4% |
| 53 | 5.2% | 55.6% |
| 54 | 5.1% | 60.7% |
| 55 | 5.0% | 65.7% |
| 56 | 4.7% | 70.4% |
| 57 | 4.3% | 74.7% |
| 58 | 4.1% | 78.8% |
| 59 | 3.7% | 82.5% |
| 60 | 3.3% | 85.7% |
| 61 | 2.8% | 88.5% |
| 62 | 2.4% | 91.0% |
| 63 | 1.9% | 92.9% |
| 64 | 1.7% | 94.6% |
| 65 | 1.3% | 95.9% |
| 66 | 1.1% | 97.1% |
| 67 | 0.9% | 97.9% |
| 68 | 0.6% | 98.6% |
| 69 | 0.4% | 99.0% |
| 70 | 0.4% | 99.4% |
| 71 | 0.2% | 99.6% |
| 72 | 0.2% | 99.8% |
| 73 | 0.1% | 99.9% |
| 74 | 0.1% | 99.9% |
| 75 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 76 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 77 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 78 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 79 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 80 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 81 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
Naturally, the team’s small sliver of playoff probability has been wiped out by April. In the preseason projections, the Rockies only had a 1.5% chance of matching 121 losses and a 0.8% chance of setting a new record. So while the feat was at least plausible, it was a long shot. The odds are still strongly against — losing this many games is really hard — but seven and five percent are bonafide countin’ numbers.
Colorado’s biggest obstacle in the pursuit of infamy is that there are real reasons for hope when looking at the roster. As mentioned above, Márquez and Dollander have been terrible, but there is still at least some remaining chance that the former can get back to where he was, and the latter is an elite prospect. Michael Toglia is a Triple-A-caliber first baseman, not a pitcher dragooned into the lineup, and will surely fall short of his -6 WAR pace. Ezequiel Tovar is a better player than this, and guys like Zac Veen and Adael Amador have legitimate upside. The Rockies simply have a lot of saving throws that could lead to more positive outcomes this year. The start makes it possible that the Rockies will match the 2024 Sox for futility, but when you watch Colorado, your eyes aren’t physically forced to stare blurrily into middle distance at the Stygian maw, where nothing will give your frozen gaze succor from the dread of oblivion and Chris Davis‘ contract.
But hey, we still have the OGs, the White Sox, to look at. At 6-19, they’re a game and a half behind the Rockies for these purposes, but if ZiPS is to be believed, they’re a fundamentally worse roster. Chicago’s 52-110 projected record coming into the 2025 season is the worst projection ZiPS has ever given a team (not counting that article last year where I projected how Triple-A teams would fare in the majors):
| Win | Percentage | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|
| 28 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| 29 | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| 30 | 0.1% | 0.2% |
| 31 | 0.2% | 0.4% |
| 32 | 0.3% | 0.7% |
| 33 | 0.4% | 1.1% |
| 34 | 0.6% | 1.7% |
| 35 | 0.9% | 2.6% |
| 36 | 1.3% | 3.9% |
| 37 | 1.5% | 5.4% |
| 38 | 1.9% | 7.3% |
| 39 | 2.4% | 9.7% |
| 40 | 2.8% | 12.4% |
| 41 | 3.4% | 15.8% |
| 42 | 3.7% | 19.6% |
| 43 | 4.1% | 23.6% |
| 44 | 4.7% | 28.3% |
| 45 | 5.1% | 33.4% |
| 46 | 5.3% | 38.7% |
| 47 | 5.5% | 44.2% |
| 48 | 5.4% | 49.6% |
| 49 | 5.3% | 54.9% |
| 50 | 5.1% | 60.0% |
| 51 | 5.0% | 65.0% |
| 52 | 4.7% | 69.7% |
| 53 | 4.4% | 74.1% |
| 54 | 4.2% | 78.3% |
| 55 | 3.7% | 82.0% |
| 56 | 3.2% | 85.2% |
| 57 | 2.9% | 88.1% |
| 58 | 2.5% | 90.6% |
| 59 | 2.0% | 92.7% |
| 60 | 1.6% | 94.3% |
| 61 | 1.5% | 95.8% |
| 62 | 1.2% | 96.9% |
| 63 | 0.8% | 97.7% |
| 64 | 0.7% | 98.4% |
| 65 | 0.5% | 98.9% |
| 66 | 0.4% | 99.2% |
| 67 | 0.3% | 99.5% |
| 68 | 0.2% | 99.7% |
| 69 | 0.1% | 99.8% |
| 70 | 0.1% | 99.9% |
| 71 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 72 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 73 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 74 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 75 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 76 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 77 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 78 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 79 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 80 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 81 | 0.0% | 100.0% |
ZiPS gives the White Sox a 16% chance of matching last year’s loss total and a 12% chance — better than the probability of an Aaron Judge homer — of besting it. Where the White Sox and Rockies differ in the pantheon of lousy teams is that the Sox are currently configured in a way that greatly limits their upside. For a rebuilding team, the starting lineup is surprisingly old and established; players like Nick Maton, Michael A. Taylor, and Matt Thaiss have a use as role players on a good team, but the ceiling on their performance is quite low. Currently injured players such as Josh Rojas and Mike Tauchman are in the same boat. The Sox have built a Triple-A-caliber team with a roster that looks like one. If you had been out of the country and behind on the baseball news and someone gave you a printout of this roster with “Charlotte Knights” at the top, would it immediately register as wrong?
That’s not to say there aren’t any players with upside. I actually like the return the Sox got for Garrett Crochet, and think that Kyle Teel, Chase Meidroth, and Braden Montgomery could all have futures in the majors. Shane Smith has been a highlight for me as a starter, and I’m totally digging Brandon Eisert’s hot start as a junk-tossing Doug Jones-esque reliever, an archetype you don’t see very often in modern baseball. But the prospects won’t be prominent quickly enough, and the interesting pitchers are too few, to give this team a real sense of short-term optimism.
There’s even a chance that both teams tie or set the record, with the Rockies and White Sox both at least tying the record in 1% of simulations and both beating the record in 0.6% of the runs. It’s too soon to known whether we’ll see a true Lossapalooza or merely two ordinarily lousy teams come September, but it’s fun to dream… darkly.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Time for Dick Monfort to pull the trigger and fire Bud Black, put Hurdle back as Manager, and completely avoid the blame as the Owner who is responsible for this Rockie wrecking ball.
One day, 30 years from now, Jerry will decide to sell the team, and then, after we’ve achieved 8 of the top 10 worst seasons in MLB history, we will rejoice.
i thought you were talking about dem Cowboys.
When he’s 119?
Dude may live that long out of spite.
So, Zips thinks the White Sox 99.9 percentile outcome is 70-92! At least Colorado has 0.1% chance at .500.
I can’t wait until the 2 play. Non-zero chance that the game just goes on as a 0-0 tie for all infinity or when one of them wins, life on earth as we know it ceases to exist.
July 4th weekend — White Sox @ Rockies.
Happy birthday USA, considering everything it’s the best we could get you this year.
That is kinda fitting considering what’s going on in this country right now… this is the matchup this country deserves.
Having a 12.8% chance to be the worst team of all time at this point in the season is BLEAK.
Unless you’re a sicko, then it’s awesome!
Shoot, that’s me, I’m the sicko
What if you could combine the White Sox and Rockies into one team, just taking the best players from each? I wonder how often that team could finish at .500?
Best team, as in best 2025 performances or best, as in projected performance? Because I think those are very different teams.
Also, what if you could combine the White Sox and Rockies into one team, just taking the worst players from each? The mind boggles.
I’d be curious about that, too. I obviously don’t have my own projection system to run, but looking at the Depth Charts projections, that team still looks fairly bad. The rotation is awful, the entire bullpen fails to break 1.0 WAR, and the new team is hampered by the fact that each of their best-projected position players is a center fielder. Also in mind that Depth Charts tends to overestimate playing time for regulars, so some of these numbers are a bit inflated (cough, Luis Robert’s 656 PA, cough), that I’m moving folks down the defensive spectrum without penalizing their WAR, and that depth charts projections for relievers are adjusted for leverage, so on two typical teams, at least two relievers get WAR credit for being closers, several more for being setup men, etc.
At the risk of being karate-chopped by Dan, which I believe is his canonical threat, here’s a first pass at making a team (all stats very sloppily prorated back to a full season by multiplying by 1.18):
Batting: ≤ 23.7 prorated WAR (23rd in MLB)
Pitching: ≤ 9.6 prorated WAR (T-26th in MLB)
Total: ≤ 33.3 prorated WAR (25th in MLB)
C: Edgar Quero (1.3 WAR in 262 PA)
1B: Andrew Vaughn (1.1 WAR in 540 PA)
2B: Chase Meidroth (2.4 WAR in 440 PA)
SS: Ezequiel Tovar (2.3 WAR in 612 PA)
3B: Ryan McMahon (1.9 WAR in 641 PA)
LF: Luis Robert Jr. (3.1 WAR in 656 PA) [projection is for CF]
CF: Brenton Doyle (3.1 WAR in 655 PA)
RF: Mike Tauchman (1.7 WAR in 385 PA)
DH: Miguel Vargas (2.0 WAR in 545 PA) [projection is partially for 3B]
Bench: Kyle Teel (0.6 WAR in 115 PA), Josh Rojas (1.1 WAR in 230 PA), Tyler Freeman (0.5 WAR in 155 PA), Austin Slater (0.6 WAR in 189 PA)
Other batters needed to round out playing time: Drew Romo (0.4 WAR in 103 PA), Matt Thaiss (0.4 WAR in 110 PA), Brooks Baldwin (0.8 WAR in 371 PA), some Lenyn Sosa or Colson Montgomery playing time (0.3-0.4 WAR in 181 PA).
SP1: Germán Márquez (1.5 WAR in 148 IP)
SP2: Kyle Freeland (1.7 WAR in 162 IP)
SP3: Shane Smith (1.2 WAR in 117 IP)
SP4: Davis Martin (1.2 WAR in 123 IP)
SP5: Ryan Feltner (1.5 WAR in 159 IP)
Other SP needed to round out playing time: Noah Schultz (0.5 WAR in 55 IP), Antonio Senzatela (1.2 WAR in 133 IP)
Closer: Tyler Kinley (0.2 WAR in 65 IP)
Other RP above replacement level: Brandon Eisert (0.2 WAR in 55 IP), Jake Bird (0.2 WAR in 63 IP), Penn Murfee (0.1 WAR in 58 IP), Seth Halvorsen (0.1 WAR in 64 IP)
I love the work you put in here, and especially that you acknowledged the potential karate chop, because that is the first thing I thought when I saw all these WARs added up. Watch your back for Dan!
That would be a decent group at run prevention but the hitting would still be so bad.
It turns out if you add zero to zero you get zero. The only guys in that group I think could hit here are Meidroth, Doyle, and Tovar, and Tovar has been awful.
I saw Andrew Vaughn on the list of players on the best combined team and grimaced.
(Rare occasion when I get to talk smack about another team’s lineup as a Pirates fan. At least Enmanuel Valdez has somehow been acceptable at 1B.)
It is a statement on the terrible state of offense on many of the “major?” league teams when Enmanuel Valdez is batting clean-up in any lineup in organized baseball.
Huh, I had the exact opposite thought. What if you made a true monster from the worst of both teams?
Being in the same division as this Dodgers team, and the Padres, Giants, and Diamondbacks is a bit of a cheat code in this race to the bottom
Yeah I wonder how much worse the Rockies’ projections would be if we were under the old, less-balanced schedule where you played each division rival 18 times instead of 12. I feel like subbing out games against the AL for yet more NL West roadtrips would make things meaningfully worse for the Rox (or better, if you’re rooting for history).
The Road Rockies this season thus far: 1-14, 32 RS, 76 RA. They have lost their last 13 straight on the road (the only road win was in March).
They were on the business end of the worst beating I think I’ve ever seen in a regular season series — SDP 16, COL 0. Over three games.
The Rockies have as good a chance to be the worst team in modern history as they do to have less than 100 losses. Unreal.
The real wild card is how good the rest of the NL West is. I know the schedule is more balanced now but what happens if the Rockies basically lose every game to the rest of the NL West?
Even though the White Sox are clearly a worse team they could easily luck into some wins because the AL Central is blah.
If the White Sox lose 111 games they set the record for most losses in a 2 year period, currently held by those expansion Mets. Based on the table above, they have a 65% chance of doing that which is insane with over 130 games to go.
With each passing day it is becoming clear that the Rockies are the poorer team and that is saying something when one looks at the lineup the White Sox put on the field behind their pitching, but the White Sox appear to have found a keeper in Shane Smith and couple of their other starters , Burke, and Cannon, have a chance. With the Rockies you get to choose between Anthony Senzatella, who has allowed 42 hits in 24 innings or German Marquez who has posted a gaudy 9.30 ERA. This team looks ghastly and if their “better” players continue to perform as they have so far the bottom’s the limit.
When can we start talking about the offense of Jacob Amaya!?
He’s worth -0.5 WAR already. Despite being an excellent fielder at SS.
wRC+ of NEGATIVE 43.
OPS of .229
That’s amazingly bad even by the CHW standards.
And the sox will keep him in the lineup because of the solid defense.
(And his prospect report have him a hit tool of 50/55 and described him as one of the most polished bats in the minors).
He’s now down to wRC+ of -50.
What is the lowest ever?
The most amazing thing about this, though, his -0.7 WAR is NOT the lowest on the team. Andrew Vaughn somehow has -0.8 WAR.
Saving throws – lol! Thanks, Dan. An insightful take and a fun read. Well done.
Being in the NL West gives the Rockies an even better chance than ZIPS Is giving them of being worse than last year’s CWS. They’ll be lucky to win more than 5 division games.
In a separate blog I said that if the divisions still played 19 games with all teams within their division then the Rockies would be a virtual lock to lose more than 121. Every day the team looks worse and worse. The pitching is dreadful and it might not be long before that same type of spell that fell over the White Sox in 2024 envelopes the Rockies.
Dan, it was really damn weird to recently see your name answering questions on a random-ass Tom’s Hardware thread on PC sockets from several years ago.
I’ve been an admin there for about a decade! I like helping people fix their computers.
I hope neither team gets there.
As I write this, the White Sox have improved from a .240 record to a .250 record by avoiding the sweep against Sacramento.
But the Rockies got swept at home by the Reds (8-7, 6-4, 8-1) to fall to playing 4-23; they are on a pace for 138 losses, smashing the 1899 Spiders 134 loss record (admittedly the Spiders were in a 154 game season, the Rockies are still beating their win percentage).
The table above gives 134 losses (28 wins in the modern schedule) 0.0%, but I have faith. They could go for it.
I hope Dan will tell us if their chance of 134 (tie) or 135 (record) increases to something that rounds up to 0.1%.
The only team with fewer wins than the two of them combined (COL 4, CWS 7) as of 4/28 is the Orioles (10-17); Pirates are tied (11-18). Just yikes.
Maybe the Rockies are so bad that it convinces Dick Monfort to just be the guy who writes the cheques, and hires some smart people to run the front office – and give them whatever resources they want (and actual analytics department, player dev, etc)… unlikely, I know.
I could imagine that there are probably some guys working in front offices who would love to have a go and ‘solve’ the problem of playing baseball in Denver.