White Sox general manager Chris Getz was asked Friday if he has a message for fans of the worst team in the major leagues.
He does: Try not to focus on the wrong things, such as wins (there have been exactly three of them) and losses (look, we lost track weeks ago).
See? Easy-peasy.
“I get it, we’re here to win games at the major league level,” he said. “But you’ve got to look at the foundation of the organization. You’ve got to look at every department.”
Do you, though? Because a lot of Sox fans are finding it makes more sense to be disillusioned or angry or simply to check out altogether. Guaranteed Rate Field is a ghost town. Watching the 3-22 Sox on television is like watching C-SPAN, only with fewer home runs and shakier starting pitching.
If Getz, a first-time GM, is feeling the burden of the sweeping discontentment in the fan base, he’d prefer not to let on.
“I’ve just got to focus on how to get us better and [get] this organization healthy,” he said. “I’ve got to have a big-picture mindset, because this wasn’t going to be a quick fix by any stretch.”
It’s true the Sox entered the Getz era — if we can call it that — with a serious uphill climb. Still, it wasn’t supposed to be worst-team-ever bad and surely didn’t have to be. It’s one thing to be outmanned, which the Sox clearly are, but quite another to do literally nothing of import well and to seemingly get worse all the time.
Don't let anybody tell you the White Sox aren't making progress. They started 2024 with a 4-game losing streak. After one win, they had a 5-game losing streak. Next, after another win, a 6-game losing streak. And now, after win No. 3? Damn straight, a 7-game losing streak.
— Steve Greenberg (@SLGreenberg) April 25, 2024
Getz and manager Pedro Grifol would like for us to believe the Sox are grinding through trying times and inching closer to winning, but the reality is they’re moving in the opposite direction and the proof is in those pesky “win” and “loss” columns. The Sox opened the season with a four-game losing streak before getting their first win. They followed with a five-game losing streak before getting their second win. Next came — yep — a six-game losing streak before win No. 3. Not to be outdone by themselves, the Sox went out and lost all seven games on the just-completed road trip to Philadelphia and Minneapolis.
A 101-loss season, to which the Sox treated fans in 2023, never looked so good. This year’s team will be lucky to sniff 50 wins, let alone get back to 60.
“It can be difficult to win major league baseball games, it really can,” Getz said.
When a team can’t hit, can’t pitch, can’t stay healthy, can’t get halfway decent production out of its veterans who are playing every day, can’t hold a lead, can’t go a single series without being shut out at least once and can’t point to a manager or a GM with any track record of success whatsoever, everything is going to be difficult. Nothing more so than believing in the future of the whole picture.
If only the uselessness of these Sox were our dirty little secret, but no; they’ve failed so spectacularly to this point, the national media can’t stop marveling at it. Sports Illustrated ran a story under the headline, “The Chicago White Sox might really be this bad.” A Bleacher Nation headline claimed the Sox “might be the worst team ever.” The New York Post likened the Sox to the 40-120-1 Mets of 1962, the actual worst team ever. Those were all just in the last couple of days, and there are more where they came from.
The Sox almost avoided losing a couple of times in Minneapolis this week. On Tuesday, they took a 5-2 lead into the bottom of the eighth inning only to crumble via a couple of Twins home runs and a ninth-inning walk-off single. And on Thursday, they turned a 2-0 sixth-inning lead into a 6-2 deficit but rallied — sort of — in the ninth, leaving the bases loaded in a 6-3 defeat.
Perhaps we should add to their “W” and “L” columns an “A” column, for “almost.”
The Sox are, after all, almost not comically awful. Almost not entirely unwatchable. Almost not a blight on this sport, this city — nay, on mankind. OK, maybe that last part was a bit much.
And speaking of “almost,” is this nightmare of a season almost over?
No? Not even close?
It’s more than reasonable to wonder if the Sox are lagging in the morale department on top of everything else.
“I hope not,” Getz said. “I hope this crew can stay at it. … It seems to be a group that sticks together and motivates each other. So, at this point, no, I don’t have too much of a concern.”
And as for his own morale?
“I’m fine,” he said. “I wake up every day in a good mood and ready to take on what’s in front of me.”
Easy-peasy?
There’s no chance it is.
