The Detroit Tigers are going to the playoffs, while the Chicago White Sox are going into the history books.
With Friday’s 4-1 loss in Detroit, Chicago now has 121 defeats for the season, breaking the modern-day record for losses set by the expansion 1962 New York Mets.
The Tigers, meanwhile, have miraculously clinched a wild-card berth after sitting at just 55-63 on August 10. Detroit has been on a tear, winning six straight and 10 of 11 to surge into the playoffs and eliminate the defending AL Central champion Minnesota Twins from the race.
But the news of the night belonged to the White Sox, a 39-121 team guided by interim manager Grady Sizemore that has outsold only three MLB teams in 2024.
They replace, perhaps, baseball’s most celebrated losers in the 1962 Mets. Casey Stengel’s final managerial stint ended with a 40-120-1 record, which included the first and only tie in MLB history. Since then, the ‘Amazin’ Mets,’ as Stengel sarcastically called his team, has been immortalized for what sports writers described as the club’s ‘spectacular ineptitude.’
The closest any team had come to New York’s record was the 2003 Tigers, who won their final two games to finish with 119 losses. That remained the American League record until the White Sox hit 120 on Sunday in San Diego.
After avoiding the record by sweeping the Los Angeles Angels at home, the White Sox lost to a Tigers team that wrapped up a postseason spot in front of 44,435 raucous fans.
Starter Garrett Crochet gave them a chance, finishing his season with four shutout innings, but the White Sox couldn’t score early and Jared Shuster gave up two runs in the fifth.
Zach DeLoach hit his first homer in the sixth, but Dominic Fletcher’s error in center field led to two more Tigers runs in the seventh.
The White Sox, who are last in the American League in runs scored and runs allowed, have threatened the 120-loss barrier since starting the season with 25 losses in their first 28 games.
Chicago was 15-48 after losing 14-2 to the Red Sox on June 6 — the Mets were 17-46 after 63 games — but won the next two games to start an 11-16 run. That left them at 26-64, two games better than New York’s record after 90 games.
At that point, it looked as if they could avoid matching the Tigers and Mets, but they lost 23 of their next 24 games, including a 20-game losing streak.
By the time they beat the Athletics 5-1 on August 6, they were on pace for 124 losses.
Another 10-game losing streak, stretching from August into September left them at 31-109 (.221). At that point, the question seemed to be whether they could keep the total losses from approaching 125.
That didn’t look likely when they fell to 33-115 after a 2-0 home loss to the A’s on September 13. To avoid breaking the record, they needed seven wins in their final 12 games.
They came closer than anyone could have expected. They won the last two games against Oakland and the first game of a road series against the Angels.
A five-game losing streak followed and they matched the record against the Padres, but they returned home to outscore the Angels 14-5 in a three-game sweep. They finished 23-58 at home to avoid another record – the 59 home losses by the 1939 St. Louis Browns and the 2019 Tigers.
