Thank goodness the second half of the season picked up, a bit, if for no other reason than to drop the “Futility Watch” each game. That’s taxing not only to you, the reader, but to me, the author. Not sure I’ve ever been so happy to be rooting for a .441 team, as the White Sox have been in the second half of 2025, but here we are.

The club managed to sidestep a pursuit of 120ish losses again, contrary to how I thought the season would play out. Losing “just” 100ish this year is truly a relief, which tells you how uniquely godawful the walk of shame every postgame was in 2024.

But, he said, that doesn’t mean the White Sox haven’t wandered into ignominy in 2025 — and in the second half, even: As of August, they had sealed the 11th-worst “era” in major league history.

Lemme backtrack a sec. Once it became clear 121 was not on the radar, and that the White Sox would not reach an all-time franchise low THIS season (it will come early next, however, unless Bryce Harper, Frank Thomas and Mickey Mantle show up in Glendale next spring), I began to wonder what this three-year run at 100+ losses looks like in the context of league history.

In order to be fair, though, we can’t look at this in a “season” context, as plenty of GODAWFUL teams played before 1961-62, the dawn of the 162-game schedule. So we have to find another way to determine the worst “eras” ever. Because the White Sox have only been howlingly bad for three seasons, I am calling an “era” as a minimum of 486 games — three 162-game seasons.

So, where do the White Sox rank? Tied for the 11th-most losses over 486 games, ever (note that some of these eras stretch longer than three seasons/are pockmarked with multiple instances of these loss totals; for example, the post-fire sale Philly A’s of the mid-1910s were horrid for almost a decade):

Yes, incorporating the lackluster end of the 2022 season to the first two-thirds of this White Sox season adds up to nearly a Top 10-worst stretch of play. The first of six instances of a 323-loss stretch started on Sept. 9, 2002 and ended on Aug. 29, 2025.

As much as I knew there was going to be a harrowing answer at the end of my research, I’m not sure I thought the White Sox were going to be this close to the worst-ever. I mean, there are no Rockies or Cubs teams, and not even a modern era expansion franchise save for the Mets, in this research frame!

So, depressing end of story, right? We have nearly a .500 September under our belts, the Kids Can Play, etc. So, goodbye.

Except … not so fast.

Just when you think you were out, they pull you back in. You see, IF the White Sox really blow this last week, they could end up upping their total from 323 (and let’s not get into what a terrible start in 2026 would do to Chicago’s standing here).

Right now, from Opening Day 2023 to now, the “era” stands at 320 wins. So even a split of the final six games of the season will match that No. 11 total above, adding a seventh instance of 323 losses … and losing four or more will make the loss total for the “era” even higher. Thankfully, at a worst-case 326 the White Sox cannot catch the early-teens Astros at 327. But for those thinking brighter days are clearly ahead and that the White Sox are incapable of the clownery that has marked the “pre-Colson” days, well, not necessarily.

Either way, here’s to a fast start in 2026 that will render any rewriting of this story next year moot.

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