Writer Michael Clausen reflects on behind-the-scenes reasons why the White Sox are having a historically awful season.
Writer Michael Clausen reflects on behind-the-scenes reasons why the White Sox are having a historically awful season.
Not content with being the worst sports team in Chicago, the White Sox have achieved the impossible by becoming the worst team in the history of modern baseball.
Even allowing for an awful run of bad luck — no stranger to any team — the 2024 White Sox have been unprecedentedly terrible. And they brought it on themselves.
The team isn’t just last in the American League Central, last in the American League and last place in the MLB, but will finish this season with a record-breaking amount of losses.
Only two years ago, the Sox were second in the American League Central. Three years ago they were first. Since the highs of 2021, the Sox have slipped further and further into crap status, even falling under the Kansas City Royals — the only team who typically beats the Sox in the AL Central’s race to the bottom.
The 2024 Sox certainly aren’t good players — at least not together — but the Sox’s roster doesn’t quite deserve to be thrown under the bus, no matter how much it might improve the team’s chances. The players, after all, can’t be blamed for management’s choice to hold onto “lovable losers,” instead of a competitive team.
Although the team sucks, the real blame lies with the people at the top — owner Jerry Reinsdorf and the club’s upper management.
Reinsdorf, who owns both the Sox and the Chicago Bulls, helped steer Chicago sports towards champion status decades ago — overseeing the Bulls’ Jordan years and the Sox’s only championship in a century. Since then Chicago sports has been a story of underinvestment, broken dreams and heartbreak.
The Bulls and the Sox of today are little more than shadows of their former selves, with neither having winning seasons since 2021. Across the board, analysts agree the teams’ struggles come not from the players, but the choices of the big man in the head office.
Reinsdorf is responsible for both blindly holding onto staff past their expiration dates and pushing through a series of bad hires in-and-out of the dugout. Even counting the good years in 2005 and 2021, his inflexible leadership since 1981 has sunk their all time win-loss record from a pre-Jerry .502 to the current .495.
As an organization, the White Sox are worth over $2 billion, putting them right in the middle of the league. The post-COVID years saw long-needed growth in MLB revenue, helped by rule changes that brought fans, and funds, back to the sport. On top of this pile of cash, Reinsdorf’s personal wealth sits at $2.1 billion — enough to buy another two baseball teams.
In spite of this wealth, Reinsdorf has cut aggressively at Sox spending, refusing to contend for free-agent talent and slashing player payroll even as the team flails.
These cuts can’t even be justified by shrinking ticket sales. Despite the Sox’s struggles, fans have stayed remarkably loyal to the sport’s worst team, with attendance only down 18% compared to past seasons.
It’s a big gap, but nowhere near as bad as other big losers like the A’s, the Rays or the Marlins, who are lucky to break 10,000 fans at home games and have still managed to seek out new talent. The Sox still draw around 18,000 fans per game. Not bad for the worst team of all time.
Considering the Sox’s division, Reinsdorf’s moves become even more shocking. Both the MLB landscape and the AL Central are more equally matched than ever before, with even the underdog Royals making the playoffs for the first time since 2015. If there was ever a time to invest in Chicago’s South Side sports team, it would be now.
But with the Sox in dire straits, it seems like Reinsdorf has learned the wrong lessons from divisional success stories like Kansas City. Instead of building out a solid bullpen, growing franchise anchors and grabbing affordable expertise out of free agency — steps with proven success across the league for teams seeking rebounds after rough seasons — Reinsdorf’s biggest move has been begging for stadium money.
Reinsdorf’s time as owner already cost Chicago one historic stadium and a whopping $270 million in city and state funds, with millions in debt still not paid back. Now, with the team in an all-time slump, he’s back, tin cup in hand, to ask for another.
Reinsdorf pushed through the construction of the Sox’s current home, Guaranteed Rate Field, by threatening to move the team to Florida in 1991, even floating “Florida White Sox” merch to pressure legislators.
The modern White Sox may be too depressing, even for Florida, but their losses haven’t stopped him, pushing for a new South Side stadium via a billion-dollar land-swap scheme in partnership with the Chicago Bears.
So far, his plot to fleece taxpayers for another billion seems to have failed, with Governor J.B. Pritzker shutting down requests for state funds. Additionally, Chicago’s budget shortfall means Mayor Brandon Johnson — although seemingly in favor of the stadium scheme — is unlikely to back the project with city funds in the near future.
On its merits, the stadium plan isn’t even a bad one – keeping both Sox and Bears in the city while bringing investment into overlooked areas like “The 78,” currently a vacant rail yard on the south branch of the Chicago River.
But the problem with the plan, like the problem with the White Sox, is Reinsdorf demanding the city fund his failed vision for the White Sox to the tune of billions, all while letting the team, the South Side and the taxpayers deal with the mess.
Reinsdorf’s White Sox have been stuck under the iron rule bought by his 19% ownership stake for almost four decades, with the organization digging itself deeper and deeper into disaster while siphoning public funds.
Whatever comes next for the Sox, the team has made its bed. Chicago shouldn’t buy Reinsdorf another one
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