Make that losses in 20 straight Flexen starts, as the O’s just won 13-3. I believe I heard the announcer on MLB network say that this ties a record.
At 31-108, they are now on pace to win 36 games.
Yeah, I was going to remark if that’s the case. I feel like ages ago it used to be tracked by the turnstiles? Or am I misremembering? Was it only one of the leagues that did it this way and the other did paid attendance?
I could also be misremembering, but I thought that it was always based on ticket sales.
Unlikely. The July player sell-off left them at a Cleveland Spiders level of awful. They’re 4-37 since the All-Star break.
They don’t have the horsepower to win 10 more games, even if some of them are against mediocre opponents.
The American League switched to the tickets-sold number in the 1960’s, and the National League followed in the 1980’s.
Interesting. I did not know this factoid. Ignorance fought, once again.
As I recall, some stadiums used to report the “official” attendance and the knothole attendance, which compared the tickets sold and the turnstile clicks respectively (when the latter was higher). I always wondered how some of those sneaky bastards got in for free.
Yeah, according to this, it was in 1993 that the NL changed to paid attendance:
That sounds about right, as those years from the mid-80s to the mid-90s I were my peak baseball-watching days, and I watched pretty much exclusively NL ball.
Though, wait, this New York Times article says “Until 1999, National League clubs reported attendance based on turnstile counts and the American League teams reported paid attendance. In 2000, all clubs started reporting the number of tickets sold because those figures were used to calculate revenue sharing between the clubs, according to Major League Baseball.”
So I don’t know which is right, but, regardless, my vague memory that they used turnstile count and there was some difference between the leagues appears not to be a hallucination, at least.
According to this article from WGN-TV, it breaks the record:
Yeah, at this point, winning 41+ will require winning a proportion of their remaining games which is extremely out of line with their performance to date.
To finish at 41-121, they’d have to go 10-13 (.435) the rest of the way.
At least Capuano had a valid excuse, and it took him 4 seasons.
I would bet that he (Capuano) is somewhat glad that he longer holds that record.
The Sox sent out rookie starter Nick Nastrini to pitch against the Orioles tonight. Coming into the game, Nastrini was 0-6, with an ERA just over 7, and things went about as badly as one might have expected.
He lasted 1 2/3 innings; in that span, he gave up 7 runs (only four earned) on four hits, six walks, and a wild pitch. Three runs scored on a throwing error, with the based loaded, by third baseman Miguel Vargas, who appears to have been pulled after that play.
Oooof. I hadn’t been watching the game, but I’m now guessing that Vargas, who was charged with the error on that play, had to leave the game due to injury.
Often, a team that’s out of contention seemingly gets fired up at the chance to damage a contending team’s chances.
At this point it’s starting to look like the White Sox are just phoning it in.
Another loss to the Orioles tonight, 9-0, making it the Sox’s 12th straight loss (still only their third-longest losing streak of the year). 31-109 on the season.
That was the 16th time the White Sox have been shut out this year.
On pace to 36-126.
They should throw in the towel and bring up their AAA players. (Wait, what’s that? Already did that?) How about the AA team? A team?
Piling on, perverse humor, can’t look away.
HISTORY IS BEING MADE PEOPLE!!!
But, it raises an interesting question (though one we probably won’t learn the answer to until after the season): how many guys currently on the Sox’s major-league roster (or even the 40-man roster) will be kept in the off-season? How many guys do they think under-performed this year, and are actually better than replacement value, and thus worth hanging onto? And, for that matter, do they even have anyone in the minors who will be substantially better?
Pedro Grifol is already gone as manager, and it seems likely that Sizemore is only in the role to play out the string. Chris Getz is finishing his first year as VP/GM, and it’ll be interesting to see if Reinsdorf gets rid of him, or if he believes that the mess that the current roster is, is more a factor of the work of the previous GM (Rick Hahn).
At least the White Sox have company now - both the Marlins and Rockies have been eliminated from the playoffs, and both teams have a fair shot at losing 100 or more games.