White Sox GM Chris Getz blames record-setting losing season on 'the cards we've been dealt'

The Chicago White Sox on Monday evening clocked their 112th loss of the season thanks to a 5-3 defeat at the hands of the Cleveland Guardians . With 17 games remaining on their schedule, the White Sox are thus squarely on pace to break the modern record for team losses in a single season – 120 by the 1962 New York Mets .

Other recent trends make such a regrettable appointment with history seem even more unavoidable. To wit, the White Sox are now just 5-3 since Pedro Grifol was fired as manager and replaced with interim Grady Sizemore. They're 9-50 since the start of July and 6-41 in the second half. They'll have to win eight of those remaining 17 games in order to avoid breaking the Mets' record and nine of those 17 in order to come in shy of 120 losses. In a vacuum, that's hardly an onerous task, but these are the 2024 White Sox – even modest stretches of mediocrity instead of dreadfulness seem beyond them.

This grim backdrop brings us to the recent comments of Sox general manager Chris Getz. Via ESPN's Jesse Rogers , Getz on Monday said:

"If you would have told me we would end up flirting with the record, I would have been a little surprised. Now if you would have told me prior to the year we would have ended up with over 100 losses, 105/110, I would not have been as surprised. This is the cards we've been dealt at this point. You try and make the best of it."

On the one hand, these are largely reasonable remarks. The Sox lost 101 games last season, so losing 100 or more in the subsequent year is hardly a stunning turn of events. As well, no team – no matter how neglected the roster is – anticipates blowing past 120 losses in a season, which is what the current Sox model is probably going to do. The last part, though, is what stands out, and it does for reasons having nothing to do with faulty subject-verb agreement. Pointing to "the cards we've been dealt" suggests the Sox have been afflicted by something visited upon them by an uncaring celestial power as opposed to a calculated dismantling of a team that clocked a .500 season in 2022 and won the division in 2021. Getz has been on the job since late August of last year, and a notable portion of the roster churn, and thus a notable portion of the current depth chart, has been his doing.

This isn't to make too much of what was probably just an offhand metaphor by Getz, but dismissing something that was done on purpose – with malice aforethought, if you will – as a turn of fate is a bit of a misstep. Anyhow, back to losing baseball games.