The White Sox fired their top executives more than a month ago. They sold off half their pitching staff at the trade deadline. They suffered a 10-game losing streak — typically a season-wrecking skid — in the opening month. They also shut down Luis Robert Jr., their only All-Star, for the season at the start of the week.
Surely, every meaningful marker of failure for the 2023 season was reached well before they were defeated 6-1 by the Padres on Saturday to lose their 100th game.
That’s what most of them want you to believe, at least.
‘‘I know people think it’s an ugly number, but 99 is not?’’ manager Pedro Grifol said, making an inarguable point. ‘‘The difference between 99 and 100? I don’t see anything. That’s like .299 and .300.’’
Even though the century mark doesn’t trigger some sort of refund to season-ticket holders, crunching the numbers reveals something. For a franchise largely known for mediocrity, truly terrible Sox teams are rare.
In the 123 years of Sox baseball, this is only the fifth team to lose 100 or more games. The increased acceptance of teams rebuilding has lowered the depths bad teams will fall to, as shown by the Sox’ 100 losses in 2018.
‘‘One hundred losses, it’s not very good, obviously, but 99 is not much better,’’ outfielder/designated hitter Gavin Sheets said. ‘‘We try to win every game, and trying to avoid 100 is stupid, in my opinion.’’
The Sox only have lost 99 games or more seven times, but three of those instances have come since 2013 — under the leadership of now-deposed executives Ken Williams and Rick Hahn — and only one came with the caveat of the team being in a rebuild. None of this endured ugliness produced a playoff-series victory, either.
True to form for the Sox this season, their 100th loss struck at the notion that there was anything from this team you could hang your hat on. Fresh off back-to-back complete-game victories, starter Mike Clevinger was shelled for six runs in 1 2/3 innings by his former team. By contrast, the Sox’ punchless offense was shut out until Lenyn Sosa’s solo home run in the eighth.
‘‘The main thing on my mind was avoiding having 100 losses; it really sucks it came on my night,’’ Clevinger said. ‘‘There are a lot of guys in this room who don’t want to see a complete rebuild, and 100 losses could result in something like that. A lot of these guys want to win now. Avoiding that in your head, whether it’s true or not, might avoid a complete rebuild.’’
That Clevinger’s 3.77 ERA paced the Sox’ rotation is cold comfort anyway, given that he is almost certainly bound for free agency after a complicated season. As he alluded to, only a portion of the players who feel the full weight of this 100-loss campaign remain in the clubhouse. And 100-loss seasons are usually a good way to ensure that a smaller portion of the group is retained to turn it around.
‘‘You saw it at the trade deadline: You can lose five or six guys in the matter of an hour,’’ Sheets said. ‘‘So that’s the business in itself, but you can’t think of it like that. You have to just go in the offseason. We’ve all gotta work.’’
Together, it’s an odd dynamic in which solemn pledges to improve are matched by vague details on how it all will be repaired after some of the worst baseball seen in this ballpark.
‘‘Wherever we end up, we end up,’’ Grifol said. ‘‘That’s not where we’re going to be next year, so I don’t get too caught up.’’
