White Sox lose 121st game, the most losses in a single season

DETROIT -- Garrett Crochet did his best to stave off the inevitable.

And in the face of a single-season record-breaking 121 losses, the White Sox played their most complete series of ‘24 by sweeping three from the Angels to conclude the home portion of their ledger from Tuesday to Thursday and stay put at 120.

But the playoff-bound Tigers are not the Angels, and the White Sox now own Major League Baseball’s record for futility in the Modern Era (since 1901) via a 4-1 loss Friday night at a raucous Comerica Park.

“Winning three in a row, maybe we could do something special and ride it out and win six in a row and you start to believe in that and think maybe it's not going to happen,” first baseman Gavin Sheets said. “And all of a sudden on the last out, you realize you’re part of the wrong side of history. It was a little more frustrating and it hurt a little bit more than I expected.”

“No real emotions,” Crochet said. “We put ourselves in this position early on. We had a bad April. We just never dug ourselves out of that hole. We are where we are because of the way we played. But that’s just all it is.”

Crochet’s first season as a starter closed out with four scoreless innings, six strikeouts and one walk. After throwing 73 innings combined over parts of three seasons as a reliever, Crochet fanned 209 against 33 walks over 146 innings. He concluded with a 6-12 record and a 3.58 ERA, looking as strong as he has all season over his last two starts against the Tigers and Padres.

In Friday’s fourth inning, with Crochet’s pitch count rising near that set limit around 60 as the Tigers loaded the bases with two outs, interim manager Grady Sizemore paid a visit to the mound. Left-handed-hitting Trey Sweeney was set to come to the plate, and Crochet exited on a high note post-mound meeting by retiring him on a ground ball to shortstop Nicky Lopez.

“There wasn’t much conversation,” Crochet said of the fourth-inning talk. “When he was walking out and he didn’t point to the bullpen, I felt like, ‘I don’t need to convince you here.’

“It’s a left-on-left matchup, and it’s a guy that I felt like I had a good at-bat vs. him [in the previous at-bat]. I said that and he was like, ‘All right. Go get him.’”

Detroit scored two in the fifth off Jared Shuster (2-5), which was good enough to clinch an American League Wild Card spot. Rookie Zach DeLoach homered in the sixth for the White Sox lone run and his first career long ball, but the White Sox fell to 8-42 against the American League Central, 1-10 against the Tigers and 16-63 on the road.

Crochet quite possibly was the most dominant starter during the season’s first half. Even though he never topped four innings after working seven against the Rockies on June 30, Crochet completed an important part of this equation by fulfilling the entire starter’s regimen.

During an extended media session Thursday, Crochet spoke of being receptive to a long-term contract offer from the White Sox this offseason. The follow-up question was why would he want to stay in the middle of this rebuild.

“I like the pieces that we have. I like the relationships I’ve developed with this [pitching] staff,” Crochet said. “I’ve got a lot of trust in [general manager Chris] Getz, and I think so does everybody in our clubhouse. It’s now just a matter of letting our young guys develop and continue to get reps. You can kind of see everything coming together throughout the year as guys started to come up.”

Things truly came together for the Tigers, who had a 62-66 record when they came to Chicago to face the White Sox on Aug. 23 at Guaranteed Rate Field. Just over a month later, they were celebrating a playoff berth, with manager A.J. Hinch in the middle of the Motown party, and television play-by-play voice Jason Benetti getting champagne dousings and hugs in the crazed clubhouse.

That feeling is what the White Sox want. Based on this record-breaking season, it’s still a ways away.

“To see Detroit celebrating, that was us only four years ago,” Sheets said. “It’s frustrating. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t sit well with any of us.

“Unfortunately, it’s where we’re at right now. It’s everybody’s job in this room to make sure we move forward and never let this happen again.”