The Chicago White Sox were eager to show that 2022 was an aberration.
Instead, they took a big step back.
Friday’s 12-4 loss to the Oakland Athletics at Garanti Rate Field was the latest on-field example of a season gone awry.
Starter Dylan Cease allowed eight earned runs and walked five in 4 1/3 innings. The team made two errors in the second set and another in the fifth. After giving up five homers in Thursday’s loss to the A’s, the Sox allowed two more on Friday as they dropped 29 games below .500, their worst record of the season.
Asked about the mistakes afterwards, manager Pedro Grifol went beyond saying, “it’s all frustrating”.
“We have to improve,” he said. “It’s plain and simple. It’s not for lack of trying. These guys do their job. We just have to improve.
“There is no excuse.”
The Sox will lose the season series to the A’s, who have the worst record in baseball.
Expected to fight, the Sox end up with the third-worst record in the American League, leading to a sell-off at the trade deadline.
Other changes came on Tuesday with the layoffs of executive vice president Ken Williams and general manager Rick Hahn.
“At the end of the day, the well-known cliché that professional sports is results-oriented is correct,” President Jerry Reinsdorf said as part of Tuesday’s statement.
Here are three series that illustrate the team’s struggles this season.
April 21-23 in Tampa Bay
The Sox were three out of a game-breaking win in the series opener on April 21 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla.
But three big Rays swings turned the game into a crushing loss. The Rays scored three in the ninth against reliever Reynaldo López to beat the Sox 8-7.
With the Sox leading 7-5, Christian Bethancourt of the Rays homered to the right to open the scoring in the bottom of the ninth. Yandy Díaz made a single. And Brandon Lowe finished the game with a two-point shot from the right.
The following night, the Sox fought back twice against deficits before suffering another loss. Randy Arozarena did it at the Sox, driving pinch runner Vidal Bruján with a right-hand single to give the Rays a 4-3 win in 10 innings.
Rays starter Zach Eflin and relievers Yonny Chirinos and Pete Fairbanks retired the final 17 batters in the series finale as the Sox fell 4-1.
They lost the next three games in Toronto – outscored 20-2 – on a 10-game losing streak from which the team would never recover.
May 8-11 in Kansas City
The Sox had won two of three against the Minnesota Twins, their first series victory of the season, and against the Cincinnati Reds when they traveled to Kansas City.
Any hope of building on that momentum ended when the Royals scored eight points in the sixth at Kauffman Stadium and strangled the Sox 12-5 in the series opener to spoil Grifol’s return to where he coached at over the previous 10 seasons.
The Sox won the following night 4-2 but lost the final two of the series by scores of 9-1 and 4-3.
In the May 11 series finale, the Sox scored twice in the eighth to tie it at 3.
But López walked Nick Pratto leading in ninth. Pratto moved into third place on a one-out single from Matt Duffy. Freddy Fermin squared on the next pitch and placed a perfect bunt in front of home plate. Pratto scored to hand the Sox the loss.
“We were outplayed in the series,” Grifol said after the loss. “Full.”
June 30-July 2 in Oakland
Thanks in part to a below-average split, the Sox were just 4 1/2 games out of the opener as they visited the lowly A’s at the Oakland Coliseum for their final first-half road series.
The Sox lost Game 1 7-4, then suffered perhaps their most brutal loss of the season, losing 7-6 in 10 innings on July 1.
The Sox held a two-point lead in the eighth.
The A’s tied on a miss and a hit in the field and won it in the 10th when Tyler Wade scored from second on a defensive error by second baseman Elvis Andrus.
The Sox saved the series finale but lost five of six when they returned home to face the Blue Jays and St. Louis Cardinals.
A 3-6 start after the All-Star break left them 12 games in first and left no doubt the Sox were going to be sellers at the trade deadline.
And Tuesday marked an even bigger upheaval.
“Obviously, at the end of the day, we didn’t do our job on the field,” reliever Aaron Bummer said Tuesday. “Always grateful to these two men. »
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