100th Post of the Year

 This is my 100th post of the year.  This marks the 8th year since this blogs inception in 2009, and the 4th consecutive year that I’ve published 100 or more post in a year. 

That is of course, it will be my 100th post of the year if and when I publish it. A few years ago  I wrote a post about having 100 posts in draft status. At the end of the post in the only comment, I had written that I had deleted all but 15 of the posts in draft status and hoped never to accumulate nearly as many post there again. 

Well it turns out that I have been accumulating posts in draft status again. I currently have 77 posts with that distinction. The majority of these are from 2023, but I do have 14 from this year. As part of my 100th post of the year celebration,I will now list each incompleted post of 2024 by title in Chronological order.

Double Library Day

Team Saturdazzle

(Untitled)

Milwaukee Brewers Catcher William Contreras bringing major league streak to begin season

Crystal Lake Library

(Untitled)

(Untitled)

Anniversary vs. Annual

A to Z 2024 Reflections

(Untitled)

What’s most wrong about the 2024 White Sox

The Newfangled Four - A Spoonful of Sugar (Parody)  [From Mary Poppins]

Former Chicago White Sox MVP , The late Dick Allen, elected to the Hall of Fame.

Not everybody needs a college degree (Writers Workshop)

That’s the 14. Some of these may see the light of day and most will be discarded. One of the drafts from last year  is scheduled to post tomorrow for the next edition of Wordless Wednesday. I also hope to share the story behind that picture in a subsequent post. 

Tomorrow’s post won’t be the last post of the year as I have a Michael Card Christmas Concert video scheduled to drop on 12/25. I’ll probably land somewhere between 103 and 107 2024 posts before the New Year and the whole race to 100 begins again.

How Bad are the 2024 White Sox?

 The Chicago White Sox are on a 10 game losing streak that dates back to July 10th because of the All Star Break.  This is their 2nd double digit losing streak this season.  The satirical news service the onion reported on them earlier this month.    

To give you an idea how bad they are you don't need to look  much further than their current record  (27-77) after their loss to the Rangers yesterday.  But here are a few more ...

• 50 games below .500 less than 2/3rd through the season
• According to the team Website Andrew Vaughn is leading the team in hitting with a ,236 Batting Average*
• The 2nd worst team in MLB, the Florida Marlins has a winning percentage of .363 that is 42 points better than the White Sox best monthly average of .321 (May and June).
• Most experts expect White Sox to be massive sellers before the Trade Deadline of July 30th which means their on-field product will probably, although incredibly hard to believe, much worse.

The White Sox are celebrating their 125th year in baseball in 2025 and have already begun promoting seasons tickets.  The  below video uses the White Sox past to promote the White Sox future because the White Sox present is absent of any hope.  

The White Sox are still very bad. But at this present moment they are not the worst.

 My beloved White Sox are really bad this year.  24 games into the season they had won 3 games and lost 24 for a paltry winning percentage of .125.  They have improved somewhat in the past two weeks.  Since the they snapped their season high 7 game losing streak and have had 2 3 game winning streaks  and 1 2 game winning streak for an 8-7 record.  This has more than doubled their winning pct. to a still very meager .282.  This is bad enough still for dead last in the American league 3.5 games behind the Astros and the Angels.  However, over in the senior circuit, (just one of many colorful monikers for the National League) both the Rockies and the Marlins have so far under performed the underperforming Southsiders.  

The Rockies own the worst winning percentage in the majors at .243 and while the Marlins are slightly better percentage wise at .250 they are still a 1/2 game behind Colorado in the standings by virtue of having played 3 more games than the Rockies at this point,

As it stands at 11:00 p.m. central time on May 10th, The White Sox are 1.5 games ahead of the Marlins and 1 game ahead of Colorado.  This is a tight margin, and but by the end of play Sunday, the White Sox could again hold the worst record in all of baseball.

One thing the Sox have not been able to do this year about a quarter way through the season is win a game when on a 1 game losing streak.  The Sox are 0-6 when on a 1 game losing streak, 1-5 after losing 2 in a row, 0-5 when on a 3 game slide, and just 2-3 the game after losing 4 in a row.  If the Sox even want to battle for mediocre they need to eschew losing streaks of more than 3 games.  So far the Sox have lost 4 or more in a row on 5 different occasions. 

I am not very hopeful that the White Sox can turn things around this year.  But for a team that started the season 2-13, an 8-7 run like the one they are on now is definitely a step in the right direction.

Opening Day MLB 2024 White Sox

The White Sox open at the stadium FKA Comiskey Park  this afternoon at 3:10 p.m.  The Sox open against Al Central rival Detroit.  After losing over 100 games last year and a bit of house cleaning near the end of the season that continued over the winter not very much is expected in GM Chris Getz's first full season in his new position.  Pedro Grifol  is in his second season as manager for the southsiders and I believe he will be given a long leash this season to get the team back on the winning track.

Opening Day starting line up for the Sox.  (Players in Bold are making White Sox Debut)

1 Andrew Bentendi LF

2 Yoan Moncada 3 B

3 Luis Robert Jr CF

4,Eloy Jimenez DH

5. Andrew Vaughn 1B

6. Paul Dejong SS

7. Kevin Pillar RF

8. Martin Maldonado C

9. Nicky Lopez 2B

This is obviously the first starting line-up for the White Sox this year.

The starting pitcher for the White Sox is Garret Crochet.  This is Crochet's first major league start.  He is only the 2nd White Sox player to ever have their first major league start on Opening Day.  The first happened some 123 years ago when Roy Patterson pitched for the Chi Sox in the first ever American League opener.  Crochet has been converted into a starter and was named the opening day starter after Dylan Cease, who had already been assigned to start Opening Day was traded to the Padres earlier this month. 

T

Jesse Chavez lists All The MLB teammates he's been on.

 Jesse Chavez the most traded player in the history of Major League Baseball has made his way to White Sox Spring training by signing a minor league contract with the Chicago American League team,  While not officially with the Sox yet, the 40 year old pitcher talked about all his former teams in this video.

Tim Anderson Signs With Miami Marlins

On June 10th 2016 Tim Anderson made his Major League Debut for the Chicago White Sox. Last year On As of September 30th 2023 TA batted .288 with a .317 while playing home games for the  South Siders.  On the road he batted .276 with a .308 OBA. For his career so far Anderson has a .282 Batting average, an OBA of .312 and a slugging percentage of .422. 

2023 was a regrettable/forgettable year for bot the White Sox and Anderson in particular. Anderson In 123 games Anderson hit only.245 lowering his career batting average 6 points from the end of 2022.  Anderson only hit 21 extra base hits last year with only 1 home run, dropping his career slugging percentage 20 points in the process.

At The end of the dismal season the White Sox, declined on Anderson's 14 million dollar contract option for the 2024 season, buying it out instead for $1,000,000.00. After becoming a free agent in November of 2023 Anderson was signed in February by The Miami Marlins and have agreed on a 5 million dollar contract for the season.