The Chicago White Sox have been shut out 10 times out of their 41 games this season. If that pace continues over a full season, they will break the MLB record for most zero-run games in a season. They are currently on pace to be shut out 38 times and the MLB record is 33 set by the 1908 St. Louis Browns. A team hasn’t been shut out 30 times in a season since the 1962 New York Mets. The White Sox offense is trending toward one of the worst seasons on record.
The White Sox have been shut out 10 times through 41 games.
There were 10 teams last year who were shut out fewer than 10 times over the full season. pic.twitter.com/WzxhMml3Sf
— Baseball Reference (@baseball_ref) May 13, 2024
White Sox Continue to Face Issues on Offense
Runs in General Are Hard to Come By
The White Sox has scored just one run in four games and two runs in six games. These low-scoring games have put them at a -90 run differential just a quarter of the way into their season. While the Miami Marlins have the same run differential as the White Sox, the next lowest is the Colorado Rockies at -66. If that run differential was throughout a full season, the White Sox would end with a -360 run differential, which would be the lowest since the 1891 Washington Senators. Only three times in the last 50 years has a team had a run differential worse than -320.
“That’s one where we have to turn the page quickly,” said White Sox Manager Pedro Grifol after the team’s most recent shutout loss, this time to the Cleveland Guardians on Sunday. “At the end of the day, we just didn’t score any points and that was it.”
While the Marlins share the White Sox’s run differential, the total team runs are drastically different. The White Sox have scored just 119 runs this season. It’s 27 fewer runs than the next-lowest team the St. Louis Cardinals. The pitching results haven’t been as bad as the Marlins who have allowed the most runs in baseball at 250, but the White Sox are fourth worst in the league at runs allowed with 209.
The Batting Statistics Are Horrible
The White Sox are last in the league for batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage. Their slash line as a team is .213/.273/.329. As a team they’ve found the barrel of their bat just 60 times, a barrel percentage of 5.9 and the lowest in the league They’re only producing hard-hit balls — more than 95 mph off the bat — in 34.6 percent of their batted ball events. That is the second-lowest rate in the league.
Of the players who have appeared in 15 games or more for the White Sox, only two have a batting average above .250. Outfielder Tommy Pham and catcher Korey Lee are batting .293 and .284 respectively. Pham, who just joined the team on April 26, is already seventh on the team in RBI with just eight. The team has just five players with 50 or more at bats in the top half of the league for OPS. Pham is the only one with that many at-bats in the top 100 batters in the league of OPS with .787, 98th best in baseball.
Will It Get Any Better?
The White Sox are 6-3 in their last nine games. They’ve scored four or more runs in four of those games. They only put up that many runs in nine of their first 32 games. Their average runs per game is 2.9, but in their past nine games that has gone up to 3.3. While most of their wins have come on the backs of good pitching, the White Sox may be starting to get out of their scoring funk.
“Early on we were like when is it going to show? When is it?” said shortstop Nicky Lopez. “We’re putting in the work when is it going to turn our way for once? We lost a lot of one run games and now it’s finally kind of flipping.”
Main Photo: © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports
