This is the story White Sox fans have been waiting for all year. The year is almost over, and the White Sox are on the cusp of the wrong kind of history, but with three games remaining they have finally grabbed the only lifejacket on the sinking ship of their season.
The Los Angeles Angels are even more disappointing.
Yes, this is recent bias, as the Angels had just lost in Chicago, a 7-0 loss in the final game in which they were stunners by Chris Flexen – the win dropped their record to 3-15 on the season – and bullpen anonymoids. Gus Worland and Jairo Iriarte. It was the Angels’ 12th loss in their last 15 games, and a perfect end to the Angels’ losingest year ever; The only shame is that they couldn’t actually finish their season now. Instead, they’ll disappoint their fans in a…well, final three times, maybe, against the half-assed Texas Rangers, who finished 11th a year from the World Series parade.
But Rangers are very tiring. The Angels are a White Sox-level dumpster fire, only with slightly different fuel. Not only did he produce his worst season ever, but It felt every bit as bad as it was All the time. The team was dull, incomplete and uninspired on a daily basis, and this has been increasingly essentialized and misdirected by manager Ron Washington. “We forgot to bring real ballplayers into the organization,” Wash said Earlier this week. “Nothing against these guys here but they’re not big league baseball players.”
While Washington later said that he had misspoke (and with an hour’s thought and a strictly worded text on top of that the truth often turns into misspeaking), he was not actually wrong. He and the players around him spent this year losing in extremely disappointing ways, all because their previous best player did game-bending things in only 31 games and their previous best player played almost the entire game. Had missed the season. The body is slowly decomposing. There won’t be another Shohei Ohtani for the Angels, and there probably won’t be another Mike Trout either. The same is true for most other franchises in baseball, but it’s not helping here. The Angels have gone cold turkey—frozen, supermarket-quality turkey with this new feeling.
Thus, losing to a team that actually deserved a month’s worth of losses even more than them when the series started is, in its own way, the worst moment ever. The White Sox are galactically bad It’s easy to forget the other terrible teams that have been at the bottom of the standings since the beginning of the year, like Miami, Colorado, and Washington; We won’t be covering the new West Sacramento franchise here, but they have some entertaining Bombers that can go totally crazy in their new flash-fried minipark.
And we certainly forgot the angels. Sometimes it may seem like that was the whole idea, since they were carefully kept hidden for so long. Even the Ohtani-Trout combination, which should have lit up the sky and led us toward a cultural renaissance of the game, finished nearly 70 games below .500 in its six seasons. The Rangers and Nationals, who were even worse, got rings. As is customary, the angels found nothing.
However, this week was the worst. Games that should have been played in private, or safely on a computer, were played in front of people who came to watch them – well, Came to watch the White Sox break the major league record for lossesAnd yet, the angels could not make anyone happy. They disappointed White Sox fans twice by leading the local nine to wins on Tuesday and Wednesday and then losing like a curse on Thursday. I mean, good for Flexen for having his best start of the year and lowering his season ERA by five, but the White Sox don’t mind beating anyone 7-0, especially when their own fans are only 121st. Wanting to lose makes the first 120 worthwhile.
But this is the era of screw-the-fan (see). it As evidence), then that’s partly on the angels, too. We could turn this into a controversial paragraph about Arte Moreno’s misbehavior, but he doesn’t even deserve a podium spot at baseball’s worst event, nor does Jerry Reinsdorf. John Fisher has taken over the board for now and the foreseeable future.
Yet, as we continue to try to celebrate Chicago’s invertebrates, we must remember that they will be no worse off next year. The law of large numbers prohibits it almost completely, and if they somehow Are Worse yet, they may have to be transferred to Conference USA until they finish their job.
The Angels, on the other hand, have always seemed so out of favor and dull, even if this was the first year they were this bad. Even their one World Series appearance didn’t have any memorable players or seasons (without looking, guess who their 2002 OPS leader was; we challenge you). But this week was as unforgiving as the game can handle. We ask for very little – a record of inadequacy worthy of the name, not a team don’t leave your house and go anywhereThings like that – and then someone moves my-beer to the front of the line and makes everyone progressively more dissatisfied.
Then again, we should not have expected angels to perform even this simple task. I mean, they’ve managed so little with any adequacy this season that it doesn’t make any logical sense to think they’ll even have a strong showing against these White Sox anymore. Frankly, it all ends up being us. We should have paid better attention and not made the assumption that this team could even beat the White Sox even once. The Angels don’t cater to their own fans, so why would they care about anyone else?