NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Dallas
Kansas City
NY Jets
New England
Miami
Baltimore
Cleveland
Tennessee
Houston
New York Football Giants
da Bears
Detroit
Atlanta
New Orleans
Carolina
Seattle
The worthless Chargers won.
The worthless Bills won.
Detroit lost.
Houston lost.
Has the curse of Saylor Twift finally settled on Kansas City?
It is the first week of the season. I don’t think it is time to panic quite yet.
The NFL regular season begins tonight.
The NFL loser update will return on Tuesday, September 9th, since we have to wait for the Monday night game.
Meanwhile, it’s been a minute since I posted a baseball loser update. Lawrence sent over a link yesterday:
“Rockies, Freeland go down screaming as they hit loss No. 100”.
So how bad are things? Not as bad as you might think. And good enough to get me depressed, which is why I haven’t been posting.
The Chicago White Sox are at 52-88, for a .371 winning percentage. That projects out to about 102 losses.
And the Colorado Rockies are at 39-101, for a .279 winning percentage. Right now, that projects out to about 117 losses.
Looking at it another way, for the Rockies to beat the 2024 White Sox record, they would have to lose 21 out of the 22 games remaining. That’s theoretically possible, but call me when the pigs start flying.
One bright note, though: the Rockies are the first – and, as far as I can tell, only – team so far to be mathematically eliminated from post-season play.
On a side note that I don’t have any room for elsewhere, Lawrence also sent over this story about the Clippers paying $28 million to Kawhi Leonard through a fake job to get around the NBA salary cap.
I’d seen this story on Awful Announcing as well. It’s interesting, but I can’t get worked up over it: I’m absolutely convinced that, even if everything is true, the NBA and the Player’s Association won’t do anything about it.
The All-Star game is tonight, so it seems like a good time for another loser update.
As discussed previously, it seems like there are two teams worth focusing on:
The Chicago White Sox are 32-65, for a .330 winning percentage. That projects out to about 108 projected losses, if my math is right.
The Colorado Rockies are 22-74, for a .229 winning percentage. My projections say that works out to nearly 125 losses. That’s in “historically bad” territory. (Remember, the record is 121 losses, set by the White Sox last year.)
We are exactly at the halfway point of the baseball season, though the All-Star Game doesn’t take place until July 15th.
Seems like a good time to do a loser update.
I think we’ve narrowed it down to two teams of significant interest.
The Chicago White Sox are at 26-55, for a .321 winning percentage. By my projections, that works out to 110 losses. Better than last year, and not record setting, but still pretty awful.
The Colorado Rockies are at 18-63, for a .222 winning percentage. As a caliber, .222 isn’t bad, but .224 is better. As a record, that works out to a projected 126 losses, which would be record setting. .222 would also be the lowest winning percentage in the modern (1901 and later) era, beating out the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics.
We’re about 25% of the way through the MLB season, so I thought it was time to do a loser update.
The question is: what teams are worth covering?
The Braves, which started out horribly, are now 22-22, for a .500 average. I don’t think they’re worth considering in the loser update any longer unless there’s a dramatic change.
There are some teams that are below .400 that might be worth consideration:
Baltimore is at 15-27, for a .357 winning percentage.
The Miami Marlins are at 16-26, .381.
Pittsburgh, the first team this season to fire their manager, is at 15-29, .341.
The Chicago White Sox are at 14-30, for a .318 winning percentage. This projects out to 110 losses, which is bad, but not historically bad, and at least better than last year.
And the Colorado Rockies…7-36, .163 winning percentage. This is bad. This is historically bad. This is a projected total of 135 losses. This is the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network publishing an article:
“Are Rockies worse than 2024 White Sox? Breaking down the numbers”.
The 2024 Sox lost 121 games, but didn’t quite nail down the “worst team in the modern era” mark. Could the Rockies accomplish what the Sox didn’t? Hope springs eternal.
Travel day tomorrow for the return, so probably light blogging unless someone important dies or something major happens.
In the meantime, Atlanta won Friday night. There are now no teams that can go 0-162, but the Braves are 1-8, for a .111 winning percentage. Projecting that out over the season, it comes out to 136 losses.
Our trip has been successful, but we did end our day early. Not so much out of exhaustion (at least for me) but because people started packing up around noon. While we didn’t see everything, we came closer than we did last year and probably could have seen it all, except by 2:15 PM diminishing returns had set in: there were so many empty tables and so many people packing and leaving that we decided it wasn’t worth it to explore the rest of the unexplored country.
While I don’t like discussing other people’s purchases, I will say that our VRBO could also now be known as the Winchester Mystery House. I will also say, at some point, folks will see the return of another one of this blog’s peculiar obsessions.
Still on the road, but have time to get in a quick one.
MLB teams that still have a chance to go 0-162:
Atlanta Braves
Atlanta, which I’ve always thought to be a generally good team, is 0-7 right now. But it looks like they play the Marlins tonight, and are pretty heavy favorites.
The MLB season started yesterday. I guess? Sort of? Apparently, the Cubs and Dodgers played two regular season games in Japan a week or so ago, and the Cubs dropped both?
Shows how much I follow baseball.
Anyway, MLB teams that still have a chance to go 0-162:
Tampa Bay Rays
Toronto Blue Jays
Minnesota Twins
Kansas City Royals
Detroit Tigers
Texas Rangers
City to be named later Athletics
Los Angeles Angels
New York Mets
Washington Nationals
Atlanta Braves
Pittsburgh Pirates
Cincinnati Reds
Milwaukee Brewers
Colorado Rockies
Arizona Diamondbacks
The Cleveland Indians Guardians won, which is nice. But Lawrence still hasn’t taken me up on my offer to bet $5 on the Guardians to win the World Series. Houston won, which is nice. And shockingly, the White Sox actually won. ESPN picked them to be the worst team in MLB this season, but could they be worse than last year? I think that would be hard.
It was a full rich weekend. I was out all day Saturday and all day Sunday (at separate events) and did not get home until 10 PM last night. So blogging has been kind of constrained, and will be probably until tomorrow. (I have to drop my rental car off this morning, and I have an eye doctor’s appointment this afternoon that’s going to leave my eyes messed up.)
Anyway, NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
None.
I was right about the Jacksonville -Indianapolis game, but that gives me no satisfaction.
And, in other news, I’m thinking the only reason this wasn’t a forfeit is that it was a playoff game, and that would have been a bad look for MLB.
I am also waiting on the results of the Alabama appeal. As I understand it, SEC bylaws specifically forbid any team from scoring more points in a game than Alabama, so I’m thinking the conference is going to overturn Vanderbilt’s win and award the victory to ‘Bama.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Jacksonville
Four weeks in, one team remaining. And I don’t like Jacksonville’s chances of going 0-17. This week they play Indianapolis (2-2) at home: ESPN has Jacksonville as a slight favorite.
The NFL loser update won’t post until Tuesday. (0-3 Tennessee plays the early Monday night game.)
But the MLB season mostly wrapped up today.
How did the White Sox do?
Shockingly well down the stretch. They swept the LA Angels Tuesday-Thursday of last week, and won two out of three against the Detroit Tigers (who ESPN had as heavy favorites for all three games). Where was this team earlier in the season?
But they did manage to drop one to Detroit, and you know what that means…
…their final record was 41-121, breaking the mark set by the 1962 Mets, and making them arguably the worst team in the modern (1901 and later) era of baseball.
“arguably”? Well, 121 losses in a season is a record. But 41-121 works out to a winning percentage of .253. That comes in fifth on Wikipedia’s list of worst MLB teams if you sort by percentage. Ahead of the Sox are:
So what’s the best way to determine the worst? Sheer number of losses, which puts the 2024 Sox at the top of the heap? Or does it make more sense to use winning percentage, which evens out the fluctuations cased by the variable number of games per season over the past 123 years, and by some games being cancelled and not made up? (If you notice, none of those numbers adds up to 154 or 162. I haven’t looked at the other records, but as I understand it, one of the 1962 Mets games was a tie, so it should be 40-120-1, and one was rained out and not made up.)
I don’t know. But I think in any case, the achievement of the 2024 White Sox is worth celebrating, even if they didn’t remove all doubt about who is really the worst. There’s always next year.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Cincinnati
Jacksonville
Tennessee
Three weeks into the season, three teams left. Right now, I’m liking Jacksonville’s chances to go 0-17. They play Houston next week. Houston is a big favorite, and is coming off a pretty embarrassing loss to Minnesota, so I’m liking Jacksonville to go 0-4.
In other news, and as noted on Sunday, the White Sox are now at 36-120, for a .231 winning percentage. Looking at this another way, in order to lose only 119 games and avoid tying the 1962 Mets…they can’t do it. (I think they would have to win approximately 116% of the remaining games.)
More seriously, if the Sox go 2 and 4 (.333 winning percentage) for the remaining games, they will finish at 38-124, for a .234 winning percentage. The lowest winning percentage in the modern era is .235 by the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, who went 36-117.
I am hoping for 125 losses. Why? Someone mentioned the other day that 2025 is the 125th anniversary of the White Sox…and they’ve ordered all kinds of memorabilia with the number “125” displayed prominently. That could be…awkward.
(It seems to me to be a little fuzzy, though, when the anniversary is. I guess you could call 2025 the 125th if you count when they moved to Chicago, which is not unreasonable. But they didn’t become the modern Sox until 1901.)
The Chicago White Sox have now lost 120 games, tying the 1962 Mets.
I plan to post a longer update on Tuesday with the NFL loser update.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Baltimore
Cincinnati
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Tennessee
Denver
New York Football Giants
Carolina
Los Angeles Rams
In other news, the White Sox have actually won a few more games. Mostly they won against the City Unknown A’s, though they beat the LA Angels last night.
Currenrtly, the Sox are 36-115, for a .238 winning percentage. That projects out to 123 loses this season. Put another way, in order for the Sox to lose only 119 games and avoid tying the 1962 Mets for worst MLB record, they will have to win 7 out of the final 11 games, for a .636 winning percentage down the stretch.
They play the Angels again tonight, and LA is favored by ESPN. Of course, LA was favored by ESPN in last night’s game as well, and you see what that got them…
As foretold in the prophecy, we have returned.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
New York Jets
Baltimore
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Tennessee
Las Vegas
Denver
Washington
New York Football Giants
Green Bay
Carolina
Atlanta
Los Angeles Rams
Arizona
In other news, the Chicago White Sox are now 33-112, for a .228 winning percentage. This projects out to 125 losses this season.
Put another way, there are 17 games left in the season. For the Sox to have only 119 losses and miss tying the record for worst MLB team in the modern era, they will have to win 10 out of those 17, for a .588 winning percentage.