The 100th White Sox loss was for your convenience

Theoretically, there isn't much of a difference between a 99-loss season and a 100-loss season. My trusty TI-83 graphing calculator says it's just one game.

But mentally, there's a sizable gap between the two. It's not just because 10 fingers makes round numbers more accessible, or because there's an extra digit involved in a fresh hundo.

It's because I'd already written about a 99-loss season, and thanks to the 2018 White Sox, I have now written about a 100-loss season. The 100-loss season was worse.

That's not recency bias. You can trust me for harboring no fond feelings for the 2013 White Sox, because I'm the idiot who stayed up all night compiling a highlight reel of all the ways the White Sox screwed up during a 1-9 road trip that year:

Here's the tale of the tape between the 2013 and 2018 White Sox. The worse team is in the brown, and this year's club has more of it:

Yes, Reynaldo Lopez accounted for nearly two-thirds of the White Sox' positive WAR value for pitchers.

Another point in the 2013 team's favor: The losing was novel. These Sox finished in fourth place for the fifth straight season, whereas the 2013 White Sox spent most of the prior season in first place before coming undone in September. Chris Sale, Jose Quintana and Jake Peavy offered the Sox frequent professionalism in spite of the offense, and the trade of Peavy brought back Avisail Garcia and opened the door for a bunch of other prospects, even if they were largely underqualified.

This was a far more difficult team to write about, because the most important acquisition earned the club's first-ever 80-game suspension at the MLB level (with my favorite headline), and the Sox' other highly touted new guy tore his UCL after four starts. Most everybody else had already been around the block once, and regression threatened all successes, and with extreme prejudice.

Look at poor Jeff Sullivan at FanGraphs. In spring training, he wrote a post called "Let's Watch Lucas Giolito Look Very Good." Giolito then started the season with more walks than strikeouts and a 7.00 ERA into late June.

When Giolito rebounded with a more encouraging stretch of starts to cut his ERA into the 5.00s, Sullivan wrote a post called "Lucas Giolito Is Saving His Season."  Giolito then finished the year with a 7.53 ERA over his last six starts.

Among local examples, after Patrick wrote about Nicky Delmonico regaining his slugging power in August, Delmonico hit .174/.217/.256 the rest of the way.

Bob Uecker said the best way to catch a knuckleball was to wait until it stopped rolling and pick it up. The same can be said about analyzing this team, at least with any hopes of variety in tone. Nothing gold could stay, and by the start of September, I couldn't wait until the shelf life of October, when it'd be at least six months before the White Sox could undermine any positive speculation.

And as the Sox staggered toward the end of September, I kinda hoped for 100 losses, because it'd be one worse than 99, and so the record could speak for itself. The Sox pulled it off, and without dragging down Lopez (2.70 ERA since August) and Yoan Moncada (.301 average in September). I guess it was the least the White Sox could do in a year spent doing the least of any Sox club over the last 48 years.

* * *  * * *  * * *

Long story short, I picked a great season to relaunch a White Sox site.

But I have no regrets, because the "rolling conversation" approach to blogging is the one I most enjoy. Thanks to everybody who followed me over from South Side Sox, and to the OGs who followed me back to Sox Machine. I'm especially grateful for the 200+ supporters on Patreon. I didn't know what to expect, but this was definitely more than that, and the support will allow me to improve the site's hosting and back-end features in the coming weeks.

Thanks to Josh for rebranding the podcast, and to Patrick, Ted and Greg for making the jump and slinging fantastic 'tent, too. And then there's Our Man in Charlotte Jonathan Lee, who became Our Man in North Carolina this year.

Thanks to the beat writers for providing the first-hand accounts. Thanks to White Sox Twitter for the additional conversation. Thanks to 670 The Score, ESPN 1000 and CLTV for having us on, and special thanks to Jon Greenberg at The Athletic for inviting me to write "Sox is Singular" every week. Speaking of which, here's an excerpt from today's season-ender:

The Blackout Game would stand out as a crazy September among easier ones with most franchises. It’s a little lamentable that it was even necessary, as the Sox blew a 6-1 lead in the Metrodome for the third of five straight losses in the final week of the season. That skid served the purpose of heightening the drama – the White Sox had to win three games against three different opponents in the same stadium to win the division – but a forgettable four-game ALDS loss to the Rays reminds everybody how the Sox limped to the finish.

Imagine what recent White Sox history would look like if head-to-head records decided home-field advantage back then, rather than a coin flip (the Twins won the season series 10-9). Imagine what recent White Sox history would look like if Justin Morneau hit the solo shot instead of Jim Thome.

Make no mistake – the Blackout Game is beautiful for its flaws, not in spite of them. It shouldn’t loom over the next decade as large as it does. The Prudential Building was the tallest structure in Chicago when it was erected in 1955. Now it’s the 45th. That’s typically how time works.

If this is your first season with us, you should keep coming back despite the lack of games -- or maybe because of it. We'll be writing about the Sox every day, starting by sorting through the ruins of the season, after which we'll fire up the Offseason Plan Project, follow the tepid stove, and before you know it, it's the centennial of the Black Sox. Hey, say what you will about the 2018 White Sox, but at least they were trying their best.