Death of Pi

Imagine the tiger immediately devouring the young man in the boat, instead of the two learning to coexist together — that sums up Detroit vs. Chicago this season

In the aftermath of Disco Demolition Night in 1979, with the outfield gutted and torn, the Chicago White Sox organization exposed as a laughingstock around major league baseball, the Detroit Tigers began a six-game winning streak against the Pale Hose that stretched into the next decade.

Today, with the outfield now laying lushly just across the street from where it once sat in tatters, a White Sox club significantly more hapless that the 1979 and 1980 editions equaled that lengthy losing streak.

And with 10 games left to play against a Detroit team that bears its fangs against one opponent, and one opponent only, more maulings are expected.

Donning blue for Father’s Day, the White Sox worked incognito in hopes that the Bengals would not realize they were again hunting the baseball equivalent of a fawn with three snapped limbs. The disguise mattered not, as the Chicago 9 fell, 3-1.

James Shields “pitched great” again, earning a “quality start,” with six hits, five strikeouts and four walks. And that’s cool; as always with Shields, it could have been worse. Seventeen pitches into the game and with one out notched on his belt, Shields walked Jeimer Candelario and offered up an 87 mph cutter cutting the heart of the plate that Nicholas Castellano deposited over the left-center field fence. But Big Game managed to rally to record 17 more outs after that, taking a mere 86 additional pitches to do so, and leaking just one more earned run.

Eating innings is just about the highest compliment you can give a White Sox pitcher this season.

The White Sox scored a run. Matt Davidson hit a homer in the second, briefly cutting the Detroit lead in half. Outside of the long balls, Chicago outhit Detroit, 8-5, but left eight on base, whiffed eight times and walked zero.

The White Sox escape to Cleveland for a brief, three-game road trip before returning back home, where to everyone’s relief, they will avoid playing Detroit. Presumably, the plane ride east will be a muted, docile one.

Cavalcade of craptastic facts

Chicago’s 46 losses in the first 70 games ties the 1948 White Sox — the second-worst White Sox team of all time — for the most ever.

The White Sox are now a season-high 22 games below .500.

Chicago is now 1-8 against the Tigers this season, 0-6 at home.

The most losses the White Sox have ever suffered against Detroit is 14, which happened in 1911, 1921, 1936, 1937 and 1949. Chicago must go 5-5 against the Tigers the rest of the way in 2018 to avoid tying that mark.

The worst winning percentage the White Sox have ever had vs. the Tigers in a season is .273 (3-8), set in 1979. Chicago also must go 5-5 against Detroit the rest of the way in 2018 to avoid tying that mark.

Detroit has scored an average of just 1.2 runs more than the White Sox in head-to-head games this season. Seven of the nine games between the two clubs have been decided by two runs or fewer.

The White Sox have had their asses owned by Detroit this decade, to the tune of a 62-96 record.