Only 90% of a season to get through now!

Plus, off-field stuff both heartening and disgusting

As of the Tuesday night shellacking by the West Sacramento A’s, the White Sox were a tenth of the way through the 2025 season, with a record that couldn’t be more fitting — just add a “1” after the wins and losses and, by golly, you had last year’s record-setting 41-121. You can just hear Hawk Harrelson saying, “Don’t stop now, boys!”

Ten per cent through is a reasonable point to take a look at some early (in many cases, we hope way too early) look at some statistics, but first let us pause for a moment for some off-the-field pieces of information.

OFF-THE-FIELD No. 1 — HE’S FINALLY GONE! (WELL, AT LEAST UNTIL THEY BRING HIM BACK AGAIN NEXT YEAR)
The “he” in this case is Mike Clevinger, who has been a stain on the White Sox organization for the past three seasons and who got DFAed on Wednesday, April 16 (mark your calendars). No, it’s not likely the team suddenly got a jolt of morality or ethics, or at least sufficient of a jolt to join the 29 other teams that wouldn’t touch Clevinger — although keeping someone employed who has more walks issued than innings pitched and an ERA close to eight will bring out sudden morality in anyone.

Since it’s likely Clevinger will refuse assignment and become a free agent, and extremely likely no team will take him, Jerry Reinsdorf gets stuck with the rest of a $1.5 million salary. Since it’s very likely Clevinger’s hiring this year was in part to give a big middle finger to the fans who found the signing abhorrent and who also have demonstrated total disdain for Reinsdorf, getting stuck for a cool mil-and-a-half is only fitting.

Finally dumping Clevinger isn’t going to raise the Sox out of the 10 teams who got nary a single “best front office” vote from their peers in a recent New York Times poll, but it will at least give some youngsters the innings the 34-year-old has been taking up.

OFF-THE-FIELD No. 2 — DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP ON OWNERSHIP
This week, 670 the Score must have found an inside source to reveal for the first time that White Sox stock ownership now breaks down to the 35% recently purchased by the Ishbia brothers, the 20% Jerry Reinsdorf holds, the 15% in the hands of various and sundry, presumably original owners or their heirs and — and this is the bad part — 30% by a fund controlled by Reinsdorf’s sons Michael and Jonathan (quite possibly the 30% owned by Robert Mazur when he died in 2013).

Given Reinsdorf senior’s extreme allergy to paying taxes, there was little or no chance he would sell while alive, but these figures would indicate the family would still have half the stock — including, of course, the special stock that gives him total control over every aspect of the Sox. Reinsdorf has advised his heirs to sell the Sox (but not the Bulls) when he dies — but what if Michael has gotten such a thrill dragging the Bulls down he decides to do the same thing on the baseball side?

It could literally be generations before there’ s any hope for White Sox fans.

OFF-THE-FIELD No. 3 — A NEW LOW EVEN FOR REINSDORF, BUT NO SURPRISE
The sourcing on this isn’t widespread, but the picture at the top of this column, dated this week, would seem to back up the report that Jerry Reinsdorf has made a begging trip to Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr to try to get federal juice to scare the crap out of Comcast in the battle over coverage of CHSN.

You can just hear the pitch, can’t you? “Brendan, my man, I love how you actually despise communications unless it’s communications of a particular political stripe, and I’m not real crazy about a free press or freedom of speech, either. I have to tell you, if there’s one other thing I hate, it’s fair negotiations — negotiations with anyone, from the players to politicians to, and this is where you come in: Comcast. I’ve got this little conflict with them now, and I gotta tell ya, Brennie, if there’s one thing I love, really love, it’s extortion. That’s worked great for me in the past, and it’s sure working well for you and your political cronies now, so what say we get together on a little good old fashioned extortion now and you do your bit to help out a billionaire like you help out all us poor little billionaires and nail these Comcast b**tards, eh? I could find a way to make it worth while for you and, uh, oh, anybody else you might think of, you know?”

BUT WHAT ABOUT ON THE FIELD?

Oh, yeah. Almost forgot.

Well, you know most of it. The starting pitching first time around was terrific, since then not so much except for two-fifths. First, 34-year-old Martín Pérez on a one-year contract (and one of those never-activated mutual options) which means he’ll be gone before the trading deadline. Second is Rule 5 pickup and last-man-added-to-the-rotation Shane Smith, with a wonderful 2.04 ERA and much higher but still very good FIP of 3.02.

The relief pitching has been better than the worst-ever-in-all-the-years-we’ve-done projections, thanks in large part to nine scoreless innings from another Rule 5 pick, Mike Vasil, and good performances by Bryse Willson and Cam Booser (though the latter two have five-ish FIPs, an indication that reality may soon set in).

The defense does seem better, at least in the sense of generally throwing to the right base, something new from the last decade or so. Runners still take advantage of weak outfield arms, though, and the error rate is about the same as 2024 with no improvement in range, so it’s no surprise the Sox are dead last on ESPN’s watchability list. They do actually have a positive defense runs saved total from Baseball Reference, but that’s only because of positioning points, for which coaches deserve the credit.

As for offense, well, uh, er, it’s offensive. Last year the White Sox were 30th in baseball in about every important category, from average to on-base-percentage to OPS to, most importantly, runs per game.

The good news is they’re not last in any of those categories this year. The bad news is why.

Chicago has moved all the way up to 27th in runs per game and are even up a little in actual scoring, from 3.13 to 3.31, but the positioning is mostly due to other teams being worse, in the limited sample so far.

Otherwise, while up in position, they’re actually worse than last year, if you can believe it (and when you see Luis Robert Jr. has a 43 OPS+ and Andrew Vaughn a 29 before of his Tuesday night homer, you should believe it).

Batting average? Well, the Sox are 29th instead of 30th thanks to the Pirates, but down — way down — from 2024’s .223 to 2025’s .200.

On-base percentage is 29th instead of 30th thanks to the Rangers, but down from .278 to ,272.

Slugging sits at 29th, and down all the way from .340 to .300.

And, oh, yeah — for those who like OPS+, it’s down from 76 to 69.

Even the other teams never figure out how to pitch to Chase Meidroth, which is unlikely, he can’t help that dismalness much.

WHAT NEXT?

Well, lots of giveaways to gloss over the awfulness of the baseball. And as for you folks with Comcast who can’t watch the Sox until the extortion wins out? Be thankful.