Opening day served as a sign of things to come for the Chicago White Sox. Garrett Crochet had a fantastic outing, allowing one run and striking out eight in six innings against the Detroit Tigers. But the offense mustered only three hits — singles by Luis Robert Jr.
, Andrew Vaughn and Eloy Jiménez — in a 1-0 loss. The Sox were swept in the season-opening series at Guaranteed Rate Field, dropping each of the three games by one run. The losses kept piling up after that.
Through 25 games, the Sox sat at 3-22. There was a single-season, franchise-record 14game losing streak that began in late May and ended in early June. And after Sunday's 9-4 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates, they are 27-71 on the season — the most losses before the All-Star break in MLB history.
"Obviously disappointing," manager Pedro Grifol said before Sunday's game when asked about the first half. "This is not something we planned for. Something we didn't really expect.
You can point your fingers at many different things and I'm not going to make any excuses for what's going on. "We are in a ton of ballgames. We just haven't been able to close it out.
It seems like every night we have an opportunity to win a baseball game. I'm not going to say that's all you can ask, because we all want more. We want to be able to close them out and win these games, but I'm proud of the way these guys go about it.
" Here's a look at the highs — and mostly lows — of the first half. MOST TELLING NUMBER: 71 The story o.
