The (entire) American League Central has passed the White Sox by

Guaranteed Rate Field

The White Sox just completed a stretch of 12 straight games against the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals.

They went 3-9. So much for the soft September schedule, huh?

Kansas City beat the Sox, 7-1, on Wednesday night at Guaranteed Rate Field. The Royals took two out of three in the series, and four out of six against the Sox over the past couple of weeks.

Mind you, Kansas City is 46-101 for the season. That's the worst record in MLB. But that didn't stop the Royals from going 7-6 against the Sox in 2023.

The Tigers swept the Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field over the Labor Day weekend, then took two out of three from Chicago in Detroit this past weekend.

Mind you, the Tigers are 66-79, but that didn't stop them from going 8-5 against the Sox this season.

The Sox are 56-90 after Wednesday's loss, and they are well on their way to finishing with 100 losses or more. I'm not going to break down any of these games. The blog metrics show that when I do that, nobody is reading. 

Almost no one cares about these results, and I don't blame them. The baseball is just atrocious. I wasn't alive for 1970's 106-loss fiasco, so this 2023 team qualifies as the worst Sox season in my lifetime. (I'm 47 years old.)

So why am I bringing these last 12 games up? Simple. ... This offseason, Sox brass is going to try to convince you that they aim to contend in 2024. They will tell you that the AL Central is "winnable," which is a polite way to say it's weak.

And, indeed, it is weak. The first-place Minnesota Twins are the only winning team in the division, but they have a pedestrian 76-70 record. They will make the 2023 playoffs by default.

All that said, the Sox are the weakest team in the weakest division at this moment in time. Sure, the Royals are about 10 games worse over the course of the 162-game schedule. But right now, even Kansas City is better than the Sox -- the recent results prove it.

The Sox haven't won a three-game series since they took two out of three from the New York Yankees from Aug. 7-9. They are 13-26 since Aug. 1, and 20-42(!) since July 1. Sixty-two games is not a small sample size. The Sox have a .323 winning percentage during that span.

This is a team that is nowhere near contention. Barring an uncharacteristic spending spree (LOL), it's going to take multiple offseasons to fix this mess. Don't buy any of the propaganda you'll hear this winter.