Waking Up to EIGHTY-ONE Texts

Let’s talk some White Sox, Shohei... and try a new JoeBlogs Connections Game!

Went to bed fairly late last night—watched Janik Sinner beat Tommy Paul at the U.S. Open in a match that was quite a lot better than the three-set score would indicate—and slept only a few hours. Then woke up early this morning to EIGHTY-ONE text messages from our pals Mike Schur and Brandon McCarthy.

Well, I wasn’t entirely sure that all 81 were from them… I woke up to this:

So, there was the briefest moment of “WHAT IN THE WORLD DID I MISS? IS IT BAD?” But, I’ve woken up to loads of texts from these guys in the past—not 81, but a lot—and it’s usually them arguing about a ball-strike call or Brandon going on about LSU something or them discussing Liverpool in a super-specific way. This text thread involved super-expensive sports-card memorabilia auctions or something; I couldn’t get through all 81.

Brandon had the 81st and final text:

Yeah, I love my friends.

The White Sox scored two runs in the top of the first inning off Corbin Burnes on Monday night at Camden Yards… and they still lost 13-3. It was their 11th consecutive loss, 108th loss on the season, and they now need a winning record for the rest of the season (12-11) in order to avoid losing 120 games.

They will obviously NOT avoid losing 120 games. At this point, it’s MUCH more likely that they will lose all 23 games of their remaining games and finish the season with 131 losses. I mean, at this point, why not?

I don’t even know what to say about such a disastrous and shameful season. Firing everybody doesn’t seem enough. This team should absolutely be relegated to Class AAA, and Omaha—with its 80-50 record in the International League—should be promoted to the big leagues.

I offer two stats:

Stat one: The overall OPS in the American League this year is .714. That’s historically low… it’s 20 points lower than last season’s, and lower than all but two seasons since the 1994 strike.

The White Sox did not have a batter in Monday’s lineup with anything CLOSE to a .714 OPS.

1. Nicky Lopez, .593

2. Corey Julks, .634

3. Andrew Benintendi, .654

4. Gavin Sheets, .682

5. Korey Lee, .592

6. Zack DeLoach, .419

7. Dominic Fletcher, .532

8. Miguel Vargas, .573

9. Jacob Amaya, .397

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that you could put a Class AAA lineup out there and put up better OPS numbers than those. I mean, you’d get at least one league-average hitter.

Stat two: The White Sox have been outscored by 301 runs this year. The worst run differentials in modern baseball history (since 1901):

1932 Red Sox, -345 (43-111)

• As bad as those Red Sox were, they did have a couple good hitters—Dale Alexander actually led the league in hitting, and the gloriously named Smead Jolley hit .309 with 18 homers for Sox.

1915 Philadelphia Athletics, -344 (43-109-2)

• The A’s won 90-plus games every year from 1909 to 1914, but then Connie Mack—facing money problems and the competition of the Federal League—sold off all his great players. That 1915 team did have a 40-year-old Nap Lajoie, but he was pretty well cooked.

2023 Oakland Athletics, -339 (50-112)

• Well, we know all the travails of the Sacramento-Oakland-Las Vegas-Sheboygan-Pocatello-San Jose A’s.

2003 Detroit Tigers, -337 (43-119)

• Worst team I’d ever seen until these White Sox came along.

2019 Detroit Tigers, -333 (47-114)

• I tend to forget how bad this team was—this was back in the Ron Gardenhire era.

This year’s White Sox are losing games by an average of about 2.2 runs. (This average includes their wins!) So, with 23 games left, at this pace, their overall run differential would be about minus-350, enough to break the all-time record. Which, honestly, at this point, they should just go ahead and break all the embarrassing records.

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Shohei Ohtani stole three more bases on Monday night, and he’s now up to 44 homers, 46 steals. He has 50-50 in his sights.

He’s also having the greatest season ever for a full-time designated hitter. And by full-time designated hitter, I mean FULL-TIME, 100%, he hasn’t played any other positions. The bWAR leaders for full-time DHs:

1. Shohei Ohtani, 2024, 7.1

2. Nelson Cruz, 2019, 4.4

3. Marcell Ozuna, 2024, 4.2

4. Jim Thome, 2010, 3.6

5. Chili Davis, 3.5, 1995

Yes, I was looking for Edgar Martínez and David Ortiz in there, too, but in Edgar’s best years—1995-2001—the Mariners would always throw him out there at first base or third base for at least a couple games. This is even more true for Ortiz—in every single one of his Boston seasons, including his last, he played at least one game at first base.

If you drop the DH requirement to 90% rather than 100%, the bWAR is a lot closer:

1. Shohei Ohtani, 2024, 7.1

2. Edgar Martínez, 1995, 7.0

3. Edgar Martínez, 1996, 6.5

4. David Ortiz, 2007, 6.4

5. Edgar Martínez, 1997, 6.2

The Top 16 bWAR seasons for designated hitters include seven Edgar seasons, four Papi seasons, three Travis Hafner seasons and one Jim Thome season. But Shohei seems certain to hold the top spot all by himself.

It does lead to a question: If he weren’t also a fantastic pitcher, how good an outfielder do we think Shohei could be, with that arm and that speed and athleticism?

A bunch of you Brilliant Readers are totally right… we have not spent NEARLY enough time talking about how good the Milwaukee Brewers are.

• They don’t have an especially viable MVP candidate, and they don’t have a Cy Young candidate at all, and yet they have the best run differential in all of baseball (plus-139).

• They lost mega-ace Corbin Burnes during the offseason and still have the lowest ERA in the National League.

• They lost their star and emotional leader and All-Star Christian Yelich on July 23 and have gone 24-14 since.

How in the world are they doing it? Well, they’re fantastic defensively—particularly in the outfield, where Jackson Chourio, Blake Perkins and Sal Frelick are all brilliant—and they lead the league in walks, and they’ve got like 400 good pitchers who generally throw strikes, and they’ve got the perennially overlooked Willy Adames, who actually leads the league in RBIs.

And they’ve got Chourio. I try to be as objective as I can when analyzing sports, but I have long held this hard-to-prove belief that good teams are ABOUT something. That is to say, they come to the park or the stadium or the arena with a certain energy or confidence or optimism or anger or something that gives them the slightest edge. You’ll hear it called chemistry, you’ll hear it called belief, you’ll hear it called lots of things… I don’t know what to call it, but I deeply feel like there’s something there.

Chourio is doing some amazing things, and he’s just getting started. (John Fisher/Getty Images)

Jackson Chourio seems to me to be that something for these Brewers. He’s 20 years old, and he’s one of three Jacksons—along with the Padres’ Merrill and the Orioles’ Holliday—who look to make up the future of baseball. He hits and he hits with power and he steals some bases and he plays good defense and he will probably lose the Rookie of the Year Award to Merrill (and Paul Skenes) but he seems to me as much a difference-maker as anybody.

And that’s because there’s just this legendary thing going on with him. On Monday, with the Brewers leading the Cardinals, he went up to some teammates and said, “I’m going to hit a grand slam.” And the best part is that he said it WHEN THE BASES WERE EMPTY. Then, Rhys Hoskins—wait, he’s not on the Phillies? He’s on the Brewers now?—walked, and Frelick doubled and Joey Ortiz walked to load the bases. Brice Turang lined out to leave the bases loaded for Chourio.

And he promptly hit the called grand slam—the second of his young career. The only other players to have multiple grand slams before they turned 21?

• Ted Williams hit two grand slams in August of 1939 when he was 20—one off Pete Appleton in Washington, the second off Harry Eisenstat in Cleveland.

• Mickey Mantle hit two grand slams over four days in 1952—the first on July 26 in Detroit off Ted Gray, the second on July 29 off Chuck Stobbs in Chicago.

• Alex Rodriguez actually hit three grand slams in the months before he turned 21. He hit one in April of 1996 off Detroit’s Clint Sodowski, one in May off Baltimore’s Alan Mills and then, another one about three weeks before his 21st birthday in July, off Texas’ Kevin Gross.

So, Chourio is in that company. But he’s been doing wild stuff all year. Last week, he had his “Natural” moment, when he smashed a home run off the scoreboard, putting the lights out for a moment. Earlier this season, he became the youngest player in more than 30 years (going back to Ken Griffey Jr.!) to hit an inside-the-park-homer. After getting off to a rough start—a completely expected outcome for a 20-year-old—he’s hitting .322/.377/.542 since June 8. I just think the Brewers are totally feeding off his good vibes… and why not?

We talked about how, as of right now, two National Leaguers—Luis Arráez (of course) and Marcell Ozuna—are hitting .300. This makes some sense, as we know that batting averages have been down all across baseball for years now.

But what’s interesting to me is that there’s only one pitcher in the American League—Detroit’s Tarik Skubal—with a sub-3.00 ERA.

This quirk has happened a few times in American League history, heck, it happened just three years ago, when Robbie Ray (2.84 ERA) was the only American Leaguer with an ERA below 3.00.

But it still seems weird to me, because starting pitchers are asked to do so much less than ever before. They’re supposed to go out there, max-effort their way through five or six innings, it just seems logical that some should have super-low ERAs, especially in a year when AL teams are scoring just 4.34 runs per game—the fourth-lowest average over the last 30 years.

But this is just another example of how deemphasized starting pitchers have become. Here are the top 10 AL starters by ERA:

1. Tarik Skubal, Tigers, 2.51

2. Ronel Blanco, Astros, 3.03

3. Framber Valdez, Astros, 3.11

4. Tanner Houck, Red Sox, 3.12

5. Seth Lugo, Royals, 3.12

6. Corbin Burnes, Orioles, 3.19

7. Logan Gilbert, Mariners, 3.19

8. Bryce Miller, Mariners, 3.30

9. Brady Singers, Royals, 3.36

10. Cole Ragans, Royals, 3.46

Are there ANY pitchers listed there that a casual baseball fan would know? Maybe Burnes? Maybe Skubal, just because he’s having such a great year? Maybe nobody.

Anyway, in honor of starters, I created a new JoeBlogs Connection Game—you will remember that the idea is to group the choices into four categories. I wonder if this one will be too easy for you, because, unlike the first few, it’s themed and one-sport specific. It’s only about baseball starting pitchers.

OK, I’m heading to Austin, Texas, on Wednesday to be part of the Jenkins Medal Dinner—I’m actually introducing my friend Sally Jenkins, who won the Best Sportswriting Award for her extraordinary piece on the friendship between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova—and then I’m sticking around for a few days for this super-exciting project I can’t talk about just yet. So, if you’re in Austin or Dallas and see somebody who looks like a thinner version of me wearing a KC cap, yeah, that’s me.