ARLINGTON, Texas — The latest Chicago White Sox losing streak reached 10 games.
And in the process came a link to the historically woeful 1962 New York Mets.
The Sox saw a tight game balloon into a blowout late as they suffered a 10-2 loss to the Texas Rangers on Wednesday in front of 36,989 at Globe Life Field.
At 27-77, the Sox are a season-worst 50 games under .500. The last time they were 50 under was when they finished the 1970 season at 56-106.
“It has been very hard for everybody, players and the coaches as well,” center fielder Luis Robert Jr. said through an interpreter. “It is something nobody wants to pass through, but unfortunately it’s where we’re at.”
The Sox became the 10th team in major-league history to lose 77-plus times in the first 104 games of a season and the first since the 1962 Mets (26-78). That Mets club holds the modern-day record with 120 losses in a season.
This is the first time the Sox have had multiple losing streaks of 10-plus games in the same year in club history. They set a single-season franchise record with a 14-game skid from May 22-June 6.
“We’re going through it right now but we’re coming to the ballpark every day to win a baseball game but also to improve and develop and do the things we have to to set us up moving forward,” manager Pedro Grifol said of the 10-game slide. “In the last 10 games we’ve had a lot of growing moments, a lot of developmental moments, a lot of lapses mentally that we’ve talked about in every facet of the game. Today there was a couple things on the catching/pitching side of it that we’ll discuss tomorrow to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again or think about things a little differently.
“So there’s a lot going on. But our No. 1 priority is to win baseball games. And we’re trying to win games. It’s not like we’re just coming out here to develop. That’s not what we’re doing. I want to make that clear. This is not a developmental league, we’re coming here to win baseball games every single day. We’re just not doing it, we’re finding ways to lose the game in some way, shape or form. We have to continue to clean it up. But in the middle of all that, we’ve had a lot of growing moments in this 10-game losing streak.”
Wednesday marked the 38th time this season the Sox lost after holding a lead.
Robert put the Sox ahead 2-1 in the third with a line-drive solo homer over the left-field wall.
Corey Seager began the fifth for the Rangers with a double, but Sox starter Chris Flexen retired the next two batters. He had a 2-2 count on Adolis García, who then tied the score with an RBI double.
“I had a good chance to keep the momentum on our side and made a decent pitch (a low-and-away cutter out of the zone), didn’t get the result we wanted,” Flexen said.
That was the 105th and final pitch of the night for Flexen. The Sox called on Sammy Peralta, who surrendered an RBI single to Nathaniel Lowe as the Rangers took a 3-2 lead.
The Rangers added another two-out run in the sixth. Robbie Grossman, who spent time with the Sox this season, extended the lead with a leadoff homer against reliever Jared Shuster in the eighth. That was the start of a six-run inning as the Rangers pulled away.
The Sox were outhit 15-4 and struck out 13 times while clinching their 12th straight road series defeat.
“Just got to continue to keep stepping forward, continue to work, continue to pull for each other and fight to win a ballgame,” Flexen said. “We’re in a handful of them, some slip away, some don’t. But just try to continue to fight.”
