The Chicago White Sox ended the 1967 season with five consecutive losses. They started the 1968 season with 10 more defeats.
Fifteen stood as the longest losing streak in franchise history. Until Tuesday.
The Sox suffered their 16th consecutive defeat, losing 4-3 to the Kansas City Royals in front of 15,360 at Guaranteed Rate Field.
“It’s obviously tough,” said shortstop Nicky Lopez, who went 2-for-4 with two runs and a walk. “We’re right there till the end. Seems like we’re in every single game. I don’t remember the last time we got blown out. Not for the lack of effort, we’re busting our ass trying to get that win.
“It just always seems like there’s that one inning or one situation where we have to come through and we haven’t done that. It’s piling up.”
The Sox set the single-season franchise mark for a slide with Monday’s 8-5 defeat, topping the previous mark of 14 straight defeats from earlier this season. Tuesday’s loss established the team record that had previously spanned two seasons.
Additionally, the Sox extended another franchise record by falling 56 games under .500 (27-83).
For the second straight night, they couldn’t hold an eighth-inning lead.
The Sox entered the eighth leading 2-1 behind starter Jonathan Cannon, who allowed one run on one hit in seven innings.
Reliever Fraser Ellard, making his major-league debut, walked two of the first three batters he faced. Justin Anderson entered and surrendered a game-tying single to Bobby Witt Jr.
Vinnie Pasquantino followed with another hit. Pinch runner Dairon Blanco scored easily from second and Witt scored from first — making it 4-2 — when the relay throw from left fielder Dominic Fletcher to shortstop Nicky Lopez went to second, where they got Pasquantino out.
“Got the fastest guy on the planet running (in Witt),” Lopez said. “My back was turned to home plate. Fletch hit me with the cutoff and when I turned I turned to second base and I probably would have had to throw across my body to throw it home. Since there was a little tail to Fletch’s ball.
“He hit me with a good cutoff and then we got the out at second. It’s better to get an out in that situation rather than force a throw at home and Bobby’s safe and there’s a guy on second now. Who knows.”
Manager Pedro Grifol said of the sequence: “I just think there was some miscommunication on that play, but as far as where the ball went by Fletcher, where Nicky was in position, I thought that it was executed correctly. The communication part of it wasn’t.”
The Sox scored once in the eighth to get within a run, but stranded Luis Robert Jr. on third when pinch hitter Andrew Benintendi struck out. The Sox were retired in order in the ninth, with pinch hitter Lenyn Sosa striking out looking to end it.
The 16-game losing streak is the longest in the majors since the 2021 Arizona Diamondbacks (17) and Baltimore Orioles (19). The Sox are just the third team in major-league history to lose 83-plus times in the first 110 games of a season, and first since the 1932 Boston Red Sox (27-83) and 1916 Philadelphia A’s (23-86).
“I think part of development is learning to win,” Cannon said. “Winning is hard and you have to learn how to do it. So, just hopefully we can just continue to put together good games and keep putting ourselves in a position to win. It will start to turn. It sounds dumb to keep saying that, but it will. It’s baseball. We’ve come out on the losing end of a lot of close ones.
“Just one hit, one pitch away from turning things around.”
