1968 Chicago White Sox – 67-95

1968 was known as the “year of the pitcher” and fittingly this team can really throw.  I tried to look close and figure out why the lost so many games and of course their offense resembled a deadball era team with lower averages.  Still they were #6 in hitting (out of 10) and #4 in pitching, so there had to be something more than what met the eye.  After peeling back the onion it finally hit me.  How could a team win if it had 3 managers ?  Eddie Stanky (34-45), Les Moss (12-24) and the great Al Lopez (21-26) each tried their hand at piloting this team, but the lack of continuity and the change of styles probably contributed to them losing at least 10-15 more games than they should have.

Hitting:  Nobody hit in 1968, so a .228 batting average was in the middle of the pack.  Pete Ward was the only guy to hit double figures in homers (15).  His poor .216 average is very deceiving, because his OBP was .354, which led the team.  Obviously he walked a ton and when they finally pitched to him he was going for the fences.  HOF’er Luis Aparicio will play a gold glove shortstop and hit .264 with 17 thefts.  Tommy McCraw and Sandy Alomar, Sr. stole over 20 bases, so this team will have to win 1-0 and 2-1 games.

Pitching:  Tommy John (10-5, 1.98) in 173 innings worth of work is a formidable ace.  Joe Horlen and Jack Fisher both have sub 3.00 ERA’s with losing records.  A few extra runs here and there and these guys just might turn it around.  The pen is outstanding.  Wilbur Wood (13-12, 1.87) made 88 appearances and logged 159 innings.  You get the feeling that this team will play a lot of extra inning games.  Wood saved 16 games, but when his lefty knuckler isn’t working there is always veteran HOF’er Hoyt Wilhelm (4-4, 1.73, 12 saves).  Wilhem’s WHIP is an incredible 0.993.  What other team in the history of baseball had a lefty and righty knuckleball specialist in the pen ?

Intangibles:  This is a team built on intangibles and championship caliber pitching.  It will be interesting to see if they can eek out enough hits.   Interestingly they also played 9 home games on the road @ Milwaukee’s County Stadium.  A used car salesman in Milwaukee (Bud Selig) conjured up this idea that baseball could still be a viable product if marketed correctly.  The Chisox were a box office smash in Brew town drawing 264,297 fans for those games, which was almost 30,000 on average per date.

Ballpark: ”Old Comiskey Park” by 1968 was a dank cavern that drew flies.  If the Milwaukee experiment was a huge success then the Chicago status quo was a big failure.  The Pale Hose averaged just over 9,000 fans per game when playing on 35th street on the South side.  Playing in front of such sparse crowds in such a big building had to hurt the team morale, which was just another reason why I feel they underachieved.