Padres 2, White Sox 1 (11 innings): 101 Losses

The San Diego Padres have swept the Chicago White Sox after an extra-inning win today, 2-1, ending a miserable and record-breaking season. This loss was the team’s 101st of the season, to go along with a whopping 61 wins in their “window of contention.” Underperforming, bad managing, no energy, you name it. It’s happened this season. This was the franchise’s sixth-worst team in HISTORY at 61-101.

As for the actual game today, nothing too exciting happened, but I guess we should go over it. New pickup José Ureña went up against Pedro Avila, and both of them went pretty deep for a Game 162. We saw brief appearances from Padres stars Fernando Tatís Jr. and Juan Soto in the lineup, but after a few innings the team started to empty its bench. Our bench was already emptied, so this was looking to be a low-scoring game.

Avila went five innings with three hits and no runs, and Ureña went six innings with four hits and no runs, along with three strikeouts.

Evan as both teams began to empty out their bullpens, but still no scoring. I nearly fell asleep — in the stands. Garrett Crochet was the most exciting arm to watch, as he looked good, going an inning with two strikeouts. Pedro Grifol’s favorite person (Bryan Shaw) had a clean inning, pitching in his FIFTH straight game.

With no scoring late, the scoreless game moved to extra innings, and with the newer rules, someone was bound to actually score at some point. Deivi Garcia started the top of the 10th for the South Siders, if you even know who that is; I’ve lost track. A ground out moved the Manfred Man to third, and Ha-Seong Kim sacrifice fly brought him in for a 1-0 Padres lead. A run! That would be all they get in the inning, and Rich Hill would take over in what might be his final career appearance (??) ... I don’t know, that guy is eternal, honestly.

Anyway, Hill got a rude awakening as Zach Remillard (the 2-spot hitter) hit a single to right to tie the game, 1-1.

Gavin Sheets singled with one out to put runners on first and second, but Yasmani Grandal decided to ground into a double play instead of ending the game with one final (and rare) thrill for the home fans. Everything about this game is so 2023 White Sox coded!

Declan Cronin, welcome to the mound for the top of the 11th. Jurickson Profar connected on the first pitch with a single to center to score the ghost runner from second and retake the lead, 2-1. With Hill still on the mound for the bottom of the 11th, Chicago wasn’t able to get anything done, as they went down 1-2-3.

Mind you, Tim Anderson, Eloy Jiménez, Yoán Moncada, and Andrew Benintendi all sat on the bench for the duration of the game. Not even an effort to try and win for the fans who showed up and were fairly enthusiastic on Fan Appreciation Day. This entire season has felt like a big insult to the fans from this organization.

I am disappointed, to say the least. For a lot of reasons. That can be a whole other story, which I will likely write at some point, but for now I will try to keep this a civil recap. We all feel the same about this organization.

With that being said, thank you to everyone who has read my rants every single Sunday this season. I hope for the sake of each and every one of us we can have a better season next year, because we deserve it. I am grateful that I got to write these stories for another year, which makes things a little more tolerable. At least we can enjoy some postseason baseball stress-free. Rooting for the Marlins and our very own Jake Burger, and the Baltimore Orioles because THAT is how you do a rebuild. Signing off on the White Sox recaps for now.