The White Sox are notorious. 20 straight losses put us over the edge of embarrassment.

It was another loss for the Chicago White Sox, but there was something special about Sunday's loss.

Sunday's loss was a classic 13-7 defeat to the Minnesota Twins, and it marked the Twins' 20th straight loss, a good number to give the franchise the national stage it deserves. No team has lost 20 in a row since the Baltimore Orioles lost 21 in a row in 1988.

In Chicago, the White Sox are expected to lose. That's what they do. But 20 straight losses? That's beyond embarrassing.

In Chicago, attention has been focused on the Red Sox trying to break the modern record of 120 straight losses set by the 1962 Mets, and now they are on the cusp of potentially breaking the Philadelphia Phillies' streak of 23 straight losses in 1961.

Bad name, thy name is the White Sox.

During Sunday's postgame show on NBC Sports Chicago, a beloved, painfully honest show, host Chuck Garfien recited one familiar insulting statistic after another.

“20 straight losses, 40 games down, 1-12 loss to Minnesota,” he said. “1-12 loss to Kansas City, I can talk about this all day…”

Then he was interrupted by Frank Thomas, of course the franchise's greatest player of all time and a regular host on the show. As a hitter, Thomas was a stickler for detail. On this show, he wanted accuracy.

“Sixty games with a winning percentage of under .500,” he said. “Under 60 games.”

That's when Garfien realized his mistake. The loss dropped the White Sox to 27-87, a huge blow.

“Sixty games,” he said. “I said 40 games under .500.”

With a bit of a theatrical flourish, he slammed the stack of papers onto the carpet.

“They're 60 games under .500!” Garfien yelled before sitting back in his chair.

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That's when Ozzie Guillen, Garfeen's daily co-host and manager of a World Series-winning team, brought up a statistic that had occurred to me recently: Even ignoring the Red Sox's franchise-record two-game losing streak, they still have the worst record in baseball.

There's nothing wrong with being the worst team in baseball for one season — someone has to do it, after all — but add a 14-game losing streak and a 20-game losing streak (and counting) to that and they're a candidate for the worst baseball team in modern history — something to laugh at forever.

The 1962 Mets were a new team with a certain quirkiness to them. They had the great Marv Throneberry and Casey Stengel. Jimmy Breslin's book “Can't Anyone Win This Game?” is a classic. Seven years later, the Amazing Mets were world champions.

But the White Sox have been around since 1901. Their franchise record of 106 losses should be broken by Labor Day. They've taken a big step back from a rebuild that was supposed to bring Chicago countless victory parades.

Two years after the Red Sox won 93 games and won the AL Central Division, it seemed like they had hit rock bottom. The previous year, the Red Sox lost 101 games, and Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf made a move no one saw coming by firing longtime front office staffers Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. Reinsdorf promised a quick turnaround under new general manager Chris Getz. No one believed Jerry at the time, because why would they? After all those years, the fans no longer had faith in him.

For some reason, well, financial reasons, the team kept Pedro Grifol. He's currently 88-188 as a manager. But he's been in a state of limbo all season, and attention quickly shifted to his position after the trade deadline. It almost seems cruel that Getz and Reinsdorf haven't fired Grifol yet. Maybe they're waiting for him to win a game so he can leave on a high.

“That means Pedro is 100 games under .500 win percentage since he took over,” Guillen said. “Wow, wow, wow.”

Ozzy is now having an existential crisis post-game show pic.twitter.com/5eCUlirBgI

— White Sox Talk (@NBCSWhiteSox) August 4, 2024

Guillen, who led the Red Sox to a World Series victory in 2005, said he's been feeling more angry and sad than usual lately and needs to see a psychologist. Why?

“I don't think I was such a bad coach, but they chose Pedro before me,” Guillen told the show to laughter.

After Tony La Russa resigned due to health issues in 2022, Guillen had the opportunity to interview for the vacant position he resigned from in 2011. Guillen had wanted to return to the position for years, but the previous administration of Williams and Hearn did not want him back and did not intend to hire him two years ago. I agree with them, but it's because the organization needs to move forward, not backward.

Guillen added, “When Rick Hahn called me and told me he didn't have a job, I swear to God he said, 'I've found the next Ozzie Guillen.'

While Hahn was keen to praise Grifol, Guillen, who went 678-617 (.524) in eight seasons, likely isn't too pleased with the comparison now, but he's sure to enjoy how terrible the Red Sox are without him.

Many fans are hoping that Guillen will immediately replace Grifol if the team fires him, but why would he want to go through all that trouble? If I was one of the coaches on Grifol's staff, I wouldn't want to take the job either. I wouldn't want to have to answer questions twice a day about this team this season.

Grifol may now be nearing the end of his tenure, but he has wasted his time doing what so many failed coaches and managers did under Reinsdorf: kowtowing to his superiors.

“I've said this before and I'll say it again,” Grifol said, according to the Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. “This gets taken out of context and somehow it gets turned over and over again depending on how people want to interpret it. Jerry is a winner, OK? He's a winner, hands down. He's a competitor. No, he's not satisfied. Who is satisfied?”

People have a weird definition of what makes them a winner, especially if they work for a company that is constantly losing.

The Bulls haven't won more than .500 games since former de facto champion Michael Jordan retired in 1998. The Red Sox have reached the postseason just seven times in Reinsdorf's 44 years as owner, winning a series in the 2005 playoffs and making the playoffs back-to-back only in 2020 and 2021.

But Grifol is hanging in the balance, speaking to an audience of one.

If the Red Sox get swept in Oakland this week, and potentially break the Phillies' 1961 record when they play the Cubs at home on Friday, the atmosphere will be somewhere between funereal and mayhem.

I don't see Grifol coming out on top on that one, how could he do that, how could he insult the intelligence of the fans by keeping him on the team?

This is a terrible situation for everyone, but while Grifol certainly bears some responsibility for making a bad situation even worse, it is not his sole fault.

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While Getz focused on building the farm system, he also tried to add defensive prowess to last year's sloppy defense and make the major league players more accessible, but publicly failed. The perennially injured core hitters surprisingly got hurt again early in the season (Yoan Moncada only played in 11 games but was in the top 10 on the team in bWAR), and the season went off track at 3-22. At least the starting pitching was stable, and Getz and his staff bolstered the team's pitching prospects.

All of this is part of the benefit of losing. It gives the front office room to improve the organization, sometimes pretty quickly. That was the plan after the 2016 season, and it worked, but it didn't. But the Getz move at the first trade deadline was widely criticized, and new baseball rules mean the Red Sox will only have the 10th pick in next year's draft.

Money will be an issue: The Red Sox are seeing attendance decline again, the team's highlight television broadcast is now considered the worst in baseball, the team's contract with NBC Sports Chicago is up and a new RSN (affiliated with the Bulls and Blackhawks) is set to debut this fall.

It's going to be a long road to redeeming itself. At least the pre- and post-game TV programs were as honest and critical as ever on Sunday. That, along with campfire milkshakes and minor league pitching, are the franchise's only strengths.

The White Sox have lost and lost and practiced so much that they may now be the greatest team of all time.

(Photo of Nicky Lopez reacting to Sunday's loss: David Berding/Getty Images)