Cubs, White Sox Set Chicago City Loss Record

This post is... well, kind of a placeholder until we find out what's going to happen with Dale Sveum and his staff, presumably later Monday. I thought I'd give all of you something to talk about while we're waiting.

The Cubs and White Sox combined for 195 losses this season; that's the most in Chicago baseball history, breaking the previous mark of 191 set in 1948. (Granted that the previous record was set in a 154-game season, and it might have been higher if there had been more games played.)

You might think that's the most by any one city ... and you'd be way, way wrong. We think of the two-team cities/markets as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area, but before the great migration of teams in the 1950s, Boston, St. Louis and Philadelphia also had two major-league teams... and sometimes, very bad teams. In fact, 18 other city/team combinations besides this year's Cubs and White Sox have lost 195 games or more in a single season, most of them during the time of the 154-game schedule.

Please note: the Dodgers played in Brooklyn, part of New York City, until 1957, and the Yankees were known as the "Highlanders" until 1912. I'm also intentionally limiting this to two teams per city; New York had three teams through 1957 and obviously would have had more total losses than this among the three clubs in many years.

Here's a complete list.

Created with the HTML Table Generator

So, it's bad here in Chicago, baseball-wise, in 2013. The table above shows, in the old words of Jack Brickhouse, "It sure could have been worse!"

And, hopefully, it starts getting better next year.