Chicago White Sox defy the odds as worst baseball bet ever - ESPN

Only one baseball team has lost more games in a season than the 2024 Chicago White Sox: the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. The Spiders lost a record 134 games that season, with a minus-732 run differential, and were disbanded the following year.

The White Sox aren't quite in the Spiders' class of futility — they entered the final week of the regular season at 36-120 with a minus-320 run differential and are expected to field a team again next season — but to bettors and bookmakers, the ChiSox are in a class of their own and will go down as either the worst team to bet on or the best team to bet against over a season in recent memory.

Mathematically eliminated from the postseason in mid-August and realistically long before then, fans gave up on the White Sox a while ago. Players and coaches are trying to laugh their way through the end of a dismal campaign. Bookmakers are ready for it to be over, too, because attracting a bet on the White Sox has been challenging. There's been plenty of action on their opponents, though.

«It's impossible,» veteran bookmaker Craig Mucklow of Caesars Sportsbook laments. «People look to oppose the White Sox every day.»

It's been a good strategy.

Betting on baseball traditionally is based on the money line, the odds to win a game straight up. Websites like Covers.com track how much a bettor would be up or down if they bet $100 on a team in every game. If an unlucky bettor put $100 on the White Sox in every game this season, they'd be down approximately $6,100. A 60-unit loss is extraordinary and easily the worst season on the money line in over two decades. According to Covers, the 2018 Baltimore Orioles are the only other team to finish a season down more than $5,000 in the past 20 years.

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