Longtime Chicago White Sox announcer Hawk Harrelson used to have a saying along the lines of “You win 60 games, you lose 60 games, it’s what you do with the other 42 that matters.” The 2024 White Sox proved that saying wrong — emphatically. And the 2025 White Sox are expected to again test its accuracy.
The White Sox are coming off one of the worst seasons in MLB history, finishing 41-121 and racking up the most losses in American League history. Only the 20-134 1899 Cleveland Spiders lost more games, and just four teams since 1900 had worse winning percentages. All of those teams played more than 60 years ago.
What will the White Sox do for an encore? Well, the odds are saying it won’t get much better.
On BetMGM, the White Sox’s win total line is at 49.5 — the lowest in the league by 11 games. According to SportsOddsHistory.com, it’s the lowest in the recorded history of sports betting, which, thankfully for the White Sox, only goes back to 1990. The previous low was the Oakland A’s last year at 57.5 wins. The A’s blew past that with 69 wins. Will the 2025 White Sox do the same? Even if they come close, 49 wins would be a significant improvement over 41, which is an extremely depressing sentence for White Sox fans.
This offseason, the White Sox already traded their best pitcher, Garrett Crochet, to Boston for four prospects, none of which have any MLB experience yet. The White Sox were only favored eight times in 2024, and Crochet was the starter for six of those games. With Crochet gone, it paints a bleak picture for 2025.
Given the dim outlook, there is some fun to be had by exploring the insane improbability of a White Sox title in 2025 and seeing just how high you can push the odds. The White Sox, of course, have the longest odds to win the World Series at +50000. The Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins share those odds, which is the sportsbook version of saying it’s not happening, but we’re not going to offer longer odds than this.
If you want even longer odds, you can go to the exact outcome offering for the World Series. This is where the odds get so long that it takes some effort to count out all the zeroes in the odds.
Let’s start with the White Sox beating the crosstown Cubs in the World Series, replicating the 1906 World Series. That would make Chicago implode, but also would pay out +500000 odds. We can do better than that, though. The Cubs are at least expected to be a playoff contender in 2025 (with -140 odds to make the playoffs).
You can get +1000000 on the White Sox to beat a number of teams expected to be in the bottom half of the National League: Arizona, Cincinnati, Colorado, Miami, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington. That means a $100 bet would pay out $1 million. Cue Dr. Evil.
This also feels like the sportsbooks are stopping at +1000000 because they can’t physically fit more zeroes on the screen. Arizona has +2000 odds to win the NL, while the Marlins and Rockies are +25000 to make the World Series, but there’s no extra value from using the worst teams to make the odds longer.
Even if White Sox fans feel like Lloyd Christmas and are interested in chasing those exceptionally long odds, the probability of a good season is … not good. As such, they’d probably do well to invest their money in something more likely to deliver value during the 2025 season. Like a blindfold.
(Photo of Andrew Vaughn: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
