Shane Smith lasted into the second inning on Opening Day. His team gave up 10 walks and struck out 20 times in an 8-inning loss. The final score was 14-2. Thirteen days later, Smith was on a bus to Triple-A Charlotte. That is not a rough start. That is an organizational autopsy happening in real time.
The White Sox are 7-14, the worst record in baseball, and FOX Sports already has them grouped alongside the Rockies as the two teams on pace for historically bad 2026 seasons. Their team ERA in early April was 7.01. The next-closest team was at 6.04. There’s bad, and then there’s running a different experiment entirely.
What makes this more than a “bad team is bad” story is the number four. Win or lose from here, the White Sox are on pace for their fourth consecutive 100-loss season. They lost 101 in 2023, set the all-time MLB record with 121 in 2024, lost 102 more in 2025. Four straight 100-loss seasons would tie records held by the 1962-65 Mets, the 1961-64 Senators, and the 1909-12 Boston Braves — three franchises from eras with no revenue sharing, no draft slotting, and in some cases no farm systems. Chicago would be doing it with all of that infrastructure, plus four years of top picks already cashed in. That’s the part nobody should let slide.
Welcome to the rebuild: The 2026 St. Louis Cardinals season preview https://t.co/Tazznqilxk
— Derrick Goold (@dgoold) March 21, 2026
Meanwhile: the Cardinals are 12-8. Second place in the NL Central. Half a game off first.
Before you wave that away — Chaim Bloom explicitly told Cardinals fans that 2026 and 2027 were development years, not competitive ones. He traded Arenado. He traded Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras. He traded Brendan Donovan. The Cardinals have no position player over 28 on this roster except Lars Nootbaar. Every reasonable projection had them finishing last in the division. And yet here they are.
Jordan Walker is leading all of MLB with 8 home runs. JJ Wetherholt, who had played 17 career games before this month, is an NL Rookie of the Year candidate with a two-homer game against Cleveland already on his resume. Ivan Herrera doubled his walk rate. The team’s walk rate overall jumped from 7.9% in 2025 to 11.2% — not a fluke, a philosophy. They’re 5-0 in one-run games and 4-0 in extra innings. That’s a team that competes until the final out, not one that collapses when it gets close.
The White Sox also tore it down. They also bet on youth. They also asked fans to wait. The difference is the Cardinals’ teardown came with a plan that’s visibly working three weeks in, and Chicago’s teardown is now entering year four with a 7.01 ERA and their Opening Day starter already demoted. Chris Getz told reporters in spring training that the rebuild was “headed in the right direction.” That quote has not aged well.
There’s a version of a rebuild where you communicate clearly, trade veterans for prospects who immediately show up at the MLB level, and your declared non-competitive year looks like second place. Then there’s the White Sox version, where four years in, the Chicago Sun-Times is still writing about “that familiar losing feeling” like it’s describing the weather.
Cardinals fans spent last winter white-knuckling the Arenado trade. Some are still not over it. But if the question is whether this organization knows what it’s doing — Chicago is the answer. Not the answer you want. The answer you need.
