Chicago White Sox: Five games that ruined the 2022 season

I am going to end the year by taking a look back at five games that cost the Chicago White Sox a chance at the playoffs in 2022.

Hopefully, this is the last time I write about the 2022 Chicago White Sox and my next Sox piece is forward-looking. That said, I still can’t quite let 2022 go.

So I had to take a look back one more time. As disappointing as the Chicago White Sox were in 2022, they were still in the playoff race until near the end of the season.

Then Cleveland came into Chicago and swept them right out of the race. Still, it was losses from earlier in the season that helped put the Sox in such a bad position.

The Chicago White Sox had a tough year and there were some bad moments.

Losses like the one in which Adam Engel dropped a fly ball in Baltimore. Or perhaps a walk-off loss to Minnesota early in the year. Maybe even a weird loss on Opening Day in Detroit set the tone for the season. Does a 1-2 intentional walk show up on this list? What about the Josh Naylor game?

There’s a theme here – maddening losses in which the White Sox either beat themselves or were unable to win a close game against a beatable team. Or perhaps the Sox fell short against a playoff-bound team.

There were some big wins in 2022, too – like the first two against Houston at home in September. But there were many more losses that seemed significant. So many that I had to think hard about how to pare it down to just five.

Hopefully, a year from now, I will be writing about the five biggest regular season wins a playoff-bound Sox team had. But for now, let’s end the year wallowing in pain and misery just one more time. Games are listed in chronological order: