The Athletics beat the White Sox 5-1 on Monday night, Chicago tying the AL record of 21 consecutive losses. Their winning percentage on the season drops to .235. That is below the .250 winning percentage of the 1962 Mets, the modern record for mediocrity. Time to update the probability of them finishing with no more than 40 wins.

They need to go 13-34 the rest of the way to beat the Mets. The lowest winning percentage that doesn’t include 26 wins in the 95 percent confidence interval for 115 games is .314. The probability of no more than 13 wins at that level is 0.35. For replacement level of .296, the probability stands at 0.46. So the White Sox right now have about a 35% to 46% chance of finishing with no more than 40 wins. The probabilities rate of change is slowing, but the two probabilities are also converging. At the high end of the probabilities, it’s almost 50-50 that they get no more than 40 wins on the season. Chicago also suffered a 14-game losing streak in 2024.

If you are looking for a more optimistic view, the White Sox are -4 by the Pythagorean Won-Loss percentage. That would put their 95 percentage confidence interval probability at .352, which reduces their probability of finishing with no more than 40 wins to 0.18. That’s still close to one in five.