The Mets beat the White Sox 5-3 on Saturday, lowering the White Sox winning percentage on the season to .226. That is below the .250 winning percentage of the 1962 Mets, the modern record for mediocrity. Time to update the probability of Chicago finishing with no more than 40 wins.

They need to go no better than 9-16 the rest of the way to finish with a worse winning percentage than the Mets. The lowest winning percentage that doesn’t include 30 wins in the 95 percent confidence interval for 137 games is .298. The probability of no more than 9 wins at that level is 0.817. The White Sox are now very close to the replacement winning percentage of .296. The probability at that level comes out at 0.823. The probabilities now indicate that if the White Sox played 100 seasons from this point on, they would finish with 40 wins or 82 times.

If you are looking for a more optimistic view, the White Sox are -7 wins by the Pythagorean Won-Loss percentage. That would put their 95 percentage confidence interval probability at .353, which reduces their probability of finishing with no more than 40 wins to 0.62, or worse than even. All indicators now point the the White Sox finishing with no more than 40 wins! My best guess right now would be a 39-123 finish.