2023 ZiPS Projections: Chicago White Sox

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and today’s team is the Chicago White Sox.

Batters

Imagine you’ve just built your dream home. You had an architect come up with a custom design that you absolutely loved. You hand selected the building materials, from the hardwood floors to the Spanish tiles in the roof. You’re ready to move into your endgame house! But wait, almost forgot, you have to furnish the house too, huh? OK, let’s head down to Crazy Joe’s Discount Furniture and find four dining room chairs without cigarette burns. The maroon couch behind the abandoned Caldor next to the bowling alley that still uses a sign from 1973 looks nice. I’m sure the smell will come out of that Craigslist mattress, and it’s not like you need all of the springs.

The White Sox did so many things well while building up the team, but they face-planted as soon as it was time to compete. Once the fun began, the discipline in the team’s decision-making disappeared. Want the 1980s manager for no reason? Sure! Need to solve the problem of two of your best young bats both essentially being designated hitters? Split the difference and have neither of them be the DH! Surely all that money you were going to use to sign Manny Machado will go towards other budgetary needs? Nope? Well, you’ve got Leury Garcia.

There’s so much talent here, including half a dozen or so still-youngish players who should be part of the organization over the long haul. But when the Sox reached for the top, it’s almost like upper management decided that hanging out at Base Camp was pretty sweet, leaving no need to head for the summit. Many of the elements of an excellent offense are on the roster; having Luis Robert, Yasmani Grandal, Eloy Jiménez, Tim Anderson, and Andrew Vaughn is a great start, but it’s not a finish. Even with injury a concern for the majority of that list, the team took a lackadaisical approach to dealing with its holes, either leaving them unaddressed or slapping in whoever could be acquired inexpensively. Just like last year, the Sox need to address second base, DH, and an outfield position at a bare minimum. This time around, it’s even more urgent; the projections of most of the principals anticipate worse performance in less playing time than before the 2022 season. Also of import is that because of changes in scheduling, the Sox will almost certainly face tougher opposition in the aggregate in 2023.

Some may be disappointed by the Oscar Colas projection, but the fact remains that he’s incredibly risky right now, a player with one professional season in the United States and at levels for which he was not young. In addition, offense exploded in most of the minor leagues in 2022, so there’s more air to take out of the statistics than usual. Chicago should be risk-averse when it comes to starters.

The Sox have given little indication that they plan to be aggressive this offseason, which means they may have already passed the high-water mark for this core. There just aren’t a lot of reinforcements on the farm, and players like Bryan Ramos and Colson Montgomery may come too late.

Pitchers

As with the offense, there is a lot to like on the pitching staff, but a frightening fragility once you get past the big names. If Dylan Cease, Lance Lynn, Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech, and Mike Clevinger all start 30 games, everything in the rotation ought to look hunky-dory. But if there’s an injury or two, things get dark — and I mean in the Darren Aronofsky sense — very quickly. This roster couldn’t have survived even a small percentage of the injuries the Dodgers managed to weather in 2022. On the plus side, ZiPS sees a good bounce-back campaign for Giolito, and anticipates that Cease will remain a top-15 starting pitcher. On the other hand, Clevinger was fairly awful in 2022; I wish they had shown a little more ambition there.

The one thing the White Sox have done well is build an excellent bullpen, even with the Craig Kimbrel acquisition in 2021 not meeting their expectations. The final projections aren’t in, but it looks like they’ll be projected to have at least a top-three relief corps per ZiPS, if not the best in baseball. You can go eight or nine deep on the depth chart before you hit a reliever who I’d really be frightened to see outside of a low-leverage situation. My hope here is that the Sox spend the winter neglecting the bullpen the way they did with the rest of the roster in 2021; if they’re determined to only spend a small amount of money, there are far bigger needs than another reliever.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2023 due to injury, and players who were released in 2022. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Death Dixieland Bubblegum Ska-Funk band, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.22, above 2022’s level of offense but lower than other years. Pitchers who appear to have a fairly definite change in the majors from start-to-relief or vice-versa from these projections will receive reconfigured updates in the spring.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.