Michael Kopech’s fastball sits in the upper 90s and has reportedly been clocked at 105 mph. With that kind of electricity, he has one of the highest upsides of any pitching prospect in the game. Part of the package Chicago received from Boston in the Chris Sale deal, he’s a big part of the White Sox’ future.

He obviously needs to stay healthy, and continue to grow his game, for that to come to fruition. There’s risk in both areas. Kopech is just 20 years old, and thanks in part to a pair of off-the-field snafus, he’s thrown only 134.2 innings since being drafted 33rd overall out of Mount Pleasant (Texas) High School in 2014. He’s been a dynamo in that smallish sample, fanning 11.5 batters and allowing 6.2 hits per nine innings of work.

Kopech talked about his ongoing development, including his burgeoning velocity, late last week.

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Kopech on his delivery and glove-side fastballs: “[Pitching coach Don Cooper] said he likes what I do mechanically, and a lot of that is from what I worked on with the Red Sox, but a few things have been tweaked. I’m trying to stay back over my back leg longer, and stay tall. Something that’s been really important for me is… not necessarily trying to stay in line toward the plate, but to have my momentum carried in the right direction. I’ve been a guy who throws across his body my whole career, but as long as I can keep my momentum going the right way, I feel like that’s more important than making a line.

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As of this moment, the writers at FanGraphs responsible for curating this site’s depth charts have allocated some type of playing time to 586 position players across the league’s 30 teams, from Freddie Freeman, Miguel Sano, and Carlos Santana at 665 plate appearances each down to Victor Caratini and Pedro Severino at just six a piece.

Of the 586 players who appear on those depth charts, 264 have received a sufficient quantity of fan ballots to earn a published projection. The fan assessments tend almost uniformly to skew optimistic. In the case of the 264 aforementioned players, for instance, the depth-chart projections (a combination of Steamer and ZiPS) call for an average of 2.1 WAR per every 600 plate appearances. The fans, meanwhile, call for 2.7 WAR per 600 plate appearances. That’s roughly a half-win difference for every player prorated to a full season.

Even though optimism is generally the rule in these matters, it comes in degrees. Nearly 20 players, for instance, receive a prorated fan projection that’s precisely a half-win better than the corresponding depth-chart projection. Over 170 players — i.e. about 65% of the entire sample — earn a fan-based projection that’s between 0.0 to 1.0 wins better than the figure produced by the the combination of Steamer and ZiPS.

The purpose of this brief post, however, is to consider briefly the players about whom the crowd is most optimistic. To identify that group, I prorated both the fan and depth-chart projections to 600 plate appearances and subtracted the latter result from the former. Here are the players who receive the top fan projections relative to their depth-chart numbers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one finds that most of the players here — all of them, really, with the exception of Luis Valbuena — have little major-league experience. That makes sense on two accounts. First, it’s logical that the projection systems would be conservative with this population. All things being equal, a player who lacks past success in the majors is unlikely to produce future success in the majors. On the other hand, if there’s a type of player about whom the public might possess information for which the numbers don’t account, it’s a prospect.

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To preview MLB spring training, Tyler Kepner examined the competitive “window” status — that is, the realistic possibility for contention — of all 30 major-league clubs earlier this month for the New York Times. Kepner employed four logical window designations: closed, open, closing and opening.

I think reasonable people can mostly agree that the Cubs’ window of contention is open, and the White Sox’ window is closed. The Royals’ is perhaps closing, and the Braves’ is opening (if not in 2017, then soon). While we will not agree on every status, it’s an interesting exercise.

Windows of contention are an interesting concept, particularly in an era of two Wild Cards in each league. How do teams balance the future and present? How do clubs play a so-so hand knowing the unpredictability of the game? Few teams are able to sustain long windows of contention. The Braves of the 1990s and early 2000s and the Cardinals of the 21st century have done it as well as any team in the in the Wild Card era.

It’s also easier to operate if you suspect your window is either completely open or closed. If you’re the Cubs and Indians last deadline, you’re willing to trade significant young assets for impact relief help. If you suspect your window is closed, like the White Sox, you’re willing to deal assets like Chris Sale and Adam Eaton. There’s a clarity in decision-making, in creating a strategy and plan to implement.

Said Texas Rangers GM Jon Daniels to FanGraphs’ David Laurila on charting a course:

“Something our management team has talked about a lot is the mistake we made our first year here, in 2006. We were caught in the middle. We convinced ourselves that if A, B, and C went right, we had a chance to win, and I think you can make the case that, for any team, it’s not a sustainable strategy.”

Being caught in the middle is the most difficult position for a club. Consider, for instance, a team with some relatively young stars at the major-league level. The front office thought this core of players would form the foundation of a contending team, but it’s not surrounded with the requisite depth, prospects or resources to realistically contend and sustain. The White Sox entered the season in that position. In the meantime, they’ve chosen a course. The Angels, Diamondbacks, Marlins, and Twins could all face difficult decisions in choosing paths in the not-too-distant future.

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In baseball, luck is a tricky concept. In some cases, it’s used to describe an event that’s within the normal distribution of outcomes but far from the mean. In other cases, what we call luck might actually be the first signs of an outlying skill for which we simply lack a sufficiently large sample to identify.

We’ve developed a new understanding on one kind of luck in recent years — namely, the sort that occurs with a batted ball. With Statcast data, we can look at the shape and size of a ball in play and try to decide what the batter “deserved” from that sort of ball in play. Then we compare it to actual outcomes. The difference between the observed and expected outcome is luck.

What if you want to look at a luck on a specific pitch type, though? How would you do it? You could look at the results on the pitch and basically use the Statcast-type process from the other side of the ball. What sorts of balls in play did that pitch produce, and what sort of results should those balls in play have produced? The problem with that approach is that you’re slicing a pitcher’s repertoire into small samples when you start talking about balls in play off a specific pitch. Even David Price, for example — who led the majors in innings last year — allowed fewer than 300 balls in play on his most frequently thrown pitch, the fastball. Secondary pitches are, almost by definition, thrown much less often. Variance isn’t the exception in such cases, but the rule.

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There are competing theories on how, assuming an imperfect supply both of resources and assets, to best build a team. For instance, construct a roster with stars and scrubs or pursue a more balanced approach? Chicago White Sox general manager Rich Hahn — and, I believe, most general managers — are entrenched in the balanced-approach camp.

Hahn has generally been praised this offseason as he’s embarked on a rebuild project, and deservedly so. He added the game’s No. 2 overall prospect according to Baseball America and MLB.com, in Yoan Moncada and three potential impact arms in Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech and Reynaldo Lopez in trades that sent Chris Sale to the Red Sox and Adam Eaton to the Nationals.

In making those deals, Hahn traded two players on team-friendly deals, in their primes, who accounted for nearly 40% of the team’s total WAR production last season. Hahn hopes that, in return, the trades yield the core of a team that enjoys a greater breadth of talent. Said Hahn recently to MLB.com:

“The last few years we’ve had a very top-heavy roster and the reason we haven’t won had nothing to do with the quality players at the top end of that roster,” Hahn said. “When the time comes that we are in a position to contend again, we are going to be approaching that with ideally a much deeper, more thoroughly balanced roster than what we had. It had to do with what was going on with not just one through 25, but one through 35 or 40. So now as we approach this, we have to build that organizational quality depth, not just insurance policies, but real high-caliber depth.”

The end is perhaps not quite yet here for the stars-and-scubs approach. The Angels have Mike Trout and everybody else and hope to contend with that arrangement. The Marlins have Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich but one of the game’s thinnest farm systems.

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Yesterday, we identified Jeremy Jeffress as a pitcher who benefited greatly from dropping his arm slot, adding more sink and fade to his two-seamer. The idea was that his four-seamer was straight and possessed below-average spin, so moving from that pitch to a sinker, while dropping the slot, gave him a better foundational fastball. There’s a roadmap there. Let’s follow it.

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Last week, Ben Lindbergh authored an excellent piece regarding baseball’s “ever expiring ideas” for The Ringer. FanGraphs editor Dave Cameron described the trend as a “devaluation of new ideas.” But I think many can agree on one area of the game that features considerable room for growth, one many clubs are pursuing: injury prevention.

Even as teams employ modern treatments, the total of days missed due to injury continues to increase. MLB players spent 36,893 days on the disabled list last year, according Jeff Zimmerman’s excellent research, which broke the previous high of the 15-year study by 21%. There are many culprits cited to explain this trend, from the rise from youth sports specialization to the toll of increased velocity on the elbows and shoulders of pitchers. Will Carroll, one of the few who have tried to measure injury loss and cost, estimated the sport spent $1.1 billion alone on disabled pitchers from 2008 to -12. Despite advances in wearable technology, despite more focus on injury prevention and strength and training programs, injuries keep increasing.

To better understand how the industry might improve its ability in keeping players healthy and on the field, I spoke to the athletic trainer who’s had more success than anyone in keeping players off the disabled list in the 21st century.

Last week, I talked with Herm Schneider as he made his way to O’Hare airport in Chicago to catch a flight to Arizona to begin his 38th season as the head athletic trainer of the White Sox. The 64-year-old is the sport’s longest tenured head athletic trainer. And for good reason: according to Zimmerman’s data, he’s been the most effective.

Over the last 15 years, the White Sox have lost the fewest days to the disabled list of any major-league team – and it’s not close. While DL data is hardly a perfect measure of time lost to injuries, as the disabled list is also employed by clubs as a roster-manipulation tool, the White Sox have averaged just over 500 DL days per season since 2001, according to Zimmerman’s research. Only three other teams have averaged fewer than 775 days lost to injury. The White Sox’ domination is illustrated clearly by this chart from Zimmerman’s piece:

The White Sox continue to remain one of the healthier teams in recent years, as well. Over the last five seasons, the White Sox have recorded the second fewest DL days, and fourth fewest over the last three seasons.

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Right-handed reliever David Robertson is earning $12 million per year on a rebuilding Chicago White Sox team that has little need for a high-priced closer. The Washington Nationals, meanwhile, might need a closer if they aren’t comfortable with internal options who, whatever their qualifications, lack proven closer experience. As a result, it isn’t surprising to find that the two teams have been discussing a trade. Robertson is owed $25 million over the next two years, a relatively reasonable fee given the cost of closers on the free-agent market. If the White Sox are looking to dump salary, Robertson might make sense for multiple teams, but if the Sox want prospects back, both Chicago and Robertson’s suitors might be better off waiting until July, even if the price for relievers is higher at that time.

From 2011 to -15, Robertson was one of the very best relievers in baseball. During that time, he averaged nearly two wins above replacement per season. The only relievers with a higher total WAR during that time frame were Aroldis Chapman, Greg Holland, Kenley Jansen, and Craig Kimbrel. That 2015 campaign, Robertson’s first with the White Sox, was also arguably the best of his career. He struck out 34% of batters while walking just 5%. A very low 66% left-on-base percentage gave him just a 3.41 ERA (compared to his 2.52 FIP), but the results were fine nonetheless. Entering the 2016 season, Robertson was again set to be one of the very best relievers in the game, earning a 1.9-WAR projection on our Depth Charts projection. The season didn’t go as well as expected.

Robertson put together a solid season, recording a good 3.58 FIP (82 FIP-) and a similar 3.47 ERA (82 ERA-). The result: a 1.0-WAR season, making him one of just a dozen full-time closers to hit the one-win mark last year. The results were good, but they represented a decline from his elite numbers the five years prior to 2016. His strikeout rate dropped from 34% to 28%; his walk rate more than doubled, up to 12%, after having remained below 9% since the 2011 season. Last season might be an outlier. It’s possible that Robertson return to form this year. It could be a new normal for Robertson going forward, though — or, worse, it could represent a decline that could continue into this season. The problem is that nobody really knows.

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There are different ways to turn a team around. That’s probably an obvious thing to say, but it’s true. Another thing that’s obvious and true: teams are made of humans. Because of that, no turnaround is entirely uniform in nature.

Even so, a team might emphasize certain traits when attempting to rebuild or improve. On-base skills, power, etc. Some of those turnarounds are easy to follow; others, less so.

Given the relatively short history of defensive metrics, the turnaround of team defense hasn’t been thoroughly chronicled, and yet teams have certainly made it a priority. Just last year, the Astros and Indians exhibited improvements in the field in a way rarely matched. Looking further back, it’s possible to find other teams that have accomplished the same feat. The question, though: how did they it? Maybe it’s possible to use past successes as a road map for current teams! So, let’s find the next Indians and Astros.

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Largely overlooked amidst the hoopla surrounding last weekend’s Super Bowl, DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the National Football League Players Association, weighed in on an obscure bill currently working its way through the Illinois state legislature. If enacted into law, the proposed legislation — presently dubbed Illinois Senate Bill 12 — would amend the state’s workers’ compensation laws to decrease the benefits provided to professional athletes who sustain career-ending injuries on the playing field.

This possibility led Smith to threaten that, if Senate Bill 12 were to be signed into law, the NFLPA would officially encourage players to steer clear of signing with the Chicago Bears. As Smith stated over the weekend, “If you’re a free-agent player and you have an opportunity to go play somewhere else… isn’t a smarter financial decision to go to a team where a bill like this hasn’t passed?”

The fact that the NFLPA would take such a public stance against the proposed Illinois legislation raises the question of what potential impact Senate Bill 12 would have on Major League Baseball players, and, more generally, how workers’ compensation laws affect MLB in the first place.

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