How the White Sox Could Win the Pennant
It’s Bold Prediction season over on the fantasy side, and since it’s in the water, it’s starting to spread. And though this bold prediction will be a silly enterprise, it’s not an insane one. It’s a prediction like any other, a dart thrown at a board with some intention and thought behind it.
The projections on our site that say that the Chicago White Sox are a .500 team poised to finish tied for second, five or six games back of the Indians in the American League central? Those represent the meat of possible outcomes, the median result of throwing thousands of player projections into a battle with each other.
But the error inherent in projecting one player adds up with each additional player added, and the error bars on those projections are relatively large. One standard deviation is around five wins, meaning that a result that is ten wins above or below the projection is not out of the norm.
That’s better than any list of predictions would do, but it also offers hope (and despair) to anyone spending too much time on the projections page. Ten wins in one direction, and the Cubs are fighting for a wild card, and the Dodgers are sitting at home when the playoffs start. Ten wins in the other direction, and the Diamondbacks play in October, and the Mariners win their division.
A ten-win swing for the White Sox, and they’ve got 91 wins and are a virtual lock for the top eight records at the end of the regular season. The question is, how do they get those ten wins?
The easiest answer sits near the top of their rotation. While Chris Sale and Jose Quintana are better-known assets, veterans that are easier to project, Carlos Rodon is nothing of the sort. In fact, pitchers and young players are the toughest populations to project.
If you wanted to call Rodon’s two-win projection light, you could just point to Rodon’s draft position and pedigree, and the fact that even in a debut full of struggles, he was worth two wins last year. That might be enough.
Mechanically, though, there’s evidence his late-season command improvements had their root in a sustainable change. Rodon’s two best walk rates came in August in September, after he moved closer to third base on the rubber. Zack Greinke told me just this past weekend that he, like most pitchers (he felt) has better command to his glove side, and that his overall command improved dramatically when he moved towards first base on the rubber. Maybe the same will be true for the lefty.
An average walk rate, along with all of the strikeouts on the back of that velocity and good slider, would probably be worth around a win. Not even the Fans projection gives him that sort of command, but improvement is not linear. Especially if the command spreads to his changeup, which got above-average results in every way except balls and strikes. If he reins that pitch in, you could see Rodon doing something like Tyson Ross did last year when he put together four and a half wins.
A healthy season from Mat Latos could beat his projections, as well. Projection systems are agnostic to the reason behind the failure, they just see failure. Latos recently said the left knee problems he battled last year are behind him. He is only 28 and was worth nearly five wins in 2013. The Fans have him at 2.5 wins, so there’s another win. We’ve got three extra from the starting staff so far.
The rest of the team doesn’t feature the type of young talent that feels as volatile as Carlos Rodon. There’s only one position player that could be anywhere from a hero to a zero next year because of a lack of established track record — Avisail Garcia.
One of the worst twenty players in baseball last year, it’s easy to be down on Garcia. So far, he’s combined poor plate discipline with bad decisions on the basepaths and atrocious defense! There’s something to hang your hat on.
But now the team doesn’t depend on him. He’s projected to be replacement level, so *any* step forward pushes the team forward. And this is a player that scouts felt would grow into his power, now in a role where his defense won’t hurt. His batted ball exit velocity was three miles per hour higher in the second half, and his two best months for fly balls were August and September. What if he finds even the league average power than the Fans give him? There’s a win.
Jimmy Rollins is the opposite of young and volatile to project. But behind him is the best prospect in the White Sox organization. Tim Anderson is super athletic and made a huge stride with respect to making contact last year. If that sticks, even if he has no patience and little power, his defense and speed alone could be worth a win. It certainly speaks to depth at a tough position.
The bullpen is already the fifth-best bullpen going into the season based on projections. But projections smash everything towards the middle, and if the White Sox had received four wins from their bullpen last year, they would have been tenth-best. The fifth-best bullpen last year got five wins from their bullpen. We’re deep into the funky math, but we’ll give the team a win based on ordinal rankings instead of projected value.
We’ve gotten the White Sox a little over five extra wins, which is just about tied with the Indians… but the news that Adam LaRoche has retired, news that docks the White Sox nearly no production by projections, that news has netted the team an extra $13 million. Perhaps that’s enough to prod Mark Buehrle back to the team to improve their fifth starter situation.
Or maybe it’s enough to keep in the coffers for a mid-season acquisition should the team surprise early on. David Price was worth nearly three wins in the last two months, and Cole Hamels was worth half that. Being in a spot to pounce on some early luck is also worth something.
By the time the White Sox have traded for Andrew Cashner and called up Tim Anderson to star on the middle infield behind surging young stud Carlos Rodon, we’ll know this prediction wasn’t so crazy. If everything else falls into place, we’ll know I’ve got an altar to Jobu in my office. Because the White Sox will have gotten their ten wins, and will have surprised anyone who didn’t read this piece.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
As vulnerable as the Indians are to an injury to one of their top starting pitchers, the White Sox are even more so. This team has a lot of great talent but the 40 man roster is paper thin.
I would argue the White Sox offense and bullpen are better than the Indians, but it isn’t by much.
Also, Brantley’s history of injury is much scarier than that of the Sox position players.
The Indians rotation is deeper, so I think they could handle an injury to one of their arms with more ease, but the White Sox have a deeper overall roster outside of pitching staffs.
LaRoche needed to leave his kid home, that’s kind of a standard practice across any workforce. These guys are rich enough to NEVER have their families more than a mile from any stadium, I call BS on this “outrage”.
The White Sox are happy to have the extra cash to spend. Two good baseball teams in Chicago, what a concept!
“But the error inherent in projecting one player compounds with each additional player added, and the error bars on those projections are relatively large.”
I know what you are trying to say but this is backwards. The error gets smaller as you ad more players not larger. The total possible error surely goes up but with diversification of what you are projecting, the standard error would go way down.
The absolute error, in win total, goes up as you add independent players together. The relative error, in win%, goes down.
If you add up 25 coin-flip +/-1 errors, the total error is about sqrt(25) = 5 = 20% of the number. If you add up 100, it’s about sqrt(100) = 10 = 10%.
To be fair couldn’t this type of argument be made for 90% of the teams in baseball
How ________ team could win it all.
1. Stay Healthy
2. Receive good performance from bounce backs.
3. Have stellar players remain stellar.
I just read one of these about how the Reds could have done well by reloading instead of rebuilding.
In the Reds case “doing well” could be wild card or even missing the playoffs in that division. In terms of the situation the Sox are much better off. And of course they actually are trying to win, they aren’t just sitting on the couch playing the what-if game. They went out and got the pieces they needed.
Fair criticism, but I would say this: I wouldn’t do it for a team projected for fewer than 78 wins because they would need to be a real outlier on the team projection curve. Anyone projected for 80+ could be a contender if it all breaks right.
Is fairly recent acquisition of Austin Jackson reflected in the .500 projections? If so then this could be a moot point. If not, then Jackson should equal at least a win.
I think Jackson will be their best defensive player, which will provide better defensive production from both CF and wherever Eaton moves to because he will replace someone who is bad at defense (Cabrera or Garcia). He also gives the Sox some more interesting platoon/lineup options where you could move Melky Cabrera down in the lineup to provide more balance. Perhaps it doesn’t sound ideal to utilize Melky Cabrera as a middle of the order left handed power presence…but nothing about the Sox’ situation is very ideal and he was actually quite a bit better batting 3rd-5th last year compared to batting 2nd.
Jackson was worth .9 wins in his worst year and he’s essentially taking time away from LaRoche (-1.4 fWAR), Garcia (-1.9 fWAR for his career…).
Glad Eno got to try my newest batch of Sox Kool-Aid! It’s tasty!!! The team is still 1 move away, imo. Eno postulated a midseason move, I don’t think they’re waiting. Jay Bruce in RF and Melky at DH is another couple of wins / might be enough to grab a postseason birth. Sale is probably the most underrated player in MLB? No lefties can even dream of touching him.
It’s already too late to make a move if you want a postseason birth, it’s only 7 months from March to October. But if the move already happened in January, just make sure that whoever is the father of the postseason birth doesn’t want to change diapers in the clubhouse. Kenny Williams doesn’t allow that kind of nonsense around here.
I am glad that he has to try its latest series Sok Kool-Aid! It was delicious! Tim is always moving and storage, MMO. There is a predicted change in the middle stage, I do not think they expected. Jai Brus in RF and DH Melki several victories, perhaps enough to play the birth. Selling players is probably underestimated MLB? Leviiari can not even dream of touching it.
As a White Sox fan, I also think they are one move away from being a contender. Although that one move involves obtaining the services of Mike Trout.
But this doesn’t account for how the Sox acquire that midseason package to put them over the hump. If Tim Anderson and Carson Fulmer are off the table, the farm system is shot after trading away Thompson, Montas, and Johnson for Frazier. I don’t disagree that the White Sox could conceivably be a play-off team; all it takes is a Michael Brantley-setback and an arm injury to a Cleveland pitcher to put them in contention. But I doubt the Sox can cobble together a package to get a player worth 3 wins over an entire season, let alone the second half.
One way the White Sox could win the pennant would be if they were to win more games than the Royals, Tigers, Twins and Indians. If they can do that I like their odds of winning the pennant.
Seems pretty simple to me. That would be the best way for them to win the pennant.
The Central is such a wide open division this year. For awhile it was just a division for the others to beat up on. But every team in the ALC looks at least decent (you could say that about the entirety of the AL really). I think more than anything this year, injuries will dictate who makes the postseason.
But if I’m picking a team for the central I like the Tigers to bounce back and win in a close race. White Sox are my dark horse. But it looks mostly like a crapshoot and I wouldn’t put money down on any team.
Drake Larouche would be devastated if the White Sox won. Say it Ain’t so Dad. All the more reason for Larouche to reconsider his retirement