These White Sox nuggets are in four bite-size pieces. Chew carefully.
The incredibly respected Baseball Prospectus released their PECOTA projections recently. Of all the projections that dare to predict wins and losses for major league baseball teams, PECOTA has the lowest average margin of error, and they're so good that you have pay for a BP subscription, leaving my cheap self with no choice but trudge through miles and miles of message boards to find the result.
This year, they pick the Sox to go 80-82
However, that horrible news is offset by the fact that PECOTA has undershot the Sox every year recently except 2007, when it was
just flat-out impossible to undershoot the Sox. The Sox beat their
PECOTA rankings by 9 games last season, 6 before that, 11 before that,
and a whopping 19 when they won it all in 2005.
It makes sense when you think about it. Annually, the Sox bet hard
against veteran regression, dumpster dive for reclamation projects with poor track records, and
make trades that render pre-season predictions irrelevant anyway. It's
as if they were built to defy typical methods of tracking team
progression, and if the computer they calculate PECOTA on ever became
self-aware, it'd just continue to diss the Sox out of spite....right
before it killed its owner.
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Scott McKinney at royalsreview.com (a site with a hilarious tagline) did something pretty spectacular the other day. He looked over all the players ever listed as a Baseball America top 100 prospects from 1990-2003, and calculated their success rate based on WAR per season over their cost-controlled years with the organization.
Using 1.5 WAR per season as the cutoff, he calculated that a whopping 70% of BA Top 100 prospects fail. He also concluded that position players are much better bets than pitchers, finding that 60% of BA Top 20 positions player succeed, but only 40% of top 20 pitchers do. Also, it appears that between 41-100 the success rate is pretty much a toss-up.
The idea that a lot of prospects don't pan out has a lot of support around 35th & Wentworth, but to put numbers to it really makes it jump out, and it becomes easier to see how an organization (like the Sox, persay) just take a broad-sweeping stance to cash out prospects when possible rather than take the risk. Makes it seems more calculated than impatient and short-sighted.
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With that nugget of statistical validity lent to the Sox approach, it's a good time to reiterate that the White Sox--in the words of the gone, but not forgotten J.J. Putz--are built to win now. And in this case, now does not just mean now, but it also means the opposite of later.
When the current teams ends the 2011 season, Buerhle, Thornton, Jackson, and Pierre will be the notable free agents. Jackson is a Boras client and is a great bet to price himself out of the South Side, Buehrle might retire, I cannot believe in earnest that Pierre will be back (34 year old speedster? Really?), and Thornton at the very least will want a raise.
Prime candidates for age-based regression in 2012 would include Konerko, Dunn, Rios, Pierzynski, and hell, even Mark Teahen will be 30 by then.
Players who will have plateaued in ability would include Peavy, Quentin, Pena, Crain, Ohman, probably Floyd, De Aza, and unless he figures out how to hit in the cold; Alexei Ramirez, who can't really get much better in the field.
That leaves the only players who can play a role in the Sox actually getting better as Sale, Beckham, Viciedo, maybe Danks, and whoever randomly emerges from the bottom-five farm system the team has....while factoring that there is no 1st round draft pick this year.
Now, it'd be foolish to think Kenny Williams would just do nothing in the face of this, but my point remains, the team that shows up in Arizona on Thursday is not built to start a dynasty, it's built to win one World Series, and it's the one that takes place this year.
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Which is why it frustrates me so that Spring Training hasn't started yet. Since when did immediate gratification take so long? The Sox are the 2nd to last team to start?!?! C'mon!!!! The Cubs started on Sunday!
I'm now, at this moment, reserving the right to sarcastically mutter, "really could have used those four days of practice" every time something bad happens all season long.
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Whole Lotta Links
J.J. is covering the hot leads heading into Spring Training, including the 3rd base battle, and the last spot in the bullpen.
Jim Margalus peers into White Sox history to uncover the best way to use Chris Sale as a reliever. (Hint: It's not as a 9th-inning specialist)
Colin at South Side Sox goes to the video tape and concludes that Edwin Jackson's mechanics have changed for the better.
Cheryl Norman at South Side Hit Girl isn't appreciative of this wait until Thursday BS either.
ChicagoNow has added a new White Sox blog, and linking to it, is a good way to not look like I'm made insecure about it
Follow White Sox Observer on Twitter @ JRFegan and on Facebook
I think Beckham will improve slightly. I think Alexei has peaked, as has Rios. I anticipate regression on the parts of almost all other position players, because frankly, this is a pretty old team. Konerko is very unlikely to repeat at the beginning of his final contract. Pierzynski is a headcase who is probably good for .260/15/65 (sub-Mendoza for 3 months, I-Rod levels for 3 months. But which months will they be?!?). TCQ is injury prone. Pierre is old, no matter what "I saved a year on the bench in LA" tales we hear. We are likely to get next to nothing from 3B, given the Teahan/Morel/Vizquel situation.
But the value of not having Mark Kotsay kill every rally in the universe is hard to quantify, because quantities rarely reach that high without the aid of advanced supercomputers.
So I think it's a fair bet that the Sox offense will improve a goodly amount by virtue of Adam Dunn not being Mark Kotsay, probably to the tune of a half run per game (752 runs to 810 or so?).
I think the key to the season is the looming nightmare/beautiful dream of the 5th starter and the misuse of Sale in the pen. This team could end up looking like a mid-decade Rangers team, or like a 2006 Sox team. Which will it be? Will our hearts survive the thrills, chills, and spills?
I was referring to 2012 with the regression talk, but it holds true this year too. And yes, Mark Kotsay was simply murdering us. Dunn can drop to 25 HRs, strike out 250 times, post a sub .800 OPS, and still be a 2-3 win improvement.
Mark was not good last year. Not good at all. We'll always have the go-ahead 9th inning RBI single in Texas, and the one time where he randomly eviscerated Detroit. We'll always have that.