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The people sitting around you have some right to expect you did everything possible to not be a risk to them. If I vaccinate...wear a mask...and practice safe distancing I have done everything in my power to protect you. If you are still afraid to go to the game...stay home. Depression is a life-threatening disease as well. We really need to let adults make their own choices as long as they don't interfere with the rights of others.

dear second worst poster on the site Yea it would be cool to have a domestic abuser on the team. Very cool. sincerely, the worst poster on the site

Here's the thing. I know everyone is hung up on depth, but let's not pretend that the Sox record last year was all based on everyone being healthy and having career years. The Sox rotation past Giolito and Dallas, was god awful. Nine starting pitchers in 60 games isn't something where the Sox were going with Plan A most nights, and they still found a way to win almost 60% of their games. They saw complete failures out of 3 offensive positions in 3B, DH, and RF, and yet were still one of the top offensive teams in all of baseball. The pen also went through a ton of pitchers, and still has a ton of depth both in top notch relieving prospects, as well as potential failed starters would could be added out there. In no way can you argue that the Sox had an ideal year last year. There is still a ton of room for growth, plus the have some margin for error. Granted, this could have been the off-season where they addressed adding to depth, but they didn't. But 83 wins? As a median result? I still can't see it. The computers don't like one off's, and this Sox team is full of those. They also have trouble projecting kids with no history into spots, and we are loaded with those as well.

Where in the hell do you see that she was anti-anthem?

Yes, I'm sure McKay could fix Eloy's defense in a couple weeks. It's just that easy to do.

I can't like this post enough. Your last point, that I bolded, is the most important to me. No one is saying the White Sox can't be good; they could be very good! In fact, projection models think so too, as their win outcomes range from 83 up to 105, but what all fans should be tired of is needing everything to go right to reach the potential the front office has sold for years. The job of the front office was to take this very talented core that is going to have some ups and downs, and give them much more likely production in pair with it. If you add two starters (even in the 8-10 million dollar range) and a real RF'er this off-season, you're looking at a team whose mean win total is now at 88-89ish, with all that youth and "variance." And with the idea that Giolito and Anderson are legitimately undervalued due to data/input issues when trying to evaluate them vs the avg. A common misconception of the "models don't project young players" isn't that they don't or can't, it's that a lot of young players fail and that's accounted for. We, as fans, may not believe OUR players will fail, but the reality is development comes in funky patterns and the sum of those patterns results in the outputs we see. So it's not that they don't project young players well, it's that there's more variance in those projections and as fans we're less likely to see that downside. What is exhausting is the front office not supporting the risk of those young players with proven vets; while also not requiring us to give up assets. There's a guy in this thread saying you HAVE to give Zack Collins and Dylan Cease a chance to play all the time. Why? The Dodgers are literally telling Gonsolin and May to take a seat and move to the bullpen until your number is called because depth is imperative and having proven assets when competing for a title increases your chances of competing for that title. You want to give Vaughn a shot because of your internal scouting, fine whatever but you could have given him a look/shot while also signing a proven MLB hitter to be your DH - further lessening the risk and burden of Vaughn. The job was to spend money when the window opened, that's what was sold. Well the window is open, and we're still stuck here rooting for a roster that needs to exceed their expected outcomes in order to be at the top of the totem pole.

Run to za pillows

I'm not going to make the argument that 7 AL teams should have higher median outcomes than the White Sox, but I don't think it's an implausible argument to make, and I certainly don't think it's so "off" that it's proof that a system is garbage like some are arguing. Hendriks is absolutely better than Colome, and fWAR supports this. However, fWAR is a DIPS-based statistic, and what that is measuring is how much of the "work" of the outs that are occurring can be directly attributed to the pitcher versus the defense/circumstance. Hendriks is better, essentially, because he allows much less contact and thus eliminates the factor of defense, resulting in fewer baserunners. However, that does not mean that his performance is guaranteed to produce better results, simply that it is more likely to produce better results. And what we saw in 2020 with Colome was nearly perfect results, even if he didn't actually pitch as well as Hendriks is likely to, and even if he relied on good defense and batted-ball luck to do so. So, if the question is "Is the 2021 White Sox closer role likely to allow fewer runs than it did in 2020?", the answer is almost certainly no. I agree that Hendriks could be deployed in a multi-inning role with some regularity, which would improve his gross production, but I'm very skeptical that the White Sox will do that. And even if they did, it would have to be a LOT more in order to make up ground toward a season of 0.81 ERA. In this instance, we are comparing a projection to what actually happened last year. Even if what actually happened last year was unlikely, it's still our baseline if we're trying to find out if the team got better. Yes, Lynn is exactly what they needed. But they GAVE UP something they also needed in order to get it. In the process of filling that glaring hole, they reopened the SAME hole. The White Sox problem is that they did not have ENOUGH pitching, so they needed to acquire pitching by using a resource OTHER than pitching. In fact, it's even worse than that, because since Lynn makes so much more money than Dunning they actually paid BOTH in current pitching talent and in money to make the upgrade. If you have some oranges but you need many more oranges, you should buy oranges with money or trade for oranges with something else. You should not trade oranges you already have, and you CERTAINLY should not trade both oranges and money. You may still end up with more oranges than you started with, but you have drastically reduced your total yield in oranges. This behavior isn't something we normally have to unpack as fans because it makes so little sense that it hardly ever happens in real life. "But Lance Lynn is better than Dane Dunning." Yes, but now you only improved your rotation by the DIFFERENCE between them. FanGraphs seems to be down right now but I think Lynn projects as about a 3.5 fWAR pitcher and Dunning projects at about a 2 - 2.5 fWAR pitcher (though to arrive there with ZiPS you have to adjust his IP, which is projected as like 70 innings or something). Most Sox fans see adding Lynn as adding 3.5 wins, but really it's adding 1 - 1.5 because the WHite Sox decided to SUBTRACT Dunning's 2 - 2.5 directly in the process. They spent $8m to add a win, and they still need just as many pitchers as they did before the move. "But maybe they could ONLY have gotten Lynn by including Dunning." Then get a different pitcher. There will SO MANY other options. How many 2 win pitchers signed for $8-12m this offseason? How many other, better pitchers were traded for prospects instead of MLB talent? If the guy at the fruit stand will only accept oranges in the deal, he's an idiot and you should go to a different store. I would amend this to say some areas of LIKELY regression. And it is much easier for a player who just played over his head to return to his norms than for a young player to learn new things to get closer to his promise. In truth, each instance of potential regression and upside is a unique event with its own probability. We, as humans, are particularly ill-suited to parse and sum them objectively to arrive at a net result. Which is why we use mathematical models, like... you know, PECOTA. That's certainly a plausible claim, but I don't know how you could possibly have evidence for it at this point, so I don't think it qualifies as a very good conclusion. Certainly not one that could survive scrutiny based on the information we have today. Yeah I mean, that's a fine opinion to hold, but we all need to understand that's as far as it goes. It's a hope we share. It's completely possible, but here's the kicker -- even if the every player on the team has a career year and the Sox win it all, it does NOT say anything about PECOTA. All that would mean is that a whole bunch of unlikely things occurred at once. PECOTA is not a genie claiming the Sox will end up the 7th best team in the AL. It's giving you its MEAN outcome out of tens of thousands of trials. Real life is ONE trial, and all kinds of things can happen. What it illustrates for us is that for the Sox to win, they need to achieve higher percentile outcomes. In other words, they nearly all of that upside to manifest. And this is, honestly, exactly where they were last year -- and it's pretty much status quo for this front office.

Hey guys just an FYI if you are trying to get spring training tickets. The Sox have not made tickets available or even announced a capacity but if you go to stubhub there are a number of games with tickets for sale. I wrote stubhub to make sure they were legit and stubhub told me they are 100% legit and the sellers that have them have relationships with the stadium and access to tickets before even an announcement. I purchased some. I noticed the Cubs announced that they are starting making tickets available to only season ticket holders in AZ so their tickets on StubHub are hundreds of dollars. Sox tickets might go up if they announce the same. EDIT: I called CamelBack Ranch and they are saying that those tickets are not real and impossible for people to have unless they are brokers!

They're going to deaden the ball when Manfred said it was never juiced. Every word that comes out of that piece of shits mouth is a fuckin lie.

Going off the color codes, which I think is based on 162 games from last year TA ~ 29 Leury ~ 9 Eaton ~11 2021, with new ball TA ~ 25 Leury ~ 8 Eaton ~ 0 (injury)

Honestly, I don't think people remember how weak the offenses were that the White Sox faced last year and their back end of the rotation still got murdered. Having the Indians in the division helped them face some elite pitching but they didn't exactly light the Indians up. People hate projections that don't like their team, I get it, but to say that the projections are absurd and our opinions are superior without substantiating it is just lazy.

Basically what happened to the NFL and NBA when they expanded their playoffs. No body watches the regular season anymore.

Some of these projections are simply way too conservative. Without question Robert, Moncada, Eloy, Anderson, Giolito, Lynn, & Keuchel will blow their numbers out of the water assuming they are relatively healthy. No reason to lose sleep over another insanely conservative projection model.

Right. Even though last year they were 6 games worse than the White Sox and have lost their best player. We outscored them by 27 and gave up 29 fewer runs. But they are somehow better??

What are the Bears' biggest draft needs this year? I love this simulator by the way. Very addicting. https://www.profootballnetwork.com/mockdraft/

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/02/which-players-will-have-the-largest-change-in-performance-in-2021.html These numbers are based on the extrapolation of last year's data over an entire season. Very interesting stuff. Hope it doesn't happen, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised.

I don't think he is high upside at all. Not much about him excites me.

Is it sad that the sox are supposed to be a world series contending team and we are sad about missing out on a failed prospect with very limited upside as our starting RFer?

This deal seems like a steal no? Not too big of a return for a high upside/solid player

Our favorite game, in Sox prospect currency, this is probably Engel, Adolfo, and Kade McClure. I would have pulled the trigger hoping Benny would bounce back to at least league average.

Lee has a nice ceiling, glad to get him outta KC. Not A huge Benintendi fan.

I agree, we can’t afford to watch businesses or people wither away. Something is better than nothing. I can’t even imagine what the economy will look like a year from now if there are still active restrictions in place a year from now. There comes a point where were going to have to live with the virus.

I'm just glad we'll be better than those garbage, NL East bottom feeding Atlanta Braves.

Poppy you understand that even being vaccinated isn't 100% effective much like a flu shot right? Why should that be part of being able to go to a ball game? I agree with you on everything else though. Masks, social distancing, and a reasonable capacity should have people in parks very soon:). P.S. I'm not trying to turn this forum into a medical campaign...there's enough of that on social media....just curious on your thoughts since I feel you are one of the respected (and respectful) posters here (at least to me :))

Upon first reading I definitely thought John Kruk was the head athletic trainer. I was confused.

Sox have a home game in 57 days. Can’t come soon enough. Sox/Angels in 50 days!

The hazards of having a bunch of guys graduate all at once, combined with having a top-heavy system and no MiLB season in 2020. Things could shift rapidly before the next rankings.

Sorry...I meant more teams in the playoffs.

Funny thing is Eloy seemed to hit the cheapest homers on the team last year

Right, but I know what’s coming next CBA. They’ll keep it.

Sheesh what y'all doing putting trades in the garbage dump pile.

at this I have very little clue who is minor league quality. Peacock has enough injury baggage that he could work, I obviously love how he was an effective swing man. I still think Jimmy Nelson would be interesting, but there has been so little about him that you assume his back still sucks. And that's not even his shoulder. Stripling would be a good idea, I just think he signs somewhere.

Just a few random thoughts: If the Sox were in the East in 1972 there is a very good chance they make the playoffs. And they played very evenly against Oakland that year, so they could have possibly won a five game series and made it to the World Series. That would have had a major effect on popularity and attendance, which could have changed the possible move to Seattle, which may have eliminated the need for Veeck to swoop in, which may have eliminated the sale to Reinsdorf and Einhorn down the line. Lot's of maybe's here, but an interesting butterfly effect. The AL had a unbalanced schedule until the Sea/Tor expansion, so lots of Sox road games after 9 pm on a weak UHF channel while the Cubs were playing home day games and lots of road games on the East coast at 6 pm on WGN 9. The kids from that era became the adults that packed Wrigley starting in the late 80's. For some reason the '69 expansion completely protected the Cubs. Not only did they keep the Cardinals rivalry, but both teams were put in the East division , while the Braves and Reds, who play in the Eastern time zone were pushed to the West division for some reason. Yet the Sox were put in the West in the first place and kept there when the Senators moved west.

I think that there are enough playoff spots that there are enough teams contending till the last of the season. In 1990, the White Sox won 94 games, had the third best record in the Majors and went nowhere. That is not likely to happen again with the way things are now. There is plenty of interest for fans. Secondly, because of expanded playoffs, regular season games are being played in the cold of late March, and the World Series is almost pushing into November. Baseball is a warm weather sport, and fans and players shouldn't have to put up with those conditions. I've been a fan a long time and have already have put with some real miserable conditions. I am not willing to do that so some rich guys can make more money. Finally, if more teams make the playoffs, why should an owner like Jerry Reinsdorf invest in putting a real solid team together? Second place is good, right? How about third? One last thing: I lost real interest in the NHL a long time ago. Seasons are way too long; playoffs are way too long.

I think the rough part is even if you get most of these guys to take a minor league deal, they are going to want an OK amount of money if they make the team, and they are also going to want a pretty firm opt out if they don't make the team. You won't be able to keep a Rich Hill or Jake Arrieta around for months in Charlotte on a MiLB deal.

I'd love Stripling. Always been a big ffan of him. But he'd be valuable to the Blue Jays since they're in win now.

There's certainty on overinflated confidence in some of our hitters. Moncada and Robert are the epiphany of high risk. Anytime you're dealing with a young hitter with a K-rate north of 30% there's a very high probability his major league tenure is tentative. Both those guys needs BABIPs north of .300 to produce at league average. There's obviously a lot of celling and projection with both those guys, but don't fool yourself into thinking they come with high floors. The probability of failure with both those guys is a real concern.

Sometimes it's fun to say PECOTA things in narrative form to see how they sound when not framed in the language of pseudoscience, and imagine how they'd fly in any thread other than this one. Like this: "Yasmani Grandal is far and away the best player on the Chicago White Sox and the face of the franchise. He is twice as good as the next tier of players on the team."

With Tim it's not about ascending. It's that he succeeds in a way that no one else does. Projection systems will never fully capture his value because it judges him vs the avg player. I agree Tim and Vaughn projections are low and they're due to data issues; vaughn being not enough data and Tim being an incredibly unique skill set that succeeds in a very unprecedented way, I think the giolito one isn't great because it's still utilizing data from when he was a different pitcher entirely but it's really only a win shy of most others that view him highly. Lynn's on the other hand isn't terrible. Father time gets everyone and expecting regression at this age and beyond isn't ludicrous. Moncada is a tricky one. I think covid mattered but Yoan has to show that 2019 wasn't a fluke before its fair to say that is a poor projection. Frankly his 99th percentile being the same as madrigal is comical though but that brings me to madrigal who BP is much higher on than most so for some players they may understate there are ones they also may overrate.

man it is really rich after the offseason we just experienced to say "who could the sox have signed to make them better?" nick freidell style lol anyway as I said I think sox will be fine, but if you want to hack the regular season you get a lot of good depth as we've been saying, and sox decided to thread the needle trying to only buy exactly what was needed. That leaves possibilities that our weak depth is actually strong, esp. in rotation. It is very possible. But it's also very possible it craters and undermines our bullpen. It is a possibility.

Calling him a "league-average hitter" misses the context entirely. He started out unstoppable, then became abysmal. He was swinging at absolutely everything the whole time. This suggests that league adjusted to him, and he needs to adjust back. Given that he's never had to do that, it's very much in question how quickly (if at all) he can accomplish it. His performance this year is very risky.

I created this thread last week, when PECOTA projections were player only, without the Team Depth Chart Standings available. My initial thoughts of the current 83-79 heading into this season: I do believe PECOTA projections (based on 50 percentile for individual and team projections) will experience a greater deviation to the mean 50% projection than previous seasons, due in large part to the first time nature of the tool's first (and hopefully last) time accommodating the 2020 60 game schedule debacle. I recall the Cubs (Theo in particular) and their fans going apeshit regarding the 2017 projections of a 91 win season as being far too low (they finished 92-70) after the World Series. Preseason projected wins are not certain by any means, but more often than not when the Vegas line and PECOTA deviate by 5 +/- wins, it typically indicates the betting public is over or undervaluing teams, and baring significant acquisitions or key injuries, it typically is wise to take the overlay and go against the public for value and profit. I do agree with most here the Sox will likely outperform their current 83 win projection, but would take the under in their winning percentage future odds of 90.5 wins (162 game season)/.559 winning percentage). There is a chance the White Sox can top Rick Renteria's great 2020 .583 winning percentage (aided by the imbalanced schedule) between 2022-2024. The lack of depth and also the fact several of their young core hitters (Eloy, Robert and Madrigal) and pitchers (Cease, Kopech and Crochet) will be attempting to play a 162 game season for the first time, with likely growing pains that will come along the way.

As a guarantee??? 41 year old DH??? Our mistake was not in failing to sign Cruz...it was signing EE last year where Soxtalk was making the same guarantees about him and his greatness. This is such nonsense about "eliminating the maybe's". There are a grand total of zero times that don't have questions marks. And signing Tyler Flowers and Nelson Cruz and Q and the other suggestions is holding back young super talent guys for the sake of a bunch of old formerly talented guys...possibly because that will allow us to continue talking about our curse of signing old players who suddenly become bad. I think going all in should mean going all in with the young guys...Dynasty or bust.

Who were the right fielders who signed as free agents? There were only 2 - Eaton and Pederson. Pederson turned down the Sox superior offer and ended up settling with the Cubs much later. That left Eaton. Who else were the Sox supposed to sign? Mazara? Obviously not. Springer? At that price? Plus, he's a center fielder. Jackie Bradley, Jr? Another center fielder. Eddie Rosario? Not a competent right fielder. There were quite a few options at LF this year. Almost none in RF. The Sox did what they could.

Projection systems that have the White Sox as the 8th best team in the AL can be disregarded. What a bunch of nonsense.

But the White Sox are a big time world series contender and they have the best team in the AL and all the fans upset about not signing FA's are just negative. What a disappointing off season this was. Not even above Cleveland. Smh.

Bump