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Luis Robert has a great couple of months and is traded (potentially this year's Luis Arraez and traded early in season. Davis Martin pitches great. Represent team at All Star game. Vargas has a surprisingly nice season. Teel comes up and has a good showing for a first call up. Sox trade Robert, Perez, B. Wilson, Murfee, one of the older lefties (Booser, Gilbert or both) and Tauchman. No one else. Clevinger pitches decent out of pen. Other teams continue to want nothing to do with him.

He has the fifth best stuff in the organization, but lack of command/control/stamina has destroyed thousands of stuff guys in baseball history or at least turned them into relievers.

When that much veteran talent is off the roster from a year ago and Clevinger is your closer…color me skeptical.

In Burke's case, a guy issuing 5.5 walks and 2 HR per nine at AAA, usually doesn't have a lot of success at major league level one off season later

I think the 2025 bullpen will be a little better prepared with long men than 2024's.

No I genuinely thought the ONLY you could possibly argue this rotation was equal or better was by including them in the second half of the season…at least Schultz and maybe Taylor if he continues evolving. And this coming from a “huge massive immense” Shane Smith fan. There’s just no way they are better after subtracting Crochet and Fedde. That’s way too much high quality production to replace…without dipping into the Big 3 for corresponding talent. A number of posters here have argued they see Schultz up in 2025. I happen to personally disagree due to it still being a JR-led operation as far as we all know. Your listing of all the AAA and AA starters plus Eder isn’t going to mean any of them will be of quality. Skepticism on Iriarte abounds. Nastrini has a tick or two higher velo. We shall see soon enough.

Sure it's possible for Katz and crew to work miracles, but to expect it is something else entirely.

Oh. Why would anyone be referring to prospects that are at least a year away when talking about the initial 2025 starting rotation. Maybe I'm just being "Caulfielded".

I don't think the projections are wrong. They're snapshots of probabilities based on what players have done in the past, with small adjustments taking development into consideration as players age towards one's peak, or regression as they age away. People who run the simulations don't enter "started throwing a new kick-change" into the formula, or "dude dominated in 10 spring training innings". Being a fan means hoping that Martin Perez can revert more towards his 2022 production, rather than continue to perform worse than his 2024 stats. (Do I need to show statistical proof of that before I can "hope" it?) Or that Davis Martin and Sean Burke can produce in ways that prospect evaluation people think they can, instead of what their minor league and limited major league numbers spit out in 1000 simulations. All of Soroka, Flexen, Cannon and Nastrini were disasters in their first trips through the rotation. I feel confident that the 3-4-5 starters in 2025 will fare better.

https://sportfiesta.com.ng/white-sox-farm-system-gets-major-boost-mlb-pipeline-crowns-chicago-white-sox-baseball-most-improved/

This right here is important. While I think we might be a bit better and more stable on the back end, we are going to be giving up a legitimate one and two on the front end. The same game we might have been able to squeak 3-2 last year during a Fedde/Crochet start, turns into a 5-3 loss this year on the front end, while the game we lost 10-2 last year maybe turns into a 5-2 loss this year. While advanced stats see the pitching production at the "same" by balancing out the loss of the most horrible starts with the loss of the best wins, with the complete lack of offense, I don't think it will translate into as many wins as it would if we had an offense that could score runs with other teams in MLB. The only games we were really in last year were those quality starts. And I definitely don't think those guys survive the season in tact anyway. There will definitely be periods of time where we get a lot of bad starts in a row, just like we saw last year as some of these guys through growing pains. Injuries are going to happen for sure, as will some big ups and downs. I am also still not convinced that the bullpen will be substantively better than last year, and with as many innings as they will be covering, there will still be a lot of really bad pitchers throwing a lot of innings. This isn't going to be a lot of 7 innings and hand it to our 2 best pitchers to close (whoever those are this year).

He's referring to Schultz, Hagen and Taylor. Major league team doesn't have a big three

Cannon and Martin Perez are definitely going to regress…Perez due to a weaker defense behind him and switching out Petco at night for GRF in the summer.

Sorry I get a little wordy and times. The professor in me.

“We're proactive about identifying teams that have locally born Japanese players on the roster, so that when we come over there, there is a real connection with the local fan base.” With this in mind, he adds that the league’s settled status in Japan made MLB’s selection of the Dodgers and the Cubs for the international series simple. “I think, a whole host of factors go into the ultimate final selection. You have to look at team interest, there's a lot of travel involved, so you’ve got to see what spring training schedules and player development cycles look like. “But, we landed on those two teams because they were super interested in being in the market and coming to Japan to bring their brand and their team to Japan, and they both have a great stable of local Japanese players that I think helps tell the story once you're on the ground.” … “In Japan, baseball is already the most popular sport. The NPB is the most popular league, followed by MLB right behind it, so it's not an awareness play. It's really around creating deeper engagement and creating new opportunities for fans to engage. “So what you're going to see [around the Tokyo Series] is still locally driven, for example we're going to be activating in Tokyo at the Sky Tree [monument], and that's really about reaching [a]broader [fanbase] and creating an experience for them to take pictures, be a part of the game, etc.” This desire for a wide array of touchpoints for the league in Japan extends to its broadcast makeup, which is similarly diverse. Distribution of MLB’s media rights in Japan is handled by major rights agency Dentsu in an eight-year partnership that will run through the 2028 campaign and could reportedly be worth more than $60 million per year. The league is broadcast by pan-Asian broadcaster SPOTV which holds MLB rights across the region, and recently the Prime Video service secured broadcast rights for the Tokyo Series and associated games. https://www.sportcal.com/features/big-in-japan-how-mlb-is-swinging-for-the-fences-in-the-asian-market/?cf-view

I voted 53-56, but I honestly don't see how this team is any better than last season.

Going with 53-56. That's a big improvement from 2024 (with still a miserable record). A lot of things went wrong last year, on top of just being a bad team. New manager, fewer asshats, hopefully more caring and less moping.

Do you have any statistical reason as to why the projections are wrong? The projections aren't assuming anything, you are. I know how bad the rotation is projected to be, and even though I made a prediction that Burke and Smith will be average MLB starters, it's very unlikely that this rotation outperforms last years. Where the Sox should be better, I'd hope, is on the position player side.

Backs are messy. Too many moving parts. Fractures bones are mostly straight ward. Unless it's a comminuted fracture with many pieces they tend to heal well in the young athletic population unless there are co-morbidities like diabetes.

Those are projections. I don't think anybody buys into Fangraphs' projection of 63 wins for the Sox. Chris Flexen was worth 1.3 fWAR last season. That projection assumes that 4 of their starters will be worse than Chris Flexen, and the 5th will be worth less than 0 fWAR.

The top four starters for the White Sox this year are projected for 4.6 total fWAR (and that's with all with > 120 IP projected!) Garrett Crochet was worth 4.7 fWAR last year. Fedde and Crochet were worth 8.1 fWAR combined.

Look, breaking a bone is never great, but it seems preferential to a back injury like this. It just doesn't seem to go away, and only gets worse.

I would agree with all of this. Part of the complexity of back issues is that just because you have a discussion issue on imaging doesn't mean they are causing problems. They've done studies on disc imaging of people who have never had back issues and about 40% find disc's issues. As we age there is normal degeneration in the spine and related structures that cause no issues. While imaging is helpful, it should not be used without the physical exam and even then as you pointed out, the back is so complex it's really hard to evaluate and treat properly.

Maybe, we'll see. But they did have 27 games where they took a lead into the 7th inning or later and lost the game last year. That's pretty hard to top.