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The White Sox are likely better than an 83 win team, but depth matters. To say they're much better than an 85-86 win team is projecting a bunch of growth with very little regression. I think the Vaughn projection is low because of a lack of information, and Anderson will never be a guy who fits projection models due to his unorthodox way of succeeding so I like his over, but discrediting something merely because it doesn't buy your perceived narrative without substantiating the disproval statistically isn't all that compelling. The fact is, the White Sox back of the rotation is bad, Keuchel was solid last year but expecting major regression isn't absurd by any means; especially with him pitching against more viable offenses. The rotation is relying on two of the worst pitchers in baseball from the past two years and one guy who hasn't pitched in two years. Could Cease take a huge step forward; sure, of course, anything could happen. Is it more likely than not? Absolutely not. Could Kopech come back and shake off rust and dominate the league? Sure - I'm probably more confident in this than I am in Cease. Are Rodon and Lopez suddenly going to be good viable starting options? I would say absolutely not. The baseline here puts the Sox between 83-85 wins. Besides the Indians, which team ahead of them is clearly not better? I would say that all 6 have a very good case for being better than the White Sox.

To be fair, Kyle never threatened to become a fan of another team because the White Sox didn't sign a free agent.

The White Sox beat Pecota projections by the most in baseball between 2005-2012 I believe; it wasn't close. It had nothing to do with PECOTA hating the White Sox. They beat projections solely because their pitching stayed healthier than everyone else's in baseball (the Hermie effect). Here's an article that was written about it in 2013. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-white-sox-and-beating-projections/ We miss Hermie.

I didn't know baseball prospectus was still around. Good for them.

I got mine today. Woohoo! In the county I live in in Michigan, they said they're vaccinating about 700 people a day now. At just that one clinic.

Look, nobody believed me when I said Colin Sexton would be a stud and better than Wendell Carter Jr. Trust me when I say that the Sox will be better than the Twins and Indians.

My god. This whole narrative is so false it feels willfully ignorant at this point. If you criticize the team, it does NOT have to mean you think they suck. It does NOT have to mean you hate them. It does NOT have to mean you want them to fail to validate your criticisms. But hey, nuances can be complicated. It’s much easier to have the blanket statement that those critical are complainers, whiners and pessimists that will never be happy. You do you.

Hilarious how they treat it as affirmation of their negative outlook. "Yep, see, projections say we stink so we obviously didn't do enough. If we happen to be good because the young players progress, then that's lucky, but it has nothing to do with the way our front office assembled the team."

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

This bob tweet is cracking me up because it looks like he is saying "look, I'm right" except DH didn't happen lol

He had a tough 2-3 week stretch in September but had a huge series against the Cubs the final series of the regular season and then a very good playoff series against the A’s. Calling Robert “risky” or whatever is lazy. He has one of the highest floors of any player on this team based on his defense alone.

Nelson Cruz for this season over Vaughn and Collins is an easy pick.

The White Sox offense posted the highest fWAR in the entire mlb last year. This was with our 3B ravaged by covid and a blackhole at DH. Both these things should get fixed this year. I'm pretty sure most offenses would be in big trouble if their stars are bad or got hurt. The offense will be fine.

I believe there is a no explicit imagery rule on the site somewhere ok

Who has said the team sucks? I'm pretty sure people are merely disappointed that after a 4 year rebuild in which the Sox promised to get rid of all the maybe's and help the young stars grow as a winning roster, we're back to being the same team that needs a lot to go right - better than expected - to be a top tier team in the AL. The Sox can be fun to watch, and exciting, and fans can still be disappointed in how this is all shaking out. I'm, for one, excited for the season but I also don't think the Sox are a shoe in for the playoffs and they had a chance of being just that but decided to not invest in that opportunity.

Didn't PECOTA project the Sox to win something like 75 games in 2005?

No way they'd want a public lawsuit now, and their comments in the article make it sound like they want this to go away. I have to say it really is obnoxious how long "startups" take to move on customer service. For a while there was a zappos ethos in tech that perhaps over emphasized it. Now it's the last thing added with just some shitty chatbots. But schwab, etrade, etc all have zero commission trading. Had he been with one of them he'd have his own contact he could have reached out to. He'd also have had to explicitly applied for an options account. RH had been defaulting everyone to margin accounts, too. With finance, healthcare, you'd be better off betting on the dinosaur institutions improving their UI than startups promising the world when by just skirting rules until they are big enough to be a problem.

So to have a baseline here are the stats: wRC+: 113 Starter ERA: 3.85 Bullpen ERA: 3.76 I think the pen could get better. Some guys like foster might regress some but hendricks is a addition. The starters is a little complicated. The ERA might not be much lower but the Sox also had some big time luck last year (4.6 fip vs 3.8 era). So the underlying skills will be better and also the innings which then helps the pen. Lineup I think might be about the same or slightly worse. DH and RF should be a lot better but some guys are also due to some decline. But overall a 113 wrc+ could be attainable again. So pitching definitely should be better albeit luck last year covered quite a bit so results might not be dramatically different

Even if Lucroy can catch decently (which is not a certainty), the Sox really can't afford his dead bat in the lineup.

Pretty much exactly how I feel about every single one of your posts.

I got Moncada with at least a .900 OPS this season.

Baseball Prospectus released PECOTA projections today. Below are players projections at the 50 percentile rate. https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/64332/pecota-2021-short-seasons-variance-and-collaboration/ Three projections presented: OPS & WARP = Baseball Prospectus WAR Projections + Comparable (Player at respective Age) C Grandal .790 / 4.7 Jorge Posada CF Robert .732 / 3.2 Victor Robles 1B Abreu .849 / 2.9 Cecil Fielder 2B Madrigal .756 / 2.7 Breyvic Valera LF Jimenez .834 / 2.6 Pete Incaviglia 3B Moncada .759 / 2.3 Brandon Lowe SS Anderson .732 / 2.0 Dale Svuem RF Eaton .711 / 1.9 Lloyd Moseby fip / WARP / Comparable (Player at respective Age) Giolito 3.96 / 2.9 / Jose Berrios Lynn 4.34 / 2.0 / Francisco Liriano Keuchel 4.41 / 1.4 / Garrett Richards Hendricks 3.17 / 1.3 / Tommy Hunter Kopech 4.80 / 0.9 / Trevor Bauer <== Jerry gave you Trevor Bauer afterall Rodon 4.89 / 0.5 / Daniel Mengden Cease 5.01/ 0.4 / Reynaldo Lopez <== Double the fun!!! Lopez 5.11 / 0.0 / Jose Berrios <== And two Berrios

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.

K

Strength of competition difference...

And then he started clicking again going into the playoffs. Do you remember his 480+ foot blast in Game 3?

Why? If you factor in regression from the obvious candidates like Keuchel and Abreu, the extreme risk of Robert, and the fact that no projection system knows how to factor COVID-19 into the equation for Moncada, you need pretty major improvement from Jimenez/Madrigal/Cease to break even. Meanwhile, how much better did the team get over the offseason? They traded a 2.5 win pitcher for a 3.5 win pitcher, and added an elite closer to replace an unbelievable 0.81 ERA from Colome. Even though Hendriks is clearly better than Colome, do you think you're going to get a 0.81 ERA out of him? I've been saying it, but I'll say it again -- the front office essentially treaded water with this offseason if you factor in the losses. The team could win it all, but it's going to take additional upside from the young stars and near perfect health.

Springer was a perfect fit for this team and the exact kind of player the White Sox should have been targeting at the end of a rebuild. Serious playoff experience, in fact one of the best performers in recent playoff history (perhaps with some assistance). Would be an excellent defender in RF, and could cover CF adequately if Robert were injured. Calling him a CF as though it's a knock on him, wtf? His contract wound up comparable to what we would have guessed it would be 2-3 years ago, so there's no big sticker shock. While he's right handed, he also has hit righties better than lefties the last 2 seasons, so he'd be a perfect fit early in this lineup as it would almost be a trap against a team bringing in a righty against the lineup.

Nelson Cruz is just as much of a fantasy. Who's to say Cruz would sign with the Sox for what the Twins paid? Do you want to spend $15M for Nelson Cruz in order to stunt Andrew Vaughn, who the Sox need not just for 2021, but beyond? I mean, if you push Vaughn off for another year, won't there be some other free agent DH possibility to shove in front of Vaughn again? If the Sox had $15M, they should have invested it in someone other than Nelson Cruz. Cruz was a Sox killer in 2019, but in 2020 after the opening series, the Sox shut him down.

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.

Helping the "young stars grow" includes letting them play -- including Andrew Vaughn, Michael Kopech, and Zack Collins, along with Luis Robert, Nick Madrigal, Dylan Cease, Garrett Crochet, and Codi Heuer, Will all of those players instantly click like young vets Tim Anderson and Eloy Jimenez do now? No. But if you don't give them the opportunity, they won't be where you need them to be by the end of 2021, or 2022 and beyond. The Sox are not a shoe in for the playoffs, nor would they be if they had added a couple marginal vets. They added EE last year and he was a complete bust. Same with Gio. They would have been better off with Vaughn last year. But the Sox are legitimate favorites to win the AL Central, regardless of PECOTA or any other projection system.

This is a fallacy. No one you advocated signing was any more of a "guarantee" than the player or players the Sox have decided to move forward with. And, if your rebuttal is Springer and Bauer, then you aren't living in reality.

I'd be terrified if PECOTA liked us.

On what planet are the Astros better in 2021? Rotation = White Sox > Astros Bullpen = White Sox > Astros Lineup = White Sox > Astros Top 100 Prospects = White Sox 4, Astros 1.

Fair enough; you're certainly entitled to your opinion. Saying the Astros are for sure worse than the White Sox doesn't jive with almost any projection system. Whether PECOTA, FG's, or the countless others. It's actually not even all that close. When the W/L totals release the Astros will also be ahead of the White Sox there as well. I can definitely buy the Indians - the offense is just so rough - and the Angels are boom or bust so a lot of risk and variance there. But the Astros, as of today, are a better baseball team than the White Sox IMO.

Fan Duel doesn't have win totals up as of yet, but they have the Sox at -150, Twins at +165, and Indians at +750 for the AL Central. Sox are 2nd best odds in AL at +380 to Yankees +210. Sox World Series odds are 4th best at +850. So while that isn't a true projection, it does tell you where people are putting their money. The betters have the Sox as a clear AL Central favorite, and secondary favorite in the AL.

This won't be the line. Pecota also has not been profitable vs the off-shore W/L totals the past 10 years, so they are not more predictive than the W/L totals. The futures market isn't predictive at all as it moves based on how leveraged the book is; the win/loss market doesn't move on air quite as often, and the closing numbers there are much more predicative of a teams W/L's than PECOTA. I would guess the Sox Win total will be 85.5-86.5, the Twins 88.5-89.5, the Indians 82.5-83.5. We'll see when they're posted and how they move.

We have had an entire month of pessimists blasting this team for not doing enough, I have watched many of those same people practically root for failure from players like Madrigal, Cease, Eaton etc to prove they were correct. My post was part hyperbole but there is truth in it

This is wrong, how? I think they're better than an 83 win team but thinking it's not a 90 win team is entirely reasonable. This is an 85-89 win team as currently constructed imo. If a few things go wrong 82-83 wins is entirely possible. If a few things go right, 95+ is possible.

Why wouldn't I follow? Are you only allowed to watch a team if you pretend that they're some world beater when they're not? They could see a lot of progression from young players; maybe Moncada bounces back; maybe Robert takes a step forward; maybe Vaughn dominates; maybe Kopech and Cease shock the world. The point of the rebuild was to not have a ton of "maybe's." The point was to supplement the young talent with some guarantees. That's why they tanked for years. The White Sox failed to do that, and now they're in a position where they aren't jockeying for World Series placement; instead they're jockeying for just a spot in the post season.

Counts as a GC shutout but not as a PG https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mlb.com/amp/news/seven-inning-doubleheaders-no-hitter-rules.html

I like the 7 inning DH and I might even like 7 innings period. Yeah it would be a big change but with starters only going like 5 do we really need to see 4 innings of relief pitching every night? But of course we don't know whether with 7 inning games starters would be lowered to 4 or so.

the lawsuit was just filed on Monday.

In most states the underlying principle has been these are electives and we can adopt standards more stringent than what is required of other students. In discussing this with coaches in my area we believe it's allowable to require vaccine before participating. However, with very little data to support it, anecdotal evidence locally seems to support little transmission between participants in competitions. The outbreaks we have seen have all been contained within that team.

Got my 2nd this past Saturday. I am good to go.

And that puts the bulls in a better position how

Grandal should be playing damn near everyday. Just has as he has done pretty much every season of his career. He was way under utilized last year, though I do know he struggled with back issues. Now that your loverboy McCann is gone, no reason Yasmani should not be catching pretty much all but the 1 or 2 day games after a night game per week.