White Sox lost 4th most production to injuries in 22

[Balta1701]

All right, I've been wanting to do this for a while and it's Friday afternoon. Let's make an assumption and do some math here - imagine that the White Sox had no injuries, and that their list of guys had full seasons. What happens if I scale up everyone's WAR up to 150 games for the starters, 33-34 starts for the starters, and 60-70 appearances for the relievers (70 for Hendriks, 60 for the non closers). 

	War Actual	WAR healthy
Luis Robert	2.1	5.0
Eloy Jimenez	1.7	3.0
Tim Anderson	2.0	3.8
Yoan Moncada	0.9	1.3
AJ Pollock	0.5	0.6
Yasmani Grandal	-0.4	-0.6
Andrew Vaughn	-0.4	-0.5
Leury Garcia	-1.1	-1.2
Danny Mendick	0.8	2.0
Lance Lynn	1.9	3.0
Lucas Giolito	1.8	2.0
Michael Kopech	1.0	1.2
Joe Kelly	0.5	0.7
Aaron Bummer	0.3	0.6
Liam Hendriks	1.6	2.0
	13.2	22.9

 

Ok, I even did something realistic here. Robert was a 3 WAR player before the wrist injury, they made him a 2 WAR player by playing him through an injury very, very stupidly. Had they not done that he would have been a 3 WAR player, and he was on pace to be a 5 WAR player, so that one is a little more of an estimate than some. Kopech, on the other hand, I gave him a little more for injury, but he wasn't conditioned to pitch 200 innings so going any higher than that isn't really fair. I was also a little optimistic with Mendick, as you can't really project him up to 600 PAs when he was a backup, but a 2 win season is pretty good for im.

That's 9.7 WAR. How terrible! If the White Sox got all that back, surely they would catch the Guardians, right?

Well, there's one thing we haven't counted. The replacements the White Sox had for some of these guys were literal saviors. Here's actual WAR from Fangraphs for guys who stepped in for replacement starts and/or only got onto the roster because of injuries. 

Elvis Andrus		2
Seby Zavala		1.9
Johnny Cueto		2.4
Jimmy Lambert		0.3
Davis Martin		0.6
		7.2

If we're going straight off of "What were they doing this year", the guys they brought in made up a ton of their performance. Frankly, Andrus outproduced what Anderson would have done during that short stint, Zavala was the most effective catcher on the Sox this year, and Cueto cleared Keuchel off their roster and kept Velasquez out of the rotation, which was a substantial upgrade. Based solely on what they were doing this year, the White Sox lost 9.7 WAR, but they got 7.2 WAR back from their replacements. 

That is...not a lot of loss to injury compared to a 10 game difference.

But, there's one other version of this. What if injuries were the reason that Moncada, Grandal, Giolito, and Lynn were so ineffective? Lynn was a 4.2 WAR player in 2021, Moncada was a 4 WAR player, Giolito was a 4.1 WAR player. That's an extra 1.2 WAR for Lynn, 2.1 WAR for Giolito, 2.7 WAR for Moncada, and of course, 4.2 WAR for Grandal. 

THAT last line is the difference maker - how do you count that? That's an extra 10 WAR if you could get those guys back to what they were beforehand, but they were mostly already present. If all of those guys were 100% as effective as they were previously, and all their other guys stay healthy, that's what it would take to make up the ground against Cleveland last year. 

What does that mean for next year? Well, if "Everything goes right", they could be up with where Cleveland was this year. But, can Grandal suddenly become a 4 WAR player again? That seems, like the most problematic part of this. Furthermore, they're also, so far, without Abreu and Cueto. That means, they need something to make up for that - Vaughn being better, Colas being better than Vaughn in the OF, Kopech being better, and adding in another OF - if all that happens, they've made up the ground against Cleveland. A few other things could be better - Robert still could be better than that, Eloy could still be better than that, Martin could be better than that, Vaughn should hopefully improve. 

But boy, have I had to say "a lot of stuff had to go right" over and over again. A lot of those things that were down compared to 2021 - Moncada, Giolito, Grandal, Lynn, Vaughn's lack of development - all those need to be fixed this offseason. How much of that can be fixed by a managerial swap? 

[SoxBlanco]

3 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

All right, I've been wanting to do this for a while and it's Friday afternoon. Let's make an assumption and do some math here - imagine that the White Sox had no injuries, and that their list of guys had full seasons. What happens if I scale up everyone's WAR up to 150 games for the starters, 33-34 starts for the starters, and 60-70 appearances for the relievers (70 for Hendriks, 60 for the non closers). 

	War Actual	WAR healthy
Luis Robert	2.1	5.0
Eloy Jimenez	1.7	3.0
Tim Anderson	2.0	3.8
Yoan Moncada	0.9	1.3
AJ Pollock	0.5	0.6
Yasmani Grandal	-0.4	-0.6
Andrew Vaughn	-0.4	-0.5
Leury Garcia	-1.1	-1.2
Danny Mendick	0.8	2.0
Lance Lynn	1.9	3.0
Lucas Giolito	1.8	2.0
Michael Kopech	1.0	1.2
Joe Kelly	0.5	0.7
Aaron Bummer	0.3	0.6
Liam Hendriks	1.6	2.0
	13.2	22.9

 

Ok, I even did something realistic here. Robert was a 3 WAR player before the wrist injury, they made him a 2 WAR player by playing him through an injury very, very stupidly. Had they not done that he would have been a 3 WAR player, and he was on pace to be a 5 WAR player, so that one is a little more of an estimate than some. Kopech, on the other hand, I gave him a little more for injury, but he wasn't conditioned to pitch 200 innings so going any higher than that isn't really fair. I was also a little optimistic with Mendick, as you can't really project him up to 600 PAs when he was a backup, but a 2 win season is pretty good for im.

That's 9.7 WAR. How terrible! If the White Sox got all that back, surely they would catch the Guardians, right?

Well, there's one thing we haven't counted. The replacements the White Sox had for some of these guys were literal saviors. Here's actual WAR from Fangraphs for guys who stepped in for replacement starts and/or only got onto the roster because of injuries. 

Elvis Andrus		2
Seby Zavala		1.9
Johnny Cueto		2.4
Jimmy Lambert		0.3
Davis Martin		0.6
		7.2

If we're going straight off of "What were they doing this year", the guys they brought in made up a ton of their performance. Frankly, Andrus outproduced what Anderson would have done during that short stint, Zavala was the most effective catcher on the Sox this year, and Cueto cleared Keuchel off their roster and kept Velasquez out of the rotation, which was a substantial upgrade. Based solely on what they were doing this year, the White Sox lost 9.7 WAR, but they got 7.2 WAR back from their replacements. 

That is...not a lot of loss to injury compared to a 10 game difference.

But, there's one other version of this. What if injuries were the reason that Moncada, Grandal, Giolito, and Lynn were so ineffective? Lynn was a 4.2 WAR player in 2021, Moncada was a 4 WAR player, Giolito was a 4.1 WAR player. That's an extra 1.2 WAR for Lynn, 2.1 WAR for Giolito, 2.7 WAR for Moncada, and of course, 4.2 WAR for Grandal. 

THAT last line is the difference maker - how do you count that? That's an extra 10 WAR if you could get those guys back to what they were beforehand, but they were mostly already present. If all of those guys were 100% as effective as they were previously, and all their other guys stay healthy, that's what it would take to make up the ground against Cleveland last year. 

What does that mean for next year? Well, if "Everything goes right", they could be up with where Cleveland was this year. But, can Grandal suddenly become a 4 WAR player again? That seems, like the most problematic part of this. Furthermore, they're also, so far, without Abreu and Cueto. That means, they need something to make up for that - Vaughn being better, Colas being better than Vaughn in the OF, Kopech being better, and adding in another OF - if all that happens, they've made up the ground against Cleveland. A few other things could be better - Robert still could be better than that, Eloy could still be better than that, Martin could be better than that, Vaughn should hopefully improve. 

But boy, have I had to say "a lot of stuff had to go right" over and over again. A lot of those things that were down compared to 2021 - Moncada, Giolito, Grandal, Lynn, Vaughn's lack of development - all those need to be fixed this offseason. How much of that can be fixed by a managerial swap? 

I appreciate the numbers crunched here and the work you put into it, but it completely takes the human element out of things. Who knows what could have happened if the team stayed healthy, won more games early, and then got some momentum and came out each night with energy. Maybe they get some momentum and everyone starts playing better. Hitting a baseball is very difficult, and it becomes even more difficult when you start pressing (or when the whole team starts pressing).

Hell, maybe Cleveland doesn’t win as many games if they weren’t playing from the top spot in the division for as long as they did. 

The bottom line is that it’s a complete unknown. Maybe everything I typed it BS, and eliminating the injuries wouldn’t have mattered. But I do know the game of baseball is not as simple as adding/subtracting WAR to a win total.