The White Sox over/under for 2023 wins is 83.5

[Bossanoveralls]

2 hours ago, ChiSoxTrojan said:

Leury was also playing hurt in the second half of the season.

I think this season Leury will bounce back to his usual level of suck, not the horrific "worst player in baseball" suckage we witnessed last year. Going from a -1 WAR player to a +1 WAR player is as helpful as going from a 2 WAR to a 4 WAR.

I say the over/under all boils down to Leury Garcia.

Leury Garcia.

[ChiSox59]

6 minutes ago, 35thstreetswarm said:

Everybody cites "81 wins" as if it's the definitive and precise mathematical measure of team quality, but let's face it -- there are different ways to get to 81 wins.  They were 5 games over and very much in the race going into that September Cleveland series, and frankly took their foot off the gas for several weeks once they lost that first Cleveland series game in a heartbreaker.  They were in free-fall for a while after they realized they were out of it.  They were probably an 85-win team that fell to .500.  A meaningless and negligible difference, really, but then so is the difference between 81 and 83.5.  83.5 seems reasonable.

Another very valid point I wish I had included on my list.  All the air was out of the balloon after that crushing loss in the 1st game of the Cleveland series.  The boys mailed the rest of that week in.  

[he gone.]

Seems like a good number based on the responses here. Sports books trying to get you at 50/50 end of day. 

Case for over:

Everything that could go wrong, went wrong last year at 81 wins. (save Cease who was incredible). You're rolling it back with seasons of health from TA, Eloy, Robert, Lynn, etc. etc. You should have improved OF defense with Vaughn in his proper place & you should have improved seasons from Grandal, Yoan and Giolito. Overall, 81 seems like the absolute floor with 90 a reality. 

Case for the under:

The biggest holes were 2b and RF and we did not address them. Our SP depth is very suspect and if Clevinger doesn't suit up, you now are relying on Davis Martin for an extended role + undoubtedly the injuries to the pitching staff. You're going to have to find 100+ innings out of someone and that someone isn't going to be very good. Hendriks is an AS caliber closer and without him, you're blowing 3-5 games more than last year. Cueto was a sponge eating innings and keeping us in games. You lost your rock and #3 hitter in Abreu which will be a giant crater. We've seen enough of a track record out of our talented guys in Yoan, Eloy, Robert to know what we have, and it'll take a perfect scenario for those guys to not only stay healthy but be productive. Grandal's knees are shot and we have no real backup C. Relying on Colas is weak as his plate discipline is suspect and likely will need to rely on Sheets in RF for extended periods of time. We can't just rely on playing AL Central teams to prop us up anymore which will lead to more losses. There's no leadership in the locker room and the fan base has given up. Have a cold start to the season and Giolito + Grandal + others will be out the door. This team has a real good shot to limp into August/September. 77 wins may be a good guess. 

Reality:

Somewhere in between 90 and 77 ... cut the difference or ... 83.5 wins. 

[ChiSoxTrojan]

15 minutes ago, he gone. said:

Seems like a good number based on the responses here. Sports books trying to get you at 50/50 end of day. 

Case for over:

Everything that could go wrong, went wrong last year at 81 wins. (save Cease who was incredible). You're rolling it back with seasons of health from TA, Eloy, Robert, Lynn, etc. etc. You should have improved OF defense with Vaughn in his proper place & you should have improved seasons from Grandal, Yoan and Giolito. Overall, 81 seems like the absolute floor with 90 a reality. 

Case for the under:

The biggest holes were 2b and RF and we did not address them. Our SP depth is very suspect and if Clevinger doesn't suit up, you now are relying on Davis Martin for an extended role + undoubtedly the injuries to the pitching staff. You're going to have to find 100+ innings out of someone and that someone isn't going to be very good. Hendriks is an AS caliber closer and without him, you're blowing 3-5 games more than last year. Cueto was a sponge eating innings and keeping us in games. You lost your rock and #3 hitter in Abreu which will be a giant crater. We've seen enough of a track record out of our talented guys in Yoan, Eloy, Robert to know what we have, and it'll take a perfect scenario for those guys to not only stay healthy but be productive. Grandal's knees are shot and we have no real backup C. Relying on Colas is weak as his plate discipline is suspect and likely will need to rely on Sheets in RF for extended periods of time. We can't just rely on playing AL Central teams to prop us up anymore which will lead to more losses. There's no leadership in the locker room and the fan base has given up. Have a cold start to the season and Giolito + Grandal + others will be out the door. This team has a real good shot to limp into August/September. 77 wins may be a good guess. 

Reality:

Somewhere in between 90 and 77 ... cut the difference or ... 83.5 wins. 

Your case for the under is like 3 times as long as your case for the over. Just saying.

[ChiSoxTrojan]

1 hour ago, FourEyesShottenhoffer said:

This makes no sense. The Sox would still have those players if they re-signed Andrus, so taking them over Andrus isn’t a relevant consideration. The question is someone like Alberto over Andrus. Alberto is nowhere close to Andrus

Alberto probably couldn't replicate Andrus's production, but Sosa probably could. Case in point, here are the ZiPS projections:

Andrus: .241/.292/.350

Sosa: .245/.286/.378

If Andrus would sign cheaply for the $2M figure that people are throwing out, then sure, he's useful to have as depth so JAGs like Alberto never see the roster. But he doesn't really add much over what we've got when everyone is healthy, and he'll take at bats away from guys who have more upside. I suspect he's looking for closer to $7M, and there are better ways to spend that money if it's available.

Edited February 2, 2023 by ChiSoxTrojan

[joejoesox]

injury prone team, lost their best hitter without a proper replacement, 75-80 wins max. pitching won't carry them all year

[southsider2k5]

3 minutes ago, ChiSoxTrojan said:

Alberto probably couldn't replicate Andrus's production, but Sosa probably could. Case in point, here are the ZiPS projections:

Andrus: .241/.202/.350

Sosa: .245/.286/.378

If Andrus would sign cheaply for the $2M figure that people are throwing out, then sure, he's useful to have as depth so JAGs like Alberto never see the roster. But he doesn't really add much over what we've got when everyone is healthy, and he'll take at bats away from guys who have more upside. I suspect he's looking for closer to $7M, and there are better ways to spend that money if it's available.

I know Elvis was the King of SSS, but his combined last 5 years line is 254/.302/.371/.673 with a grand total of bWAR 6.4, while getting all of the defensive WAR advantages statistically of playing SS.

[4uckOffCommieScum]

1 minute ago, southsider2k5 said:

I know Elvis was the King of SSS, but his combined last 5 years line is 254/.302/.371/.673 with a grand total of bWAR 6.4, while getting all of the defensive WAR advantages statistically of playing SS.

That’s still better than Alberto. You are comparing a 3.5 career war vs a 33.5 career war player who put up 3.5 war just last year. In his last 650 plate appearances Alberto walked 12 times and hit 7 homeruns, less than Andrus put up in that small sample size. I don’t see how having the defensive advantage works against Andrus here either

[LittleHurtCG]

1 hour ago, ScooterMcGuire said:

This is all very valid. The biggest question mark is health. If they can even have an "average" amount of injuries I think your 88 win+ is possible.

It is plain as day that the "core" that Hahn assembled is extremely injury prone. None of these guys come close to Iron Men like Cal Ripken JR. Injuries are gonna happen again in 2023. It appears to be unavoidable at this point. 

[4uckOffCommieScum]

23 minutes ago, ChiSoxTrojan said:

 I suspect he's looking for closer to $7M, and there are better ways to spend that money if it's available.

This I agree with.

[ChiSox59]

4 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

 

Here we have 2 guys who probably believe that Wins don't matter for a pitcher which is what we hear often in the enlightened age of stats  now telling us wins matter. Cueto kept us in the games. The Sox offense scored 3 runs or less a tiny bit over 50% of the time. You can't say Cueto didn't pitch well.  Citing how often they won or lost in his starts is more on the offense and defense than it is Cueto.

I think some of you have no consistency of thought unless it suits your argument.  Cueto and Andrus both played well that got us to 81-81. It doesn't matter in 2023 how bad you think they will be. People have to step up and give us what they gave us or improve upon their own performances to cover the lost performances of Abreu, Cueto, Hendriks and Andrus enough to get the Sox 9 more wins when they lost 10 fWar from those 4 players.

Cueto was great for the Sox after they got him for basiscally nothing because no one wanted to sign him.  SP wins don't matter that much.   Its not a SP fault if he goes 7 strong and hte team doesn't score any runs for him or the pen blows it. 

But teams wins certainly matter.  Sox went 11-14 in the games Cueto started.  That is a fact.  Yes he gave them a chance to win more often than not, but the reality is the team didn't win more often than not in the games he start.  I do believe that Mike Clevinger (if he pitches for Sox) or Davis Martin or AJ Alexy or some combination thereof could probably rival a .440 winning percentage across 25 starts.  No, its not mostly Cueto's fault the team didn't perform well in his starts, but replacing a pitcher who a .500 team won less than 50% of his starts should not be that hard.

I wish Johnny Cueto well, but I look forward to him being terrible in 2023 like he was for the lionshare of the last half decade so he stops getting brought up here 25x a day.    

[Balta1701]

1 hour ago, 35thstreetswarm said:

Everybody cites "81 wins" as if it's the definitive and precise mathematical measure of team quality, but let's face it -- there are different ways to get to 81 wins.  They were 5 games over and very much in the race going into that September Cleveland series, and frankly took their foot off the gas for several weeks once they lost that first Cleveland series game in a heartbreaker.  They were in free-fall for a while after they realized they were out of it.  They were probably an 85-win team that fell to .500.  A meaningless and negligible difference, really, but then so is the difference between 81 and 83.5.  83.5 seems reasonable.

As a sidenote, I love threads like this where neutral, outside reality creeps in to the Soxtalk doom chamber for a moment.  The cognitive dissonance can be fascinating to watch.  I swear, we could be heading into the ALCS next year and somebody would post that "the people celebrating the ALCS are missing the real point, which is that Rick Hahn failed to sign Zach Wheeler in the 2019 offseason and..."

They were on pace to be a few games over .500...and they had the run differential of a 77 win team pretty much the whole year. 

[SoxBlanco]

11 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

 

Here we have 2 guys who probably believe that Wins don't matter for a pitcher which is what we hear often in the enlightened age of stats  now telling us wins matter. Cueto kept us in the games. The Sox offense scored 3 runs or less a tiny bit over 50% of the time. You can't say Cueto didn't pitch well.  Citing how often they won or lost in his starts is more on the offense and defense than it is Cueto.

I think some of you have no consistency of thought unless it suits your argument.  Cueto and Andrus both played well that got us to 81-81. It doesn't matter in 2023 how bad you think they will be. People have to step up and give us what they gave us or improve upon their own performances to cover the lost performances of Abreu, Cueto, Hendriks and Andrus enough to get the Sox 9 more wins when they lost 10 fWar from those 4 players. Being sarcastic about how in the world the Sox ever replace the .444 win percentage in his starts doesn't make you right it just makes you sound like a wrong smug ass.

I think you are missing our point. Wins don’t matter in assessing how good a pitcher performed. But people were claiming that the TEAM wouldn’t have won as many games without the great performance of Cueto, and that simply isn’t true. 

You said that we “can’t say Cueto didn’t pitch well”, and you’re absolutely right. He pitched great. 

Edited February 2, 2023 by SoxBlanco

[4uckOffCommieScum]

Except they could have in fact won less games in those starts with worse pitching

[he gone.]

45 minutes ago, ChiSoxTrojan said:

Your case for the under is like 3 times as long as your case for the over. Just saying.

Oh i know. not lost on me. i currently hate this team. I hope it all goes right, but many more off ramps for a poor season. 

 Standing pat ensures almost no path to success this year or into the future, while also really cornering yourself on assets like Lucas Giolito who will not be resigning with us. We'll be in the thick of the race, or at least in fighting distance and we're gonna have to hold onto him and get nothing in return. 

Trading our core and retooling would've been the better option here. We feel like the Rockies just slowly dying with our core that clearly doesn't have the talent to win it all, but also not trading them. 

[Balta1701]

17 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

Cueto was great for the Sox after they got him for basiscally nothing because no one wanted to sign him.  SP wins don't matter that much.   Its not a SP fault if he goes 7 strong and hte team doesn't score any runs for him or the pen blows it. 

But teams wins certainly matter.  Sox went 11-14 in the games Cueto started.  That is a fact.  Yes he gave them a chance to win more often than not, but the reality is the team didn't win more often than not in the games he start.  I do believe that Mike Clevinger (if he pitches for Sox) or Davis Martin or AJ Alexy or some combination thereof could probably rival a .440 winning percentage across 25 starts.  No, its not mostly Cueto's fault the team didn't perform well in his starts, but replacing a pitcher who a .500 team won less than 50% of his starts should not be that hard.

I wish Johnny Cueto well, but I look forward to him being terrible in 2023 like he was for the lionshare of the last half decade so he stops getting brought up here 25x a day.    

Worth noting, Cease, Giolito, and Lynn received on average between 4.96-5.18 runs per game. This was in the top 1/3 of MLB run support. 

Cueto received 4.15. This was in the bottom 40%.

(Kopech received Quintana like run support last year and that won't be discussed because blah).

[fathom]

Still crazy to me how the Sox haven’t done a single thing the last month to provide depth if Hendriks is out for the year and/or Clevinger never pitches here.  It’s sickening how little they care about contending. Based on how this offseason went, I wish they blew up the whole thing.

[ChiSoxTrojan]

34 minutes ago, fathom said:

Still crazy to me how the Sox haven’t done a single thing the last month to provide depth if Hendriks is out for the year and/or Clevinger never pitches here.  It’s sickening how little they care about contending. Based on how this offseason went, I wish they blew up the whole thing.

AJ Alexy and Michael Pineda rumors don't do it for you?

[ChiSoxTrojan]

40 minutes ago, he gone. said:

Standing pat ensures almost no path to success this year or into the future, while also really cornering yourself on assets like Lucas Giolito who will not be resigning with us. We'll be in the thick of the race, or at least in fighting distance and we're gonna have to hold onto him and get nothing in return. 

Off topic and has nothing to do with his impending free agency, but since you brought up Giolito, earlier today I was looking at his splits from last year and noticed that his monthly ERAs in the second half were far worse than his monthly FIP numbers. He had a bad June (coinciding with the sticky stuff crackdown), but his second half FIP was 3.79 (ERA was 5.15). Here's the breakdown by month:

• Mar/Apr: 2.57 ERA, 3.11 FIP
• May: 4.13 ERA, 4.42 FIP
• June: 7.67 ERA, 6.00 FIP
• July: 5.00 ERA, 3.63 FIP
• Aug: 5.68 ERA, 3.74 FIP
• Sep/Oct: 3.48 ERA, 3.23 FIP

 

 

Hopefully along with the reported changes to his offseason conditioning we get to see a nice bounce back.

[southsider2k5]

8 minutes ago, ChiSoxTrojan said:

Off topic and has nothing to do with his impending free agency, but since you brought up Giolito, earlier today I was looking at his splits from last year and noticed that his monthly ERAs in the second half were far worse than his monthly FIP numbers. He had a bad June (coinciding with the sticky stuff crackdown), but his second half FIP was 3.79 (ERA was 5.15). Here's the breakdown by month:

• Mar/Apr: 2.57 ERA, 3.11 FIP
• May: 4.13 ERA, 4.42 FIP
• June: 7.67 ERA, 6.00 FIP
• July: 5.00 ERA, 3.63 FIP
• Aug: 5.68 ERA, 3.74 FIP
• Sep/Oct: 3.48 ERA, 3.23 FIP

 

 

Hopefully along with the reported changes to his offseason conditioning we get to see a nice bounce back.

I know we talked about it last year, but defense killed Giolio.

[Lip Man 1]

1 hour ago, fathom said:

Still crazy to me how the Sox haven’t done a single thing the last month to provide depth if Hendriks is out for the year and/or Clevinger never pitches here.  It’s sickening how little they care about contending. Based on how this offseason went, I wish they blew up the whole thing.

Remember the motto of this ownership, "Fiscal responsibility is more important than winning." 

[Tnetennba]

9 minutes ago, Lip Man 1 said:

Remember the motto of this ownership, "Fiscal responsibility is more important than winning." 

If this is fiscal responsibility then gawd help us all…

[Jose Abreu]

4 hours ago, fathom said:

Still crazy to me how the Sox haven’t done a single thing the last month to provide depth if Hendriks is out for the year and/or Clevinger never pitches here.  It’s sickening how little they care about contending. Based on how this offseason went, I wish they blew up the whole thing.

Especially since Hahn, at the Benintendi press conference, said they weren't a finished product. Since that quote, which is now a month old, they have acquired 0 MLB players

[fathom]

31 minutes ago, Jose Abreu said:

Especially since Hahn, at the Benintendi press conference, said they weren't a finished product. Since that quote, which is now a month old, they have acquired 0 MLB players

Yep, meanwhile we’ve lost two players and the Twins added Correa and Lopez.

[maxjusttyped]

5 minutes ago, fathom said:

Yep, meanwhile we’ve lost two players and the Twins added Correa and Lopez.

Sox had lost the 2nd most net fWAR over the off-season and would be closing in hard on #1 if you factor in Liam & Clevinger.

Edited February 3, 2023 by maxjusttyped