White Sox Early PECOTA Projections

[South Side Hit Men]

Jim Margalus broke down a few of the “revamped” positions in this article covering early PECOTA:

https://soxmachine.com/2023/12/previewing-white-sox-position-battles-with-early-pecota-projections/

 

PECOTA Projections (All 50% Percentile)

2024 Replacements

• C Stassi 1.4 & Lee -1.2
• 2B Lopez 0.3
• SS DeJong 0.2

2024 Replaced players

• C Grandal 1.0
• 2B Andrus 0.8
• SS Anderson 0.9

2024 Projected Staff

• 150 IP Fedde 2.0
• 87 IP Soroka 0.8
• 104 IP Toussaint 0.5
• 107 IP Kopech 0.2
• 77 IP Shuster -0.4

The go into additional players on the Sox Machine Podcast:

PECOTA 50% Percentile Projections

Position Players

• 3.3 Luis Robert Jr. (40th ranked MLB Position Player) 30 HR 87 RBI
• 2.7 Andrew Benintendi (65th) 11 HR 63 RBI
• 2.5 Eloy Jimenez (75th) 24 HR 79 RBI
• 1.7 Andrew Vaughn 22 HR 76 RBI .737 OPS
• 1.6 Yoan Moncada 17 HR 66 RBI .709 OPS

Starting Pitchers

• 2.0 Erick Fedde
• 1.9 Dylan Cease
• 0.8 Mike Soroka
• 0.5 Touki Toussaint
• 0.2 Michael Kopech

[Chisoxfn]

How is Fedde more than Cease. A guy one year removed from a cy young type season vs a guy who is a reclamation project albeit with some promise. 

[Timmy U]

If Fedde's really a 2 WAR player, I bet they deal him at the deadline. This org has such little talent, there's gonna be years of churn.

[South Side Hit Men]

1 hour ago, Timmy U said:

If Fedde's really a 2 WAR player, I bet they deal him at the deadline. This org has such little talent, there's gonna be years of churn.

They said the same thing, if he is good he'll likely be flipped. They also said if you have two top pitchers, if the Sox legitimately tried this season the division is certainly winnable, though there are many holes to fill. Even considering a very modest $130M-$140M, if you add guys like Kyle Lewis in RF, say Giolito or Anderson return on a one year deal, you convert a couple lottery tickets (convert on Fedde, reunite Wood with the SF guys, add Kyle Lewis in RF, sign Jonathan Davis for adequate OF reserve coverage, pick up 3-5 minor league invite relievers and convert on 1-2, perhaps also one more starter.

That is what I'd like to see, not settling on an unsatisfying Cease or Eloy trade to dump salary. Sure if you are blown away by a Cease offer or are given solid prospects for Eloy, then perhaps change course. But the bottom line is the Sox will need to vastly improve player development and scouting to have a future contending team. Whatever comes back in these prospect trades will not be anything they got in the Sale/Eaton/Quintana trades, which also ultimately got us nowhere since they lacked player development and scouting.

2 hours ago, Chisoxfn said:

How is Fedde more than Cease. A guy one year removed from a cy young type season vs a guy who is a reclamation project albeit with some promise. 

They explained some of it in the podcast, but the brief explanation for it is BP has a narrower range for pitching WAR than the other systems, PECOTA projects sustained progress from his Korean performance, and Cease has been up and down and this is a middle of the road projection.

To me the biggest head scratcher was Benintendi being within 0.3 of Robert, or quite frankly being over 1.0. I don't see Eloy that high either unless he's able to stay healthy and somehow play well RF. Moncada has upside and I think he'll be their second best position player with a solid chance at 2.5-3.0 fWAR.

I've successfully used PECOTA in my Rotisserie teams over the years. Yes there are misses on individual players like every system, but I found over a broad range of players it was worth seeking out. 

 

My Dollar Store $120M-$125M Payroll plan linked below,

 

[nrockway]

Does Baseball Prospectus give any information on how they do their projections? Intuitively, Fedde seems a bit high (though not outrageous, I have high hopes for him), Cease seems low. Vaughn's WAR might be right, but I have a hard time believing his OPS will be lower than last season and still produce higher WAR. Eloy feels a little high and I don't think Moncada's OPS will drop 20 points in a contract year (provided he's healthy). Even Kopech seems low, he was pretty abysmal this year and still produced 0.7 bWAR...maybe if he's a reliever. I don't think players like Kopech, Vaughn, Moncada could get much worse. Benny's WAR is optimistic but not out of the realm of possibility. 

Fedde seems particularly interesting to me because I wonder how they weigh KBO stats relative to MLB stats if they are using 3 or so years of data to make a projection.

[chw42]

Fedde having higher projected WAR than Cease is hilarious. PECOTA has been bad for a while so no surprise.

Edited December 23, 2023 by chw42

[caulfield12]

1 minute ago, chw42 said:

Fedde having higher projected WAR than Cease is hilarious. PECOTA has been bad for a while so no surprise.

Or Benintendi being so close to Robert...based on what exactly?

Benintendi has only had one good season in the past four...and that was largely on the backs of being in that Yankee lineup, not unlike Pollock with the Dodgers then subsequently falling off a cliff.

[chw42]

6 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Or Benintendi being so close to Robert...based on what exactly?

Benintendi has only had one good season in the past four...and that was largely on the backs of being in that Yankee lineup, not unlike Pollock with the Dodgers then subsequently falling off a cliff.

I can see why projection systems might be a bit pessimistic on Robert due to his swing and miss issues. I just don't see how they can be so optimistic on Benintendi. His defense also fell off a cliff last year. Part of his value before was that he was a good left fielder. Not anymore.

Edited December 23, 2023 by chw42

[nrockway]

24 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Or Benintendi being so close to Robert...based on what exactly?

Benintendi has only had one good season in the past four...and that was largely on the backs of being in that Yankee lineup, not unlike Pollock with the Dodgers then subsequently falling off a cliff.

his best years were in Boston and KC, ranging from (complete seasons) 1.7 WAR to 3.9 WAR. I don't think it's absurd to think that a healthy Benintendi could put up ~2.5 WAR. I wouldn't expect Robert to drop 2 WAR from last season though, even if a slight regression is in order (I don't think he'll regress unless he misses games).

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

9 hours ago, chw42 said:

Fedde having higher projected WAR than Cease is hilarious. PECOTA has been bad for a while so no surprise.

We can trade Fedde right now for a haul !!! ?

[caulfield12]

9 hours ago, nrockway said:

his best years were in Boston and KC, ranging from (complete seasons) 1.7 WAR to 3.9 WAR. I don't think it's absurd to think that a healthy Benintendi could put up ~2.5 WAR. I wouldn't expect Robert to drop 2 WAR from last season though, even if a slight regression is in order (I don't think he'll regress unless he misses games).

Assuming some were right about his wrist...why would he suddenly become one of the worst defenders in baseball simultaneously?

[nrockway]

3 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

Assuming some were right about his wrist...why would he suddenly become one of the worst defenders in baseball simultaneously?

Daryl Boston I'm sure had a large part of it although I'm not so sure Benintendi was ever all that good defensively in left. I'd put some blame on the outfield coach because the schemes out there were ridiculous, nobody was ever in a proper position and only Robert could make up for it by having incredible range. Basically every flyball anywhere in left or right center field consisted of Robert pissing off his teammates by essentially taking balls out of their gloves. I've never seen so much chippiness among outfielders about whose routine flyball it was to catch. I'm sure that creates uncertainty and a lack of confidence and since there's only so much dWAR to go around, all of it went to Robert as there were fewer potential chances for the left and right fielders which magnifies their mistakes. 

Benintendi's dWAR looked pretty good in Boston playing in a very tiny left field and during his gold glove season in KC, he played with a terrible defensive right fielder and gold glove center fielder who thus probably shaded toward right to compensate for Dozier's garbage defense (to a lesser extent, Isbel and and Olivares) giving Benintendi more chances to make plays. Hopefully the additions of Bourgeois and Sizemore can help the defense out there, but we'll see. 

[caulfield12]

12 hours ago, nrockway said:

Daryl Boston I'm sure had a large part of it although I'm not so sure Benintendi was ever all that good defensively in left. I'd put some blame on the outfield coach because the schemes out there were ridiculous, nobody was ever in a proper position and only Robert could make up for it by having incredible range. Basically every flyball anywhere in left or right center field consisted of Robert pissing off his teammates by essentially taking balls out of their gloves. I've never seen so much chippiness among outfielders about whose routine flyball it was to catch. I'm sure that creates uncertainty and a lack of confidence and since there's only so much dWAR to go around, all of it went to Robert as there were fewer potential chances for the left and right fielders which magnifies their mistakes. 

Benintendi's dWAR looked pretty good in Boston playing in a very tiny left field and during his gold glove season in KC, he played with a terrible defensive right fielder and gold glove center fielder who thus probably shaded toward right to compensate for Dozier's garbage defense (to a lesser extent, Isbel and and Olivares) giving Benintendi more chances to make plays. Hopefully the additions of Bourgeois and Sizemore can help the defense out there, but we'll see. 

It wasn't just that though...misplays, bad reads, throwing to the wrong bases...fear of the walls, being too nonchalant or lackadaisical and allowing runners to take extra bases.  Much like Pollock preceding him, he seemed for most of the season like he just would have preferred to be anywhere else but the Sox outfield.

Coaching alone can't explain that...because his most logical motivation would be to play well enough to get traded out of a situation he didn't seem to enjoy very much.

Edited December 24, 2023 by caulfield12