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White Sox ZiPS Projections


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The month of January creeps on. Once you hit February it's all over for roster building. Assuming all our studs are "not ready" the lineup and pitching staffs are both worse to way worse than last year's team that came out of spring training. That must be a helpless feeling as a GM knowing you don't have the weapons so to speak. Seriously our only hope at 50 or more wins instead of 41 would be our central division opponents not being able to get up for the Sox. It will be difficult to get up for the Sox games if you are an opponent. Only way you could get up is if as a hitter you decided to feast on Chicago to build up the RBIs and batting average. And if a pitcher to get those strikeout totals up and ERA down by virtue of domination of the Sox. We're that bad.

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2 hours ago, WhiteSox2023 said:

Their projection for the bullpen of -1.6 WAR is their worst bullpen prediction of all time.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2025-zips-projections-chicago-white-sox/

What’s fascinating is that Steamer in general isn’t all that different in the lineup or rotation, but does have the bullpen at 0.0 fWAR vs. ZiPS’s -1.6 fWAR.  I just don’t buy the bullpen being that terrible.

Wilson put up 0.3 & 0.4 win seasons prior to 2024 and the stuff is still there…I think he comes back healthier and returns to form.  Berroa put up a 2.26 xERA last year over 19 innings as rookie…he may not be great due to control issues but hopefully he’s a positive fWAR guy.  Varland put up 0.4 fWAR with us last year over 26 innings.  Anderson has had three straight positive fWAR seasons and flashes a ton of red on Statcast.  Booser just put up 0.3 fWAR over 40+ innings in his first taste of major league baseball.  That’s only five guys in a pen that will use tons of arms over the course of the season, but I strongly believe that group will exceed 1 fWAR on their own.  And hopefully Smith & Gilbert can be positive contributors as well given they were identified by Bannister.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this will be a good bullpen, but I’m hard pressed to see a -1.6 fWAR protection out of them.  I still feel having a more experienced dude at the top (even if coming off a bad season) would go a long way of adding some stability.

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14 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

What’s fascinating is that Steamer in general isn’t all that different in the lineup or rotation, but does have the bullpen at 0.0 fWAR vs. ZiPS’s -1.6 fWAR.  I just don’t buy the bullpen being that terrible.

Wilson put up 0.3 & 0.4 win seasons prior to 2024 and the stuff is still there…I think he comes back healthier and returns to form.  Berroa put up a 2.26 xERA last year over 19 innings as rookie…he may not be great due to control issues but hopefully he’s a positive fWAR guy.  Varland put up 0.4 fWAR with us last year over 26 innings.  Anderson has had three straight positive fWAR seasons and flashes a ton of red on Statcast.  Booser just put up 0.3 fWAR over 40+ innings in his first taste of major league baseball.  That’s only five guys in a pen that will use tons of arms over the course of the season, but I strongly believe that group will exceed 1 fWAR on their own.  And hopefully Smith & Gilbert can be positive contributors as well given they were identified by Bannister.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this will be a good bullpen, but I’m hard pressed to see a -1.6 fWAR protection out of them.  I still feel having a more experienced dude at the top (even if coming off a bad season) would go a long way of adding some stability.

The bullpen looks to be boom or bust to me.  Getz acquired a bunch of relievers with some recent history of success, but not too much long-term success.  With most relievers other than the truly “lights-out” top guys being fluky from year to year, it could be good or it could be awful like last season.

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11 minutes ago, WhiteSox2023 said:

The bullpen looks to be boom or bust to me.  Getz acquired a bunch of relievers with some recent history of success, but not too much long-term success.  With most relievers other than the truly “lights-out” top guys being fluky from year to year, it could be good or it could be awful like last season.

That’s 100% true, but given everyone has options you simply cycle through the ones working and demote the ones failing.  Outside of Berroa, it’s not exactly a young group you have to commit playing time to.  And I don’t think we’ll be lacking of relief options as Charlotte should have tons of guys warranting looks at some point next year.

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32 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

That’s 100% true, but given everyone has options you simply cycle through the ones working and demote the ones failing.  Outside of Berroa, it’s not exactly a young group you have to commit playing time to.  And I don’t think we’ll be lacking of relief options as Charlotte should have tons of guys warranting looks at some point next year.

They should be churning over some of these guys when more interesting, younger guys hit waivers to be claimed.

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1 hour ago, Chicago White Sox said:

What’s fascinating is that Steamer in general isn’t all that different in the lineup or rotation, but does have the bullpen at 0.0 fWAR vs. ZiPS’s -1.6 fWAR.  I just don’t buy the bullpen being that terrible.

Wilson put up 0.3 & 0.4 win seasons prior to 2024 and the stuff is still there…I think he comes back healthier and returns to form.  Berroa put up a 2.26 xERA last year over 19 innings as rookie…he may not be great due to control issues but hopefully he’s a positive fWAR guy.  Varland put up 0.4 fWAR with us last year over 26 innings.  Anderson has had three straight positive fWAR seasons and flashes a ton of red on Statcast.  Booser just put up 0.3 fWAR over 40+ innings in his first taste of major league baseball.  That’s only five guys in a pen that will use tons of arms over the course of the season, but I strongly believe that group will exceed 1 fWAR on their own.  And hopefully Smith & Gilbert can be positive contributors as well given they were identified by Bannister.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this will be a good bullpen, but I’m hard pressed to see a -1.6 fWAR protection out of them.  I still feel having a more experienced dude at the top (even if coming off a bad season) would go a long way of adding some stability.

Anderson as closer and Bummer in the game both created the expectation of an inevitable cave-in.

Maybe it's just the fact he's okay as a pen guy #4-7 but not nearly good enough to be an effective closer in today's game of 98-103 mph relievers.

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7 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

The Amaya/Colson Montgomery comp is just scary….to consider how much of a setback that would constitute.

Colson had a pretty bad and injury filled year, and his numbers suffered because of it.  We will find out this year if those numbers are for real or not.  Really we need to find out if the health can hold up, and if he can really hit a fastball or if something else was slowing him down from doing so last year.

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