More Historical Perspective

[Greg Hibbard]

I think that it's really foolish to write off a season, necessarily, because of one really bad 19 game stretch, and here's why....

 

Last five WS teams' worst stretches:

 

2015 KC Royals - 8-16 (games 134-157) - .333 winning percentage

2015 New York Mets - 7-14 (games 53-73) - .333 winning percentage

 

2014 San Francisco Giants - 5-18 (games 65-87) - .218 winning percentage

2014 KC Royals - 9-18 (games 72-98) - .333 winning percentage

 

2013 Boston Red Sox - 2-9 (games 29-39) - .182 winning percentage - *this was one of the more consistent teams, but had multiple 6-8 and 4-10 stretches, as well.

2013 St. Louis Cardinals - 4-13 (games 100-116) - .235 winning percentage - this team still won 97 freaking games.

 

2012 San Francisco Giants - 6-10 (games 17-32) - .375 winning percentage

2012 Detroit Tigers - 20-30 (games 7-56) - .400 winning percentage !!!!!!! - still won 88 games and made it to the WS despite a horrible FIFTY game stretch in the beginning of the season.

 

2011 St. Louis Cardinals - 11-18 (including a 3-11 stretch - games 51-79) - .379 winning percentage

2011 Texas Rangers - 4-11 (games 22-36) - .266 winning percentage

 

It's baseball, folks. Really, really good teams are going to have really, really bad stretches because of poor play, variance, the length of the season, injuries....and really, really mediocre teams are going to have super hot stretches, inexplicably. One does not have to go much further than the 2010 white sox who went 22-5 in one stretch to find evidence the other way.

 

My main point is that the jury is WAY WAY WAY out on this season.

 

I would ask everyone here to keep something in mind: we play 27 of our last 43 games at home, including a stretch of 20 out of 27 games. This team has shown the ability to get red hot.

 

We have maybe the single best pitcher in the AL in Chris Sale, another top 5 AL starter in Quintana, a bona fide superstar in Abreu (albeit slumping) and Frazier and Lawrie are major additions. Robertson is a front line closer. We have enough big pieces, we need the medium sized ones and we have the purchasing power.

 

If you were sunshine and rainbows about the start, and doom and gloom about the last 20 days, it's totally understandable. This team has been more jeckyl and hyde with two initial big stretches than any I can remember recently.

 

However, I am enjoying the fact that we are three games over .500, having played more road games than home, and being over .500 in both splits.

 

We have figured out we have a lot of issues to address, but mainly we need to add a designated hitter and at least one pitcher. We have money to spend and an aggressive team president who still does have a world series win on his resume, something that no one who has ever worked for the people across town in the past 100 years can boast. That will start to weigh heavier and heavier on them as expectations get loftier and loftier on the North Side. Watch and see.

 

I know faith is hard to come by around here, but I wasn't surprised they came back and won it last night. This is, after all, the exact same team that seemingly couldn't find a way to lose just three and a half short weeks ago. I was happy.

 

I am trying to temper my expectations and hoping others do too.

Edited June 1, 2016 by Greg Hibbard

[bmags]

Thanks Greg, nice post. I'm worn out by the last few weeks. But somehow I made it in to see Saladino's homer. I just want baseball to be fun this year.

[shysocks]

Good research. The '05 Sox had some rough spots too.

 

We're about where a lot of us thought we'd be at this point of the season, although the path getting there was frustrating, to put it kindly.

[southsider2k5]

At a mark of 28-25, the White Sox are on a pace for 85.6 wins, or almost exactly where Soxtalk predicted them to be this year. That is despite and including the horrible streak of ball in the last few weeks of May.

[southsider2k5]

Also interesting... The Sox hit 14 points higher as a team in May, than they did in April (.252 vs .238) They also only committed 7 errors for the entire month vs 16 in April.

[Chisoxfn]

Great post Greg. Baseball is a marathon not a sprint and in a large season, every team, even the best, are going to have their fare share of losing streaks and beat downs. I do think if this team is going to legitimately make the playoffs, it needs some help. The back of the rotation won't hold, probably need another reliever, and the offense could use help.

[Greg Hibbard]

At a mark of 28-25, the White Sox are on a pace for 85.6 wins, or almost exactly where Soxtalk predicted them to be this year. That is despite and including the horrible streak of ball in the last few weeks of May.

 

They are on pace for sure, but I believe most would say their schedule has been weighted towards having the toughest stretch early, no?

 

 

[Rowand44]

Good stuff Greg.

[Lip Man 1]

They are on pace for sure, but I believe most would say their schedule has been weighted towards having the toughest stretch early, no?

 

Schedule still isn't easy...June is a killer. They really don't see things ease up (if you can call that in the A.L.) until after the All Star break.

 

Mark

Edited June 1, 2016 by Lip Man 1

[SoCalSox]

Very good post.

[flavum]

I'd say the one thing to be completely worried about is the ability to beat teams in the division. It's a 2-game swing every time you play the Indians or Royals, or now the Tigers.

 

2-4 at home vs the Indians

1-5 vs the Royals

 

That's not good when you have 19 precious games against each. 3-3 vs both right now would have the Sox comfortably ahead in the division.

 

But the point is taken that it's rare that a team consistently wins 6 out of 10 games all season long. There are swings both ways.

 

At the 1/3 mark in the season, 29-25 is pretty good if you didn't know they were once 23-10, and lost 9 of 12 vs the Indians and Royals.

Edited June 2, 2016 by flavum

[caulfield12]

Yeah, those six consecutive losses to CLE and KC were a killer...all we had to do was win 1/3.

 

Well, technically we went 1-3 against the Indians in that series, but we let a 4+ game lead at the end of the doubleheader last Monday turn into a 2 game deficit.

 

 

As far as home and away goes, the White Sox in recent years have played better on the road against the best competition...but, to win the division or even get a WC, they're going to have to play better than .500 ball against two of the three teams from here on out and keep killing the Twins (and FINALLY START CREATING/DEFENDING THE HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE).

 

You can say with the Indians, they'd be ahead of us were it not for their poor play against MN, for example.

Edited June 2, 2016 by caulfield12

[SonofaRoache]

This team just doesn't have enough talent or the manager to be good. It's that simple. This team has made the playoffs 5 times in 40 plus years including numerous choke jobs. Even the 2005 team let a 15 game lead drop to 1.5 in 6 weeks. That is the historical perspective that scares me.

[Quin]

This team just doesn't have enough talent or the manager to be good. It's that simple. This team has made the playoffs 5 times in 40 plus years including numerous choke jobs. Even the 2005 team let a 15 game lead drop to 1.5 in 6 weeks. That is the historical perspective that scares me.

 

40 years ago has no bearing on today.

 

This is a team driven by momentum, that much is clear. Texas derailed that, but hopefully this weekend will right the ship.

[bmags]

What a choke job by that 2005 team.

[Greg Hibbard]

I'd say the one thing to be completely worried about is the ability to beat teams in the division. It's a 2-game swing every time you play the Indians or Royals, or now the Tigers.

 

2-4 at home vs the Indians

1-5 vs the Royals

 

That's not good when you have 19 precious games against each. 3-3 vs both right now would have the Sox comfortably ahead in the division.

 

But the point is taken that it's rare that a team consistently wins 6 out of 10 games all season long. There are swings both ways.

 

At the 1/3 mark in the season, 29-25 is pretty good if you didn't know they were once 23-10, and lost 9 of 12 vs the Indians and Royals.

 

I agree with you regarding divisional games being particularly important with respect to the 2-game swing, but I really don't know that I'd cherry-pick the divisional teams themselves, in the way you're doing.

 

For several years, I've heard the "if you can't beat divisional teams...." mantra, but I've heard it applied to all divisional teams in all circumstances, in what I think is a clunky way of doing things.

 

We're talking about, what, 76 games of the season...in four 19 game chunks? Well, just as I emphasized that it might be a bit silly to focus on the 4-15 stretch and extrapolate that to determine how good or bad any given team could be, I think it's a bit shortsighted to take individual records against certain teams and state that it killed a season.

 

If we had gone 3-3 vs. both the Royals and Indians, but then also gone 3-3 against the Twins, I guarantee you we would be having the conversation that we need to beat the Twins more often, if we expect to compete for the division. Back in 2003, I recall a lot of people lambasted the Sox for not having a better overall record against the hapless 43-119 Detroit Tigers (they went 11-8 against them), citing that as a principle reason why that particular team didn't make the posteason. Cherry-picking doesn't get us very far, no matter where we apply it. We are 6-0 against the Twins, and I guarantee every fan around here has just taken that for granted, and not thought twice about it since those series happened. In baseball, can you ever reasonably expect to be 6-0 in 6 games against any team, no matter how bad they are? I don't think so. That's part of the reason why the season is 162 games long. Nobody's counting their blessings every time they think about it, and yet the Royals and Indians records are very much the problem. Yes, we are probably competing with them for this division. However, in 6 games, are we really able to evaluate which team is better or worse, overall, so far? I don't think so. We might be able to determine who is better in May, who got hot, and where some problems are.

 

I prefer to look at our entire divisional record thus far, and then measure our overall record against that. Currently we are 9-9 in the division and 29-25 overall. We've done a bit worse, but I expect that it will even out on both ends over the course of the season. If we don't have at least an above .500 divisional record by the end of the year, like 5 or 6 games above .500 - I don't really expect us to compete. I'm excited to see what we do against the Tigers this weekend.

Edited June 2, 2016 by Greg Hibbard

[CB2.0]

You can certainly have your own preference for how you choose to measure success, but flavum's (correct) point regarding divisional foes is it's not just an increase in the W or L column. It also directly affects your position in the division.

 

You sweep the Angels in a 3 game set while the Tigers, Indians, and Royals also win over those 3 games - so what. You don't gain any ground. Same as if you and they all lose.

 

But you GET swept by any one of those 3, you can see huge difference immediately.

 

That we keep getting our asses handed to us by Cleveland and Kanas is a big problem.

Edited June 3, 2016 by CB2.0

[Greg Hibbard]

You can certainly have your own preference for how you choose to measure success, but flavum's (correct) point regarding divisional foes is it's not just an increase in the W or L column. It also directly affects your position in the division.

 

You sweep the Angels in a 3 game set while the Tigers, Indians, and Royals also win over those 3 games - so what. You don't gain any ground. Same as if you and they all lose.

 

But you GET swept by any one of those 3, you can see huge difference immediately.

 

I agreed with him on the point about 2-game swings.

 

I disagree on cherry-picking particular divisional teams, as I said in the preceding post.

[flavum]

It may be cherry-picking six games into a 19-game season series, but if they get to the end of the season and the Royals win the division with an 89-73 record, while the Sox go 86-76...and in the process go 6-13 in the season series---there's no other way to look at it than the Sox blew the division.

Edited June 3, 2016 by flavum

[Greg Hibbard]

It may be cherry-picking six games into a 19-game season series, but if they get to the end of the season and the Royals win the division with an 89-73 record, while the Sox go 86-76...and in the process go 6-13 in the season series---there's no other way to look at it than the Sox blew the division.

 

So, let me play devil's advocate here. Let's say the Sox go 9-10 vs. KC and 8-11 vs. the Indians, but lose most of their games early, but go 5-1 against each team respectively, late. Did they blow it in mid-May?

 

Look, I agree with you that being results-oriented post-season against the eventual division winner is a whole lot different than any other team in your division or in baseball, but I also would say that games in September against the then-division leader become even more important as we all know they are decisive. They are maybe 3,4,5,6 times as important as any other game. Simply saying the record heads up is important, in a vacuum, is way oversimplifying things.

 

Also, let's say the Sox go 18-1 against the Twins, and 12-7 against the Tigers. What do we say, then? Is that just what they "should have done"?

Edited June 3, 2016 by Greg Hibbard

[caulfield12]

The White Sox absolutely need to win at least 2/3 in DETROIT to prove they can actually win a series for once against one of the 3 remaining contenders for the division. If we can't beat the arguably (and statistically backed up) 4th best team in the division, then who/when/how?

 

Just like we like to blame Ventura, KC fans will blame Falling "Asleep at the Wheel" Yost for last night if they end up on the wrong side of the season series with CLE (and giving them huge momentum now with two crazy walk-off twins in a row over TEX and now the Royals).

 

The fact of the matter is that we were pretty fortunate to get Minnesota and hold them down when they were just mental midgets. Now they're playing much better baseball (see series against SEA recently)...and they're 4-2 against the Indians, for example (should have even been 5-1).

 

If we're NOT going to beat Cleveland and KC now (when they're missing so many key players), then when? When we've acquired this ideal LH power hitter, improved the bench, bullpen and starting rotation in July/August?

 

This also puts us in the uncomfortable position of having to beat up the Tigers...on the road, something that (recently, at least) has shown is quite tough to do because their offense matches up pretty well with our pitching (other than Sale, when he's on) staff. Plus, we're apparently going to be without one of our most consistent hitters this year in Cabrera, and playing at least one terrible defender in Sands/Garcia in that huge RCF.

Edited June 3, 2016 by caulfield12

[Greg Hibbard]

The White Sox absolutely need to win at least 2/3 in DETROIT to prove they can actually win a series for once against one of the 3 remaining contenders for the division. If we can't beat the arguably (and statistically backed up) 4th best team in the division, then who/when/how?

 

Just like we like to blame Ventura, KC fans will blame Falling "Asleep at the Wheel" Yost for last night if they end up on the wrong side of the season series with CLE (and giving them huge momentum now with two crazy walk-off twins in a row over TEX and now the Royals).

 

The fact of the matter is that we were pretty fortunate to get Minnesota and hold them down when they were just mental midgets. Now they're playing much better baseball (see series against SEA recently)...and they're 4-2 against the Indians, for example (should have even been 5-1).

 

If we're NOT going to beat Cleveland and KC now (when they're missing so many key players), then when? When we've acquired this ideal LH power hitter, improved the bench, bullpen and starting rotation in July/August?

 

This also puts us in the uncomfortable position of having to beat up the Tigers...on the road, something that (recently, at least) has shown is quite tough to do because their offense matches up pretty well with our pitching (other than Sale, when he's on) staff. Plus, we're apparently going to be without one of our most consistent hitters this year in Cabrera, and playing at least one terrible defender in Sands/Garcia in that huge RCF.

 

So why aren't we saying that Cleveland isn't going to win the division or doesn't deserve to win the division because they are 2-4 against the Twins?

 

Why not say that the Royals don't deserve it if they are going to go 1-3 against the Indians thus far? Or 1-3 against the under .500 Yanks and 0-3 against the last place Angels?

 

The Indians and Royals aren't exactly juggernauts, here. Yes, the Royals are playing much better of late, but both teams have had wildly inconsistent stretches and shown plenty of weaknesses. So have the Sox. I'm call it about even in early June.

 

I hope you're being hyperbolic when you say the White Sox absolutely need to win a series in Detroit this weekend. They may win 3, they may lose 3, they may win or lose 2. It will likely have little bearing on the strategy or the overall standings. No one is going to run away and hide with this division.

 

The composition of this team will drastically change WHEN (not if) the front office acquires players to make their run later this summer. It's likely we won't have the same rotation, daily lineup, or bench. We will likely be much improved, if we can remain injury free. So yes, we will have a much better time beating the Royals and Indians when we are actually sporting a Major League Designated hitter, a deeper bench, and a more seasoned rotation.

 

Additionally, Rodon and Saladino are good examples of players that are apparently benefiting from seasoning on the job, and may be better as we go on. Wouldn't you agree? Would you say that they might be more reliable major league pieces in September than they were in April?

 

Because there are so many teams in the AL that are still in it, it's likely that the White Sox will not acquire all of their pieces until potentially late July or early August, when some teams finally give up. I think I'll wait until then to start proclaiming certain series "must win"

Edited June 3, 2016 by Greg Hibbard

[Greg Hibbard]

Also, why is it that when the Twins can go 4-2 against the Indians they are "playing much better of late", but when the Royals come back and win three straight come from behind victories against the Sox, it's the White Sox who suck?

[Lip Man 1]

Also, why is it that when the Twins can go 4-2 against the Indians they are "playing much better of late", but when the Royals come back and win three straight come from behind victories against the Sox, it's the White Sox who suck?

 

Maybe, just maybe it's because the Sox blew late leads in every game...AND half of the Royals starters were out with serious injuries.

 

Maybee...LOL.

 

Mark

 

[Kyyle23]

So why aren't we saying that Cleveland isn't going to win the division or doesn't deserve to win the division because they are 2-4 against the Twins?

 

Why not say that the Royals don't deserve it if they are going to go 1-3 against the Indians thus far? Or 1-3 against the under .500 Yanks and 0-3 against the last place Angels?

 

The Indians and Royals aren't exactly juggernauts, here. Yes, the Royals are playing much better of late, but both teams have had wildly inconsistent stretches and shown plenty of weaknesses. So have the Sox. I'm call it about even in early June.

 

I hope you're being hyperbolic when you say the White Sox absolutely need to win a series in Detroit this weekend. They may win 3, they may lose 3, they may win or lose 2. It will likely have little bearing on the strategy or the overall standings. No one is going to run away and hide with this division.

 

The composition of this team will drastically change WHEN (not if) the front office acquires players to make their run later this summer. It's likely we won't have the same rotation, daily lineup, or bench. We will likely be much improved, if we can remain injury free. So yes, we will have a much better time beating the Royals and Indians when we are actually sporting a Major League Designated hitter, a deeper bench, and a more seasoned rotation.

 

Additionally, Rodon and Saladino are good examples of players that are apparently benefiting from seasoning on the job, and may be better as we go on. Wouldn't you agree? Would you say that they might be more reliable major league pieces in September than they were in April?

 

Because there are so many teams in the AL that are still in it, it's likely that the White Sox will not acquire all of their pieces until potentially late July or early August, when some teams finally give up. I think I'll wait until then to start proclaiming certain series "must win"

 

Caulfield? No, never