As many have seen, projected 2023 season records have not been kind to the Chicago White Sox. ZiPS has them at 74-88, PECOTA puts them at 78-84, while Steamer serves as the bastion of "optimism" by putting the team at 80-82. I fully expected for projections to be pessimistic this season because of the likelihood that injuries (whether resulting in IL stints or not) were likely a culprit behind down seasons for many key regulars in 2022, which the projection systems won't understand. This team will likely not experience good health, but a reversion to the less catastrophic level of banged-up from 2021 would do wonders for this group.
It's not really worth worrying about the White Sox's 2023 record if the team's health doesn't significantly improve, so I tried to look at the individual position projections under Steamer to see if there were any places where the White Sox could do better given good health. Unfortunately, it seems like a fair bit of optimism is already inherent in the individual numbers that were used to build the 80-82 estimated record. The depth charts are publicly available.
The above represents a pretty good outcome for catcher. The White Sox would certainly take that bounceback from Yasmani Grandal, who just posted a .263 wOBA season, and Steamer sees enough defensive value in Seby Zavala for him to be a decent backup even without a .404 BABIP. It's possible Grandal goes on a tear like he did in 2021, but hoping for better than this at catcher seems like folly. This would be a great result.
Andrew Vaughn has been a career -0.7 WAR player to this point, and while a fair amount of negative value can be ascribed to his outfield play, this represents a significant step forward offensively. This is again another place where the White Sox would be pretty happy with their player simply meeting projections.
The three players listed here who were part of the White Sox roster last season were all horrible, so a projection of positive WAR seems like optimism in of itself. The best path to beating 1.3 WAR at second base is a breakout from Lenyn Sosa coupled with a reversion to form from Leury Garcia, both of which are certainly possible. However, it's easy to see how this situation gets much worse than these estimates even with perfect health.
There was likely a phyiscal reason that Tim Anderson's power completely dried up en route to last year's disappointing finish, and 3.2 WAR seems beatable, especially if he reaches Steamer's projection of 602 plate appearances. I could see a strong Anderson season helping the Sox pick up an extra win against this estimate, but probably not much more than that given that Anderson's plate discipline and uneven defense will always cap his upside.
Yoán Moncada has cleared a .322 wOBA in every odd-numbered season and fallen short of it in every even-numbered season, so 2023 brings some highly scientific optimism. The 2.8 WAR projection doesn't seem low to me, but as we've seen Moncada double that number before, third base seems like the first position we've covered where there's a strong chance to significantly beat the projection if the starter's body cooperates.
Again, we have another situation where the baseline estimate for the starter looks like a reasonably strong outcome. Andrew Benintendi slightly cleared this number in 2022 but failed to do so in each of the previous three seasons. He represents a stronger upgrade to the White Sox than he would other teams simply by virtue of being a living, breathing outfielder, but he's a low upside player that probably shouldn't be expected to do much better than this.
Luis Robert's upside is still that of an elite player, but 588 plate appearances and 4.2 WAR are remarkably high baseline estimates for a player who has never been healthy enough to come close to either. Robert's talent makes the concept of a 6+ WAR season easy to imagine, but given his history, I'm not sure there's enough bubble wrap in existence for it to be a good bet to bank on it in any particular year.
Here we go. There are plenty of valid concerns about Oscar Colás' profile as he graduates to facing major league pitching. The probability that this doesn't go well is significant enough that you should be unhappy that the Sox only signed one outfielder. However, he'll turn 25 during the season, has plenty of power, and has a lot of professional experience under his belt. Colás has enough talent that one can dream on him collecting Rookie of the Year votes by season's end, and that scenario would involve blowing his 0.8 WAR projection out of the water.
It may surprise you to learn that Jiménez has yet to reach 1.9 WAR in any season of his career thus far (though there's a big ol' asterisk on 2020, when he was playing very well). The better versions of Eloy Jiménez have featured a wOBA closer to .370 than the projected .350 above. I'd venture a guess that he might be able to slip into the 3.0 - 3.5 WAR area with good health, which hopefully has increased likelihood with less outfield exposure.
Let's start with the obvious. Dylan Cease has posted back-to-back 4.4 fWAR seasons and is one of the very best pitchers in the American League; the 3.4 WAR estimate seems way too conservative as a 50th percentile. The other major source of upside here seems to be from Lucas Giolito, whose 1.8-WAR 2022 shouldn't be enough to dismiss the memory of WAR totals of 5.2, 2.0 (60-game season), and 4.1 from the preceding three years. When thinking of ways the Sox can beat expectations, a Giolito bounceback ranks pretty high on the list.
The bullpen is always a potential source of upside given that they're tasked with pitching the highest-leverage innings, and even a bullpen with mediocre talent can have a great season if they click at the right times. With rosy projections for Aaron Bummer and Joe Kelly already in the mix, I don't see much outside of a successful return to form from Hendriks that will materially improve this group's core talent. It's all about how they wind up pitching in the clutch (duh).
To sum all of this up, I'm a little concerned that the individual Steamer projections for the White Sox are more optimistic than I would have expected and that still only gets them to 80 wins. If I had to rank players who the team is counting on the most to overperform the above expectations and help the team contend for the AL Central title, I'd probably go...
- Oscar Colás
- Lucas Giolito
- Yoan Moncada
- Lenyn Sosa
- Dylan Cease
It is worrisome that the first and fourth names on my list have 36 combined major league plate appearances to their name. Such is life under Rick Hahn and Jerry Reinsdorf, I guess.
