The Hardball Times -- Christopher Michaels http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en studes@hardballtimes.com Copyright 2013 2013-05-23T08:50:15+00:00 Why the White Sox will beat the Rays http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/why-the-white-sox-will-beat-the-rays/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/why-the-white-sox-will-beat-the-rays/#When:06:42:15
While the prevailing narrative seemed to be that nobody wanted to take control of the Central as both the Sox and Twins faltered in September, the reality is that the White Sox have been in control since May 15th. For it was on that date that two important events occurred. First, Juan Uribe, who opened the season as the team's starting second baseman, went down with a leg injury. All his replacement (Alexei Ramirez) has done is hit .304/.331/.502 since, including the go-ahead grand slam in game 162, inserting himself into the middle of the AL Rookie discussion. Second, that was the last day the White Sox were as much a one game behind in the division. True, they didn't hold on to first place for every remaining day on the schedule, and had to go all the way to game 163 to decide the division, but they never trailed by more than a half-game.

If the baseball season is a marathon, the White Sox were the team with the world class kick. Well, maybe not world class, but strong enough to outkick their competition. They set the pace all season, and saved just enough to outlast a scrappy Twins squad that nipped at their heels for the entire second half. And they've got enough left in the tank for a post-season sprint.

They've been there before


The Sox have seen some considerable roster churn since their 2005 World Series title, but their core remains. That squad was anchored by Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye offensively, with AJ Pierzynski making the calls behind the plate and Bobby Jenks closing games out. Mark Buehrle is the only starting pitcher returning from that team, but ...

They're tested


John Danks and Gavin Floyd were question marks coming into the season, but they're playoff veterans now. Floyd has pitched two of his best games in the twilight of the season, with an impressive performance in Yankee Stadium and an amazing start on short rest in what amounted to an elimination game Monday. Floyd mixed his pitches well, and when Detroit started to sit on his fastball, he scrapped it altogether, using a variety of breaking balls to record his final six outs.

Danks, who is only 23, has been protected from a high workload by the White Sox. When the Jose Contreras injury left them without a true fifth starter and forced them into essentially a four-man rotation, the Sox did everything in their power to make sure that Danks was not used on short rest. And when they were finally left with no other option in game 163, Danks turned in the best start of his young career in the most pressure-packed game you can have outside the playoffs.

They've weathered the storm


The Sox choked. There's no other way to explain their five-game losing streak in the final week of the season. To revisit the running analogy, they stumbled, falling flat on their face in the final 200 meters of the marathon, before getting back to their feet and sprinting back to the lead in a photo finish. They've already stared elimination in the face.

The Sox were a team falling apart as late as the final Saturday of the regular season. Javier Vazquez got into a mound argument with Pierzynski after he gave up a three-run double. Orlando Cabrera was calling out his teammates. Ozzie Guillen was calling out Orlando Cabrera. Nick Swisher, who has never met a microphone he didn't like, was suddenly not talking to the media following his late-September benching.

Then they won the final three games. Pierzynski hugged Vazquez, who will pitch game one based on availability more than merit. Cabrera gushed about the heart of his teammates. And Swisher was friends with the media again. Winning cures all. Winning after the season seemed lost gives the Sox a Nothing To Lose mentality heading into the playoffs.

They've got a pair of ringless Hall of Fame-bound players


Jim Thome and Ken Griffey Jr. have combined for 1152 home runs, including the game 163 game-winner, and have played a combined 4751 major league games (including playoffs), but neither have a World Series title on their resume. There has never been a 600 home run club hitter and a 500 home run club hitter in the same lineup prior to this White Sox team, and there may never be two players on the same club who've combined for such impressive individual records, yet lack the ultimate team crown, ever again.

Thome and Junior looked like little kids dancing on the field Tuesday night. While there is no way to quantify this, there's nobody in baseball that wants to get to that point again, this time celebrating a World Series win, more than these two. Give an edge to the Sox on intangibles.

They've turned up the heat in the pen


Bobby Jenks has transformed from a fireballing fastball-curveball strikeout artist in his first two seasons to a strike-throwing groundball machine with a complete arsenal of pitches in his last two. Jenks all but ditched his curveball this season, and when he did throw it, it wasn't the fall-off-the-table hammer that Jenks rode to dominance in the 2005 postseason. Jenks has always maintained that he could reach 100 again "if he needed it," which was widely used as a punchline by many a White Sox fan.

Jenks may have the last laugh though. He opened the season throwing in the low-to-mid 90s on the radar gun, and sat at about 94-95 mph for much of the season. But in the last few weeks Jenks fastball has begun to show some signs of renewed life. He averaged about 95-96 in his last few outings before unleashing some serious heat in the play-in game against the Twins, when his fastball averaged 98.1 mph and topped out at 99.7 according to Gameday.

Jenks isn't the only member of the Sox with some renewed life in his arm. Scott Linebrink's trip to the DL in late July sent the White Sox pen into a tailspin, and he didn't exactly help when he finally returned at the beginning of September. But in his final outing he averaged 93 mph on the gun, up from 90-91 in his previous post-DL outings, and showcased a hard breaking curveball that hadn't been seen since June. It was only one outing, but it was the first glimpse the Sox have had of the Linebrink who allowed only five earned runs over his first 37 appearances.

Also bringing the heat in the pen are Matt Thornton, the hardest throwing lefthander in baseball, and Octavio Dotel, who is a walking definition of streaky. Thankfully for the White Sox, he closed the season on a hot streak, retiring the last 15 batters he's faced, eight by strikeout.

The Sox bullpen was terrible in the second half, but these four guys might be putting it all back together at the right time to give the Sox a shot at a postseason run.

They've got power at every position


Postseason baseball is said to be about pitching and defense. You'll get no argument from me there. I've already touched on the Sox pitching. Defensively, the Sox are challenged, especially in the outfield and holding runners. But what the Sox lack in outfield defense, they make up for with the longball.

It seems that power is written off by many once the postseason rolls around. This strikes me as odd, because if the game is going to be low-scoring, decided by pitching, doesn't that amplify the impact of the home run? Well the Sox are the most powerful team in baseball. They live and die by the home run, and more often than not, they've lived this season. As they showed in the play-in game, dominant pitching plus one swing of the bat can be a winning formula in a playoff atmosphere.

They're the Rays' equal


Even thought the Rays compiled the best record in the AL, the last time they faced the White Sox, I noted how evenly matched the two clubs were. Looking back on that entry, I should have seen the injury comparison as a sign. Carlos Quentin, the Sox left fielder and MVP candidate, would only last another week. The Sox haven't announced their playoff roster, but it's a pretty good bet that Quentin will not make the cut. He's begun to take swings, however, and could be back for the ALCS, but that's for another preview.

The Sox have actually outscored the Rays 37-35, despite losing six of their 10 meetings this season. The first three meetings of the year were blowouts, but the remaining seven were some of the Sox' hardest fought games of the year. Three of the games ended in walk-offs, and five were decided by the bullpens. In fact, if not for a Sox bullpen that could be described as incredibly unlucky and an offense that completely shut down with two outs and runners in scoring position, the Sox might have come out on top in seven or more of their contests with the Rays.

Prediction


No team can match the White Sox combination of power, pitching and experience. Certainly not the Rays. White Sox in 5


Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Christopher Michaels 2008-10-02T06:42:15+00:00 The remains of the season: Chicago White Sox http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-remains-of-the-season-chicago-white-sox/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-remains-of-the-season-chicago-white-sox/#When:05:08:15
Sure, why not? I read THT daily and can crank out 1,500 words on the White Sox with little effort. I quickly replied that I'd love to have another opportunity to write for THT, but wanted to hold off until after the trade deadline, as it would be much easier to avoid looking stupid by waiting until after the Sox roster became set. Boy, am I glad I waited. They were rumored to be shopping Orlando Cabrera in an effort to land more pitching, but when the trade deadline came and went it was a surprise move for Ken Griffey Jr. and nothing else.

The acquisition of Junior left me, and pretty much everyone not named Mike Downey, confused. The Sox needed pitching depth, not another old, defensively-challenged power threat in their lineup. Worst of all, it appears the Sox are willing to live with Junior's woeful fielding in center field. As I write this, he has seen just five games in the field (four in center field, one in right field), yet he has managed to turn three routine plays into triples—two of which were the dreaded single-turned-triple—and has averaged one play a game that makes you question what he's doing out there. I'm confident the Sox will come to the seemingly obvious conclusion that Griffey cannot play a major league-caliber center field, but much less so that they'll reach that conclusion before he's cost them with his sluggish, running with $100 worth of pennies in my cargo pants defensive efforts.

The Griffey addition is a good one if you think of him as a type of super-platoon player, a shadow starter of sorts, giving a different guy a day off each time he finds his way into the lineup. This is exactly the way Ozzie Guillen has utilized Griffey in his first week, giving Jim Thome, Paul Konerko, Jermaine Dye and Nick Swisher each a day off. Unfortunately, in the limited time Griffey has been with the Sox, Thome, Konerko and Swisher, the three players he figured to replace most often, have all hit extremely well, albeit in an extremely small sample size. Griffey won't have a significant impact on the Sox's pennant chances unless there's an injury to one of the Sox key sluggers, because he can't be in the lineup with all of them at once. He merely insulates the team from the effect of an injury while providing some additional downtime to their plodding, beer league softball hitters.

Injuries tell White Sox's story


The single biggest reason the Sox climbed atop the AL Central and held onto sole possession of first place for two-and-a-half months was excellent team health. Between opening day and July 1, the only significant loss was a DL trip for Konerko, during whose absence the Sox went 13-7. Juan Uribe served as the starting second baseman from spring training until May 15, when a DL trip forced Alexei Ramirez, who had struggled to adjust to big-league pitching, into starting duties. All Ramirez has done since is post a .335/.352/.511 triple-slash line, relegating Uribe to Wally Pipp status. The Sox had very few injuries, and the few that they experienced were weathered by fine play from the replacements.

Since the calendar flipped to July, however, the Sox have not been so lucky in the injury department. Bobby Jenks, Scott Linebrink, Joe Crede and Jose Contreras have all spent time on the DL. Jenks bounced back quickly, and even appears to have a little more life on his fastball since his return. The others, conversely, have all experienced setbacks in their recovery effort; the most damaging was Contreras' ruptured Achilles tendon suffered this past weekend just two innings into his return from the DL.

The Contreras injury combined with Linebrink's slow-going rehab effort has set off a domino effect, putting the Sox in an All Hands On Deck mode, picking up reclamation projects like Franklyn German and Horacio Ramirez, while mulling over exactly what to do with Contreras' rotation spot. Preseason, it looked like the Sox had two viable sixth starter candidates, but Lance Broadway, who was given a promotion to the Sox pen following the Contreras injury despite giving up hits like crazy in Triple-A (10.4 H/9), doesn't seem like he'll provide any help, and Jack Egbert's fringy stuff seems to have fallen out of favor following spring elbow soreness. Clayton Richard gave up a trip to Beijing for three major league starts during Contreras' first DL stint, but that was just enough time to see the lefty, who started the season in A-ball and ranked outside Baseball America's Sox top 10 prospects in a very weak system, needed more minor league seasoning.

For now, it appears as if DJ Carrasco has laid claim to Contreras' rotation spot with a pair of excellent emergency long-relief outings bookending his season thus far. But the Sox are said to be exploring all of their options on the waiver wire, with Buster Olney reporting that they've had significant conversations with Seattle surrounding Jarrod Washburn, though the Sox deny interest. The Mariners' price for Washburn is rumored to border on the ridiculous, however, and I would expect them only to seriously explore that option in the event of Carrasco cracking under the pressure of a pennant race.

Moving Carrasco from the pen to the rotation only shifts the Sox's pitching problem from the rotation to the pen, which should help explain why they've made trades for H. Ramirez and German and are willing to give a guy like Broadway a shot. With Linebrink on the shelf and Carrasco presumably in the rotation, the Sox only have three players they can turn to in high-leverage situations: Octavio Dotel, Matt Thornton and Jenks. That's at least one arm too few for Ozzie's style of bullpen management.

The White Sox might have a bit of an ace up their sleeve in the form of Aaron Poreda. The 2007 first round pick (25th overall) was the hardest-throwing left-hander in all of baseball last season and has continued his hard-throwing ways this season, reportedly sitting in the mid-90s with good sink and solid command. The knock on Poreda, aside from having just 10 starts above A-ball, is that he lacks consistent complementary pitches. His mechanics caused former THT writer and current Diamondbacks scout Carlos Gomez to pan the pick last year, but Poreda seems to be proving the doubters wrong. In his last three Double-A starts, the tall left-hander has allowed just two runs in 21 innings while striking out 20 and walking only two batters.

In an ideal situation, the White Sox would leave Poreda in the minors to continue his work refining his secondary pitches with Double-A pitching coach JR Perdew, with an eye on a mid-2009 debut at the earliest. But this isn't a perfect world, and Poreda possesses the natural gift of velocity. As the Sox scramble for pitching help, scouring the waiver wire for competent, if not completely capable, pitching, their best solution may be the in-house one. Poreda might not have the repertoire to survive three trips through a major league lineup, but he's got the one thing you can't teach, and there are plenty of relievers who get by on essentially one dominating pitch. The Sox need only look as far as their own bullpen to find such a left-hander, Matt Thornton, and they need only look across town to see what an impact a similar, hard-throwing, highly-touted prospect has done to the Cubs pen in limited action. There have been plenty of stories this year about David Price contributing to the Rays down the stretch, but, because of need, Poreda might be the 2007 draftee who makes the biggest impact.

Joe Crede's back has not only cost him games this season, it's hit him in the wallet. Crede is a free agent following the 2008 season and has now taken back-related trips to the disabled list in each of the last three seasons. It's hard to envision a team giving him a long-term deal knowing full well that he's going to have at least one trip to the DL, perhaps more, in each year of the deal. From the Sox perspective, they've missed Crede more than would have been expected before the season.

With Josh Fields coming off a 24 home run campaign as an unexpected fill-in, Crede became a frequent target of trade rumors the past offseason. I went so far as to call a spring training trade an inevitability. Oops. Crede broke camp as the Sox starter, with Fields as the heir apparent in Triple-A. But Fields struggled with his own injury issues this season, and when Crede went down was having a lackluster season in Triple-A. He was given third base duties initially, but an inability to hit a well located major league fastball and below-average defense at third cost him the job to Uribe, whose primary asset is some fine glovework wherever he plays. Uribe won't be counted on for offensive production, but he'll give the Sox the occasional home run out of the #9 spot and provide solid-to-spectacular defense at the hot corner.

Down the stretch


Much has been written about both the White Sox's and Twins' remaining schedules down the stretch. There's enough of a split for both teams between their home and road records that you can make the remaining games seem like either team has a scheduling advantage depending on which games you choose to emphasize. So, I'll just point out the raw specifics.

The White Sox have 17 games remaining against the Red Sox, Rays, Angels, Yankees and Twins, plus 23 of their last 45 games at home. Technically, it's only 22, but they have a suspended game to complete with the Baltimore Orioles that will be played on the road, but as the home team. Like I said, you can make the numbers say whatever you want here.

The key for the Sox's final push for the division will not come down to schedules or even home/road splits. No, the White Sox will only go as far as their pitching will take them. Since July 1 when the Sox owned a best-in-baseball ERA of 3.38, that pitching has failed them, posting a 5.37 ERA. You don't get anywhere near the playoffs pitching like that. Now that Contreras' injury has caused a domino effect on the back end of the Sox bullpen and rotation, you can almost say that pitching is literally the White Sox' Achilles heel.

Javier Vazquez, in particular, isn't living up to expectations. He has a 6.23 ERA and just three quality starts since June 1. The scary thing, from the Sox's perspective, is maybe he is pitching to expectations. He's pitching exactly like he did in his second half of his year with the Yankees and the first four months of his career on the South Side. If there is a single player who is the key to the rest of the Sox's season it's him. If Vazquez turns his season back around, the Sox have a chance. If the Sox are able to catch lightning in a bottle from their cobbled-together fifth starters, they have a chance.

If either fails to happen, I don't think the Sox have much of a chance. That's a near automatic loss in two out of every five games, meaning if the Sox are perfect in the other three the best they can be is a .600 club to close things up. That might take home the division, but the Sox demonstrated how fragile perfection can be on Monday night.

John Danks, who has been a revelation in the Sox rotation and might just be the "ace" of the staff, took a perfect game into the sixth inning and a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Red Sox. But a shaky start to the seventh allowed the BoSox to push across two runs, and a porous bullpen helped put the game out of reach despite a start that was nearly pefect.

Who wins the AL Central?


I think Baseball Prospectus' ELO-adjusted playoff odds report puts the White Sox postseason chances in the most accurate perspective. Elo rating was invented for use in chess, but Nate Silver has adopted them baseball purposes. Because the ratings are derived from who you beat and when, they do a great job of capturing a teams hot and cold streaks, as well as approximating a team's true talent. The ELO-adjusted odds have the Sox as underdogs to the Twins (69 percent to 44 percent), which feels about right, especially given the Twins' recent addition of Francisco Liriano and subtraction of Livan Hernandez along with the uncertainty surrounding the Sox's pitching staff.

Prediction: The White Sox are on hand to watch the Twins clinch a division crown in the Metrodome the last week of September.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Christopher Michaels 2008-08-13T05:08:15+00:00 Five Questions: Chicago White Sox http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/five-questions-chicago-white-sox3/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/five-questions-chicago-white-sox3/#When:04:05:15 ridiculously low," and I had the Sox pegged for around 83 wins. PECOTA got the last laugh, of course, even if it did miss the boat on the reason why.

This season the Sox have been less vocal in their criticism of PECOTA’s 77-win projection, though Kenny Williams and Ozzie Guillen still seem to think they have a championship contender. Are they right? Probably not.

1. How did the White Sox lose 90 games last season?

  • They gave too many at-bats to below replacement-level talent. The White Sox gave almost 1,400 at-bats to a group who combined to post a collective .226/.282/.319 batting line. Of that group, only Pablo Ozuna, Brian Anderson and Toby Hall are poised to break camp with the Sox, all in reserve roles.
  • They had a terrible bullpen. Only the Orioles and Devil Rays had a worse bullpen than the White Sox last season. Of the Sox' regular relievers, only Bobby Jenks had a WPA significantly above zero, and only late-season call-ups Lance Broadway and Ehren Wasserman joined him above the break even line.
  • They suffered an offensive decline that even PECOTA didn't see coming. Jim Thome was the Sox' only offensive regular to outpace his PECOTA projections. Thome, being the eldest White Sox hitter, was supposed to be the one on the precipice of a steep decline. But you couldn’t spit a sunflower seed in the White Sox dugout last season without hitting an under-performing batter, no matter his age.


2. Can the Sox make up for the loss of Jon Garland from the rotation?

Garland is not a great pitcher. He is, however, exactly the type of pitcher—one who is good for 200-plus innings of above average ERA+—who helps a team with an above-average offense win a lot of games. The 2007 White Sox did not have an above-average offense, and it showed in Garland's win total, 10 versus 18 in each of the previous two seasons. Jose Contreras, John Danks and Gavin Floyd will have the tough task of filling in for Garland’s steady production.

Contreras' poor 2007 can, in part, be explained away by a single incident which occurred in the clubhouse before he took the mound in the White Sox season opener. Contreras was served with divorce papers just hours before the Sox disaster of a season began. It should have been a sign. He would go on to give up eight runs in just an inning-plus before being pulled.

He struggled the entire season with his confidence, but more importantly with velocity. Contreras hard-headedly threw from a drop-down arm angle far more often than in any of his previous seasons, which lowered his average fastball velocity to 90 mph, 3 mph below his excellent 2005 campaign.

Contreras is throwing mostly from over-the-top in camp, which helps his forkball, and has returned his fastball to the 93 mph range this spring. Normally, I wouldn’t be citing a player’s mental state in evaluating his performance. But Contreras has carried the reputation since his days in New York as the type of player outside influences can affect.

Danks started the 2007 season well, but was unable to build on his strong start as the season progressed. His straight fastball often caught hitters off guard in their first plate appearance, and lost effectiveness as the game progressed.
              G    PA   AB    BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  BABIP 
+-+------------+---+----+-------+-----+-----+-----+-----+
1st PA in G   26  236  206  .238  .322  .485  .807  .237   
2nd PA in G   26  230  209  .287  .341  .493  .833  .309 
3rd+ PA in G  24  156  138  .370  .425  .587 1.012  .434

The trend also carried through to the second and third time he faced a team within the season. It seemed that once teams were able to time Danks’ fastball, they had no problem hitting him around.

Danks has added a cutter to his repertoire this spring, and has been receiving rave reviews from coaches, teammates and opposing players. “Player adds new pitch” is a common refrain at this time of year, but Danks has youth and the coaching of Mark Buehrle and Don Cooper, who helped turn Esteban Loaiza into a Cy Young contender with the addition of a cutter.

The final spot in the rotation will be filled by Floyd, about whom I could spout the same trivial anecdotes of increased confidence or new approaches, but my heart wouldn’t be in it. Floyd is what he is, a failed prospect who gives up far too many home runs to succeed in homer-friendly US Cellular Field. Gavin will have to succeed by keeping his walk total low, and keeping his strikeout total up. He’ll never be the pitcher the Phillies once thought he would be, but he could turn into a serviceable control-type back-end starter. His last six starts last season have given the Sox some (misplaced?) hope.

With Buehrle and Javier Vazquez anchoring the rotation, Contreras, Danks and Floyd don’t need to carry the rotation. They need to provide the type of steady, slightly above-average inning-eating capabilities of Garland. One of them should. Can the rest follow?

3. Is Alexei Ramirez any good?

I've been impressed by what I've seen from Ramirez this spring. Thanks to CSN Chicago's spring training coverage, the White Sox have 13 spring games televised, which has afforded me (and many others) the opportunity to do some amateur scouting from the comfort of our respective couches, or you know, mothers' basements.

Ramirez received little interest after a poor showing in the Dominican Winter League (1-for-14), and signed with the Sox for a four-year $4.75 million deal. Since showing up in White Sox camp, however, he has done nothing but impress and exceed the expectations of White Sox brass.

He's a lanky infielder/outfielder with quick wrists, which immediately draws comparisons to Alfonso Soriano. Such a comparison will be hard to live up to, and Ramirez can only hope to come close to that type of production.

The general scouting report on his hitting ability is that he's a dead red fastball hitter who will have trouble adjusting to off-speed pitches. I haven't seen enough of his at-bats to confirm—pitchers often don't throw breaking balls in their first few spring outings—but have been impressed by his bat speed.

His approach, however, may need some tweaking. Ramirez has been swinging from the heels on almost every first pitch. And while he has demonstrated enough patience to get back into at-bats, the overagressiveness early in the count could easily be exploited at the major league level. He and the White Sox appear to be aware of this, as he took every first pitch he saw on Wednesday, and hit a home run after a 10-pitch at-bat and two walks.

Defensively, Ramirez looks solid at shortstop. His arm might be a bit below average for short, but it's far from David Eckstein territory. He's had a bit of problem adjusting to second base, but with experience and repetition he should be fine. He's played only two games in center field, experiencing similarly rough potential-filled play. He missed the cutoff man twice Wednesday, and didn't take the proper route on what would have been a very good play, but he appears athletic enough to play a solid center field in the future.

It's hard to say what the future holds for Ramirez. Earlier, I would have written that his only chance to be in the majors Opening Day would to be as a super-utility player. But Wednesday, the White Sox apparently waived Juan Uribe, who had previously been thought of as the probable opening day second baseman. Though the details are sketchy, if Uribe is removed from the picture, Ramirez' competition for the second base job is limited to the unestablished Danny Richar, who's having some back issues, and a career utility player, Pablo Ozuna, who is himself coming off a broken leg. Ramirez would seem to have the inside track to the second base job unless Kenny Williams pulls off a trade between now and opening day,.

4. What happens with third base?

I held off on writing this piece specifically because I was waiting to have an answer for this question besides "I don't know." A week ago, I was convinced that Joe Crede was headed to the Giants, in a move that wouldn't make much sense for a San Francisco club that could lose 100 games.

Brian Sabean, to his credit, has been unwilling to give up anything of value for Crede, who is coming off a poor season shortened by back surgery. It now appears that Crede, who has a year remaining before free agency, will be the Sox' Opening Day third baseman, with Josh Fields starting the season in Triple-A.

Barring injury, it's actually harder to envision a midseason trade partner who would be willing to give the White Sox the return they desire for Crede. The only competitive team I can come up with is Cleveland, which has done a whole lot of standing pat when in the hunt and seems an unlikely trade partner within the division.

For his part, Fields is something of an anti-Alexei Ramirez. He can't hit fastballs. Another half-season in Triple-A, facing a host of 88 mph fastballs, might not be the worst thing for his development. There are still significant contact and defensive issues he can work on while the Sox try to decide what to do with Crede.

5. Can the White Sox compete in a tough AL Central?

No. The offense will be better than it was in ’08, thanks to the addition of Nick Swisher—how I made it this far without mentioning the Sox' biggest acquisition, I don’t know—and the fact that it would be difficult to score fewer runs than they did last year. The bullpen will be improved—again because it would be difficult to be worse and beacuse the Sox added Octavio Dotel and Scott Linebrink. But those improvements aren’t enough to make up the 20 games the Sox would need just to reach the 90-win plateau.

These Sox will be better than last year’s version, but not enough to keep pace with the 90-win Indians and Tigers teams. Put me down for 82 wins. I wanted to go with 81, but picking a .500 record is such a cop-out answer.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Christopher Michaels 2008-03-21T04:05:15+00:00