He's more like a servicable 4th. He doesn't win games. JORR says that's the only way to judge a starter.

It's more fun to be a victim

There will never be an effective vaccine. I'll never get one anyway.

You can't stop me, you can only hope to contain me.

RPB, I expect you to be consistent and offer a vociferous response

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

Was Duke used as a LOOGY last year? Does Coop intend to deploy him as a LOOGY? I thought he was a guy who can pitch to both sides of the plate. And I have no idea how often he goes to the side action vs. RHB.

89 or 103 if Rodon breaks camp as a starter.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

Im pretty hammered right now.

86 wins, of course taking good pitching health into account.

88 would have won a play in wild-card last year, so I don't think its impossible for them to contend-- at least for a WC-- this year.

It's more fun to be a victim

There will never be an effective vaccine. I'll never get one anyway.

The #1 problem plaguing this team last year was the bullpen. They were so deficient at the end of the year that they didn't even bother to carry a lefty. Rookie relievers were the only ones who showed anything and despite taking their lumps, they looked like usable parts. Hahn rebuilt the bullpen from the back with a legitimate closer and two lefty relievers to go with the rookies. I don't think there offense helped themselves yet. The offense was competitive, ranking in the upper part of the middle last year. I think a large part of that was due to injuries as they seemed to be better when Eaton was not hurt.

I see this team as a mid 80 win team, able to compete with the receding Tigers and Royals. I say 85 right now with a chance of upper 80s with another bat or two.

84-93

I don't waste my time with the Cubs.

Fangraphs has their early projections out. They will be updated throughout the off season and during the actual season.

The White Sox are in fourth place in the AL Central at 78-84.

You can see all the projections here:
http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.as ... dings#AL-C

75-90

Fangraphs has their early projections out. They will be updated throughout the off season and during the actual season.

The White Sox are in fourth place in the AL Central at 78-84.

You can see all the projections here:
http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.as ... dings#AL-C

The White Sox regularly exceed projection systems.

Let me put that in a clearer way. I believe there is an inherent bias coming from the modern "analytical" baseball writer that favors particular ways of putting together a team.

When one is attempting to create numbers to encapsulate a player's complete performance, there is necessarily going to be a lot of "noise". And as much as these "analysts" like to present their work as objective, there is obviously subjectivity as different components are weighted.

These formulae are being constantly tweaked. What I believe actually happens is that a guy like Kenny Williams signs a player who these writers consider a bum and they twitter and talk about how dumb Kenny is, whereas if Beane or Friedman or Epstein were to sign the same player, they would begin looking at why they signed him and perhaps being to "realize" that he had more value than they previously suspected and in turn look to adjust their numbers to reflect that "fact".

It sort of reminds me of a guy who was in my fantasy league for many years. He used to write a preseason preview for our league called Pavilion (his team was the St. Louis Browns) and every year he had his own team finishing first. When other members objected, he simply said, "Of course I think my team is going to finish first. If I hadn't I would have drafted differently."."

Let me put that in a clearer way. I believe there is an inherent bias coming from the modern "analytical" baseball writer that favors particular ways of putting together a team.

When one is attempting to create numbers to encapsulate a player's complete performance, there is necessarily going to be a lot of "noise". And as much as these "analysts" like to present their work as objective, there is obviously subjectivity as different components are weighted.

These formulae are being constantly tweaked. What I believe actually happens is that a guy like Kenny Williams signs a player who these writers consider a bum and they twitter and talk about how dumb Kenny is, whereas if Beane or Friedman or Epstein were to sign the same player, they would begin looking at why they signed him and perhaps being to "realize" that he had more value than they previously suspected and in turn look to adjust their numbers to reflect that "fact".

It sort of reminds me of a guy who was in my fantasy league for many years. He used to write a preseason preview for our league called Pavilion (his team was the St. Louis Browns) and every year he had his own team finishing first. When other members objected, he simply said, "Of course I think my team is going to finish first. If I hadn't I would have drafted differently."."

I would need to look at their formulas but I don't there is any adjusting based on team.

Why do you think that is? Probably the same reason Fangraphs likes Scherzer better than Lester until Theo signs Lester.

ZiPS - The work of Dan Szymborski over at Baseball Think Factory, the ZiPS projections uses weighted averages of four years of data (three if a player is very old or very young), regresses pitchers based on DIPS theory and BABIP rates, and adjusts for aging by looking at similar players and their aging trends. It’s an effective projection system, and is displayed at FanGraphs for off-season and in-season projections.