American League Two-a-Days: Chicago White Sox

LiveBall Sports previews the American League this week.

Team Synopsis: Chicago White Sox

2013 record: 63-99
2013 runs scored: 598
2013 runs against: 723
2013 pythag. record: 67-95

In 2013, the Kansas City Royals led the AL in runs against with 601.  The Chicago White Sox did not score 600 runs in what can only be considered a total offensive collapse.

Who is having a good spring?

CF Jordan Danks, the team’s reserve outfielder, and LF Alejandro De Aza, who is leading Dayan Viciedo in the battle for the team’s starting LF job.  RHP Andre Rienzo has done well in five relief innings.  LHP Charlie Leesman has done well in his 4+ innings.

Reasons to be optimistic about the 2014 White Sox

First of all, there’s no risk of the team being contracted.  The starting pitching has a chance to be very good.  The rotation is strong at the front, with LHP Chris Sale as the team’s ace, and at the back, where RHPs Felipe Paulino and Erik Johnson replace Rienzo and LHP Hector Santiago, who was traded to the Angels in the offseason.  The outfield defense will be much improved in 2014, as the White Sox have improved their speed and athleticism across the board.  The White Sox acquired a bevy of young infielders to play this year, which should help define their direction for the future.

Reasons to be realistic about the 2014 White Sox

The team’s bullpen, it’s strength for the past decade, was gutted by trades last year and is very unsettled.  Closer Nate Jones is the one reliable arm in the pen, and the unit as a whole has a figure-it-out as you go feel.  The offense can’t be as bad as last season, but it really isn’t a lot better talent-wise.  It’s hard to put expectations on Cuban 1B Jose Abreu, who will need to adjust to facing major league pitching this year.  Veteran DHs Paul Konerko and Adam Dunn remind you what happens to your roster when 20% of your major league lineup walks up to Metallica.  Every offseason acquisition by the White Sox comes with the same caveat: we don’t know if they can hit at all.  No upgrade at catcher means more of the Josh Phegley/Tyler Flowers experience in 2014.  Everybody in this lineup except Dunn/Konerko is a hacker.

2B Gordon Beckham will never not be a reminder of why you need to be realistic about a team’s chances.

The projections

The Fangraphs projected team WAR for the 2014 White Sox is 27.0, 13th in the American League.  Their 14.4 Batters WAR projection is 14th in the AL. Their 12.6 Pitchers WAR projection is 13th in the AL.  Cool Standings projects the 2014 White Sox to win 74 games, an 11 win improvement over last season.  Chris Sale is the White Sox with the best 2014 projection with an average WAR projection of 4.7.  Jose Abreu is the position player with the best average projection at 3.3 WAR.

The White Sox vs the rest of the AL Central

The AL Central is an above average division this year.  The Tigers enter the season with one of the best statistical profiles of any team.  The Royals and Indians are above average opponents with some downside potential.  The Twins should be improved, and have the consensus best farm system, which should help avoid a repeat of the end of last year when they were running a sub-MLB lineup out.  The White Sox and Twins are neck and neck for the fourth best team in the division.

LiveBall Sports projection for the 2014 White Sox Season

I am expecting the White Sox to fall a bit short of their statistical projections for the season.  There are a lot of moving parts on this roster, and the Sox are at an abnormally high risk for sub-replacement performance across the roster.  This leads me to take them to finish 70-92.

2013 Major League Baseball Mega-Preview: the American League

The American League begins it’s 113th season with a stranglehold on MLB dominance in the regular season.  However, no American League team has managed to take home the World Series since the Yankees did in 2009.  Given where the Yankees and Red Sox are with regard to rebuilding their rosters and restructuring their finances, AL teams have a ton to prove this year.

Five teams have won multiple World Series since the Toronto Blue Jays last made the playoffs in 1993: the Yankees have won five times, and the Red Sox twice.  But the other three teams: the Florida Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals, and most recently, San Francisco Giants.  The remarkable thing is this has happened over a period of AL dominance.

Lacking the consensus best team in baseball for the first time in awhile, the American League looks to reclaim bragging rights over the National League as interleague play becomes an all-the-time thing for the first time ever.

The American League Central

The Detroit Tigers (2012: 726 runs scored, 670 runs allowed) enter the 2013 season as the clear favorites to represent the AL in the World Series for the second straight year — and the third time in the last seven.  The Tigers are a three man team in many ways, as the only way that Detroit can overcome a down year from RHP Justin Verlander, 1B Prince Fielder, or 3B Miguel Cabrera is for the other two to pick up the slack.  The problems facing the Tigers are numerous: the team declined from its peak in 2011 through the 2o12 season, either slightly (run differential) or significantly (wins) depending on what measure you use.  And outside of getting DH Victor Martinez back from an injury that cost him his 2012 season, it’s not exactly clear where all the Tigers’ perceived improvement is going to come from.

The reason the Tigers are favored heading into the year is because they have the clearest path to the playoffs through the AL Central: having just the White Sox, Royals, and Indians nipping at your heels gives you plenty of leeway.  The Tigers are gambling that they can score 800 runs in 2013 because of an improved outfield, featuring Andy Dirks and Torii Hunter in full time roles instead of Delmon Young and Brennan Boesch.  Actually, truth be told, the Tigers are gambling on a lot of things, especially a flimzy bullpen.  However, improved defensive efficiency in the outfield leads me to bump the Tigers slightly to a 91 win team.

That should be good enough to win a division where there’s unlikely to be a trio of 85+ win teams, but wouldn’t it be nice if the Kansas City Royals (2012: 676 runs scored, 746 runs allowed) could push the Tigers this year.  The Royals best profile as a 83-79 team, but that’s not totally going to take them out of contention for the second wild card, and should make things interesting with the Tigers into early September.  The Royals have a chance to do special things with their bats this year.  LF Alex Gordon enters 2013 a legitimate candidate for AL MVP, as you could make a charitable case for the two time Gold Glove winner as a poor mans* version of Mike Trout.  The Royals spent an obscene amount of money to take the variance out of their pitching staff, which really lead their team’s run prevention through the first two and a half months last year before regressing to it’s true talent level of “minor league.”  The upgrades make the Royals one of the safest, easiest teams in the AL from a projection standpoint: there’s not a ton of upside here, but the dark days appear to be over in Kansas City.

*Although Gordon will make about 22 times more than Trout will this season.

The Chicago White Sox (2012: 748 runs scored, 676 runs allowed) may be the most average team in baseball this year, as they head towards one more year of 82 wins.  The excellent run prevention unit of the White Sox is likely to stay in the ballpark, so to speak: this is a strong defensive team led by SS Alexi Ramirez, C Tyler Flowers, and CF Alejandro De Aza, and a top-level pitching staff featuring LHP Chris Sale and RHP Jake Peavy.  However, after shocking the world and putting up 748 offensive runs and leading the division in run scoring, the White Sox will have a really tough time doing that again.  Run producers like Paul Konerko and Adam Dunn are aging quick and there’s not much the White Sox can do to score if those two stop hitting bombs at such a high rate.  It should be easier for the Cleveland Indians (2012: 667 runs scored, 845 runs allowed) to catch the Tigers in run scoring as the Tribe features a premier lineup, headlined by C Carlos Santana and 2B Jason Kipnis.  But the Indians giving up 845 runs last year wasn’t a fluke: it was just horrific pitching.  That’s a problem that went largely unsolved this offseason, shaping the Indians as a 77 win team.  And Minnesota Twins (2012: 701 runs scored, 832 runs allowed) fans still get to enjoy C Joe Mauer’s best seasons, which is awesome.  They won’t get to enjoy a whole lot a good baseball, but the Twins should be able to avoid 100 losses through some combination of dark magic and veteran contributions.  Pencil the Twins at 65 wins.

The American League East

Dynastic.  While most of the baseball universe realizes that we’re entering a year where the Red Sox and Yankees are strong underdogs against the Tampa Bay Rays (2012: 697 runs scored, 577 runs allowed), I don’t think the baseball universe much realizes how FAR the Yankees and Red Sox will have to go in order to reach where the Rays are going to be in three years.  There’s no question that the Rays — division favorites as far as I’m concerned — have holes on the current team: they tentatively will DH Luke Scott, will play Ryan Roberts at second base, and James Loney at first base, we’re talking about a team that traded away RHP James Shields to Kansas City, and may set a modern American League record for runs prevented this year.  They allowed just 577 runs last season, which is less preposterous when you consider the ballpark effect of Tropicana Field, but the Rays find a way to rank at the top in terms of defensive efficiency every single year.  That won’t change with Desmond Jennings patrolling CF.

But more than any other team in the league, the Rays are injury-proof.  Sure, they’d have just as much a problem as anyone replacing the lineup production of 3B Evan Longoria or 2B/RF Ben Zobrist in extended absence of their two best offensive players.  But they can replace any member of their pitching staff using their lush farm system.  Improving just a bit in terms of run scoring, I think the Rays are capable of a division winning 94 wins.

Their main challenger went all-in on their pitching staff this offseason, making the Toronto Blue Jays‘ (2012: 716 runs scored, 784 runs allowed) win-now tactic a sharp contrast to the win-always scheme preferred by the Rays.  The Blue Jays had two main problems last year: every pitcher got hurt or struggled, and everyone on the offense underachieved or was hurt (save for DH Edwin Encarnacion).  Similar to the Royals, the move all-in to acquire a new pitching rotation (added: RHP R.A. Dickey (Mets), LHP Mark Buehrle (Marlins), RHP Josh Johnson (Marlins))  means the Jays won’t be reliant on recovering pitching arms and prospects (such as Kyle Kendrick ->Tommy John surgery), which is a positive.  But the Blue Jays had a second problem last year which isn’t necessarily going to be fixed purely through regression: their lineup really sucked.  To fix that, they acquired a lot of the Marlins spare contracts, which made a lot of sense in theory until we consider the Marlins lineup also struggled last season.  The cause for optimism is that the Blue Jays are now spending money, which makes them competitors in the AL East this year, and their rotation has a chance to be really, really good.  But the makeover happens on a foundation that won 73 games last year.  90 wins would make them the most improved team in baseball, but the foundation would not fundamentally change unless the Jays push 100 wins, in which case a lot of things got a lot better pretty quickly.

It could be worse.  The New York Yankees (2012: 804 runs scored, 668 runs allowed) haven’t even made it out of Spring Training in a state where Brennan Boesch is not considered an upgrade.  Injuries to 1B Mark Teixiera and OF Curtis Granderson have headlined the spring in New York.  But the Yankees are about to take the field on opening day with three regulars from last years lineup only: Derek Jeter, Ichiro Suzuki, and Robinson Cano.  The rotation is rather promising, and should keep the Yankees out of the cellar by a good margin, but the bottom line is that the Yankees are a 79 win team this year.  That should keep them in company of their rivals, the Boston Red Sox (2012: 734 runs scored, 806 runs allowed), also at 79 wins.  Whereas the Yankees have some semblance of a plan, the Red Sox appear to be trying to tear down to rebuild and compete at the same time.  On the positive side, the Red Sox were 5 games over .500 at the end of June last year, and this isn’t a completely hopeless ballclub.  The rotation isn’t great shakes, but it’s littered with name guys like Jon Lester, Ryan Dempster, and John Lackey, which will probably end poorly in a couple cases, and work out well in others.  You can say that about a lot of areas of a .500 team.  And I think .500 happens to be a bit aggressive for the Baltimore Orioles (2012: 712 runs scored, 705 runs allowed), who finished 2012 impressively, winning all the games that Boston would lose.  Baltimore shakes out as a 75 win team thanks to weaknesses in the rotation, and a team-wide issue with on-base percentage.  There’s upside on the offensive end here with Matt Wieters, Adam Jones, and Chris Davis all entering their age 27 seasons.  The bullpen, led by closer Jim Johnson, doesn’t have to be as dominant as it was last year for the O’s to exceed 75 wins, but it must still be quite good.

The American League West

The AL West is the strongest division in the American League, and possibly all of baseball.  It would be even stronger if the Houston Astros (2012: 583 runs scored (NL), 794 runs allowed (NL)) didn’t move into it.  The Astros will be fighting to avoid losing 100 games all year.  I think they’ll come close, topping out at 61 wins.  But the real story is at the top of the division, where the Oakland Athletics won their final six games last season to steal the division from the Texas Rangers (2012: 808 runs scored, 707 runs allowed).  The Rangers return as division favorites in my eyes, although many others prefer the Los Angeles Angeles of Anaheim, a California-based baseball club (2012: 767 runs scored, 699 runs allowed).

Texas has been routinely criticized for “losing” in an offseason where they allowed Josh Hamilton ($125 million) to sign with the Angels, failed to reel in Zack Greinke ($147 million) after his contract expired (hard to blame them at those price tags).  They ended up grabbing Derek Lowe on the cheap while biding their time for Colby Lewis to return from arm surgery.  Here’s the thing though: I don’t hear a lot of people arguing that Texas’ offense won’t be alright without Hamliton (they’ll survive) even as most laud the Angels’ aggressiveness in the market.  Texas is being criticized for not acquiring pitching.  But after giving up just 707 runs playing 81 games in the Ballpark in Arlington (Park factor: 112) last season, people are under-rating the quality of the Texas bullpen.  And their biggest offseason acquisition flew mostly under the radar, when the Rangers plucked Joakim Soria from the Royals at rehabilitation (torn UCL) prices.

Although there’s not a ton of pitching depth here, expect the run prevention of the Rangers to improve and they’ll lead the AL in wins this year at 98.  The Angels on the other hand may feel confident in a lineup that can make pitchers face Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, and Josh Hamilton in the first four batters.  The issue with the Angels is that the pitching is a disaster.  They don’t have the bullpen the Rangers do.  They don’t have a bullpen that can consistently get outs.  And unlike last year, they don’t feature a rotation that can get deep into games.  The Angles jettisoned both Torii Hunter and Kendrys Morales to get…something.  Hamilton and Mark Trumbo are a major improvement over Vernon Wells and Hunter, but since neither can play a premium defensive position anymore, the Angels opening day lineup will likely feature Peter Bourjos, Howie Kendrick, Erick Aybar, Alberto Callaspo, and Chris Ianetta playing those tougher defensive positions.  Those players will absorb about half of the team ABs for the Angels this year.  Not only is this not a 1,000 run lineup, but it’s likely not even a 750 run lineup.  The Angels are an 80 win team this year.

Does this mean the Royals are in the playoffs?  Not exactly.  The AL West is strong after the Angels as well, and the Oakland A’s (2012: 710 runs scored, 614 runs allowed) did win the division, posting a run differential exactly on par with the Rangers, and plucked the division on the season’s final weekend.  They would have made a lot of noise if they had beaten the Tigers in the ALDS, but as is, the team returns a lot of it’s pieces from 2012.  Brett Anderson will replace Brandon McCarthy (signed with Arizona) atop the rotation.  Anderson is finally healthy after missing more than two thirds of last year with the torn UCL he suffered in 2011.  The A’s don’t have the front line pitching to allow just 614 runs again, although 660 is a very reasonable expectation for a strong defensive team playing in the hitter graveyard that is the Oakland Coliseum.  I think that 83 wins is a strong expectation for the A’s.

And that will not quite make the playoffs in the AL West.  I am predicting the second wild card will fall to the Seattle Mariners (2012: 619 runs scored, 651 runs allowed), which I’m sure will make Ichiro happy.  The Mariners have done well to rebuild their outfield on the fly, acquiring Michael Morse from the Nationals (in a questionable trade), to match with Casper Wells and Michael Saunders, who both came into their own last year.  With the lineup looking like something other than the worst offense in the AL this year (although still pretty bad), Mariners fans and league observers can finally appreciate the dominance of Felix Hernandez every fifth day.  But after making a lot of quietly sharp moves this offseason (possibly excluding the Morse deal, although that should help out in the aggregate), I think 85 wins might actually qualify them for the playoffs this season.  If not, they’ll at least be right in it.

2013 AL Predictions

East Champ: Tampa Bay Rays (94-68)
Central Champ: Detroit Tigers (91-71)
West Champ: Texas Rangers (98-64)
AL Wild Card #1: Toronto Blue Jays (90-72)
AL Wild Card #2: Seattle Mariners (85-77)

The Kansas City Royals and $40 million pitching rotations

Baseball’s Pitching Rotations, by projected salary of top six starters for 2013:

-Los Angeles Dodgers $78.2 million
-Philadelphia Phillies $72.7 million
-San Francisco Giants $69.5 million
-New York Yankees $58.2 million* (excludes $8.5 million sent to Pittsburgh w/AJ Burnett)
-Toronto Blue Jays $50.45 million (excludes $8.5 million received from Miami in six player trade)
-Boston Red Sox $47.6 million
-Los Angeles Angles $46.9 million (exclues $1 million sent to KC with Ervin Santana)
-Detroit Tigers $45.2 million
-Chicago White Sox $41.25 million
-St. Louis Cardinals $40.1 million
–Kansas City Royals $40.1 million (excludes $1 million relief from Angels for Ervin Santana)
-Pittsburgh Pirates $38.5 million* (excludes $13.5 million relief team has for AJ Burnett and Wandy Rodriguez)
-Chicago Cubs $37.4 million
-Cincinnati Reds $36.3 million
-New York Mets $34.1 million
-Washington Nationals $32.0 million
-Seattle Mariners $29.8 million
-Texas Rangers $23.3 million
-Cleveland Indians $20.6 million
-Atlanta Braves $19.85 million
-Baltimore Orioles $19.1 million
-Colorado Rockies $17.1 million
-Arizona Diamondbacks $16.7 million
-San Diego Padres $16.1 million
-Tampa Bay Rays $15.7 million
-Miami Marlins $15.15 million (excludes $8.5 million sent to Toronto in six player trade)
-Milwaukee Brewers $14.5 million
-Minnesota Twins $13.3 million
-Oakland Athletics $10.75 million
-Houston Astros $6.3 million (not counting $5 million owed to former pitcher Wandy Rodriguez)

All data via Cot’s/Baseball Prospectus

The Kansas City Royals appear out of place on this list, relative to their market size.  Actually, they’re just out of place on this list in general.  When you look at the small market teams on this list, they’re pretty much universally collected at the bottom: Oakland and Tampa have made the playoffs recently as have the mid-market Diamondbacks.  But low-revenue teams such as the A’s, Brewers, Marlins, Padres, Rays, Indians, and Pirates (considering salary relief) are all paying between $10 million and $25 million for entire rotation, which comes out to between $2 and $4-5 million per pitcher.

Broken down into a wins above replacement argument, small market teams are almost universally structured so that the money they pay to their pitching rotation year after year comes in under an average of 1 win per pitcher on the open market.  It’s practically impossible to not operate with a surplus in return on investment, because small market teams are highly invested in young arms who can get hitters out without costing the team a lot.

$40 million rotations on the other hand mean that the team sits between 1-2 wins above replacement per pitcher in terms of average compensation.  Only 10 rotations in baseball are at this pay-grade,  and every team (perhaps with the exception of the White Sox) is in go-for-it mode every year.  You can’t rebuild while paying $40+ million for your starting rotation: it’s lunacy.  The risk of losing your payroll dollars to the disabled list is extremely high.

Whether the Royals are spending their payroll most efficiently is a different argument entirely.  Their overall payroll isn’t extreme: it will be a fraction under $80 million this year, but the mid-market Twins consistently held an $100 million payroll when they were competing for the division every year, and there’s little doubt that most teams can do the same.  The Indians are in exactly the same financial situation as the Royals, and are spending the same amount.  But the percentage of the payroll the Royals have put towards pitching IS extreme.  The Royals have just three position players on their roster making more than $3 million this year: RF Jeff Francoeur, DH Billy Butler, and LF Alex Gordon.  Their entire rotation, with the exception of Wade Davis, will make more than $3 million each.

The Indians are invested very differently.  They spent the same kind of money the Royals did this offseason, but waited out the market and ended up signing hitters instead of pitchers.  They signed four position players this offseason (OF Michael Bourn, OF Nick Swisher, IF Mark Reynolds, IF Mike Aviles), committing a grand total of $116 million in salary, though just $26.25 million for this season.  To upgrade their rotation, they acquired Brett Myers (most recently of the White Sox), and will convert him to the starting rotation.

Both teams saw a relative opening in the AL Central, and tried to fix their biggest weakness to get there.  The Royals got 7.5 wins from their rotation last season, which would essentially be worth $40 million on the open market.  But it’s not like the Royals had to keep their entire rotation from hitting the market, nor would they have paid that amount to keep those guys had they needed to.  The Indians got 4.6 wins from their rotation last season, which is worth about $25 million on the market.  From a salary perspective only, neither team can expect to receive a boost in terms of pitching performance from last year.

It’s a weird position for the Royals to be in because it’s the same position that large market teams find themselves in year after year: paying big bucks to remain relevant/not lose ground.  The Yankees have been in this cycle for years.  The Dodgers appear ready to enter it.  The Phillies are stuck in it.  The Giants are still winning world series, but have no way of improving their run prevention at this point.  The top of this list suffers from this investment effect every year.

The problem of course is that the Royals won 72 games last year and the Indians won 68.  Paying for arms is not going to improve either team, so the improvement has to be made on the other side: with the position players.  Both teams are hoping that they improved enough from the outside (Indians) or through internal development (Royals) to make their financial investments worth the trouble.  The Toronto Blue Jays, who only received 5.5 wins from their rotation last year (and won just 73 games), are hoping for the same kind of thing: they’ll be expecting at least 2-3 more wins from their rotation this year.

There may not be an optimal strategy here, but simply spending money on the rotation has worked for National League teams in recent years such as the Pirates and the Cardinals, not to mention large market teams like the Giants, Nationals, and Phillies.  It hasn’t worked quite as well in the American League, for a number of reasons.  Instead, teams like the Rays, Athletics, Orioles, and Rangers have won in spite of their abilities to shed large contracts to players while the Red Sox, Tigers, Yankees, and Angels, who spend the most on pitching, consistently have the weakest results.

I’m skeptical that the Royals’ investment is going to work out for them.  It certainly can, but there will likely be other factors at play here, including the improved health and training/development of their current staff.  If that had worked over the last three years with their young pitchers, the Royals wouldn’t have been in this position to begin with.  So the team’s methodology must improve across the board.  And in the American League this year, there are enough bottom feeders to keep a team like Kansas City afloat.  But to get to the playoffs, their approach is going to have to prove stronger than teams in like situations, such as the Indians and Blue Jays, and the track record of high pitcher salary in the American League in recent years is simply not that good.

 

LBS 2011 MLB Preview: AL Central

LiveBall’s Previews of the 2011 MLB Season begins right in it’s own backyard with a look at the American League’s most tightly packed division, a worst to first description of all the contenders.  And, yes, the Indians and the Royals as well.

5) Cleveland Indians (projected finish: 66-96)

The Indians’ second rebuilding project since their appearance in the 2007 ALCS began much earlier than expected, and was officially brought in by the seemingly natural front office progression of the promotion of hotshot candidate Chris Antonetti to the role of General Manger, with former GM Mark Shapiro taking on the title of “President of Baseball Operations.”  That doesn’t make it immediately clear who will be doing what, but the Indians message for their fans is clear: it’s Antonetti’s show now.

Cleveland’s best asset is its deep farm system, although they lack the bevy of top prospects of the next team on this list.  They have two proven major league regulars in OF Chin-Soo Chu, and OF Grady Sizemore, another to-be regular in second year C Carlos Santana, and then will rely on whatever contributions slow-to-develop OF/1B Matt LaPorta and longtime DH Travis Hafner can give them.

That’s a decent core to build a team around, but unfortunately, it’s unlikely that Chu, Sizemore, or Hafner will be around for the next AL Central-contending Indians team.  LaPorta is increasingly less likely to develop as a power hitter as the weeks pass, and while Hafner rebounded in 2010 for his best season since 2007, he’s 34 now.

The Indians don’t have much by way of pitching, with the erratic Fausto Carmona at the top of their rotation, and the bullpen unsettled, to put it kindly.  This is a problem when you consider the lacking quality of the Indians’ team defense, notably at the hard to fill positions of centerfield, and shortstop.  Former Red Sox prospect Justin Masterson still has some potential to help the rotation, but the rest of the help may still be a year away.  The race for worst pitching staff in the AL Central between the Indians and Royals could be as fascinating as the farm-arms race that will occur between the two clubs in years to come.

4) Kansas City Royals (projected finish: 71-91)

Its going to be just one more year of bad baseball in Kansas City, although the real question is whether or not the product that follows 17 years of bad baseball was worth waiting for.  That’s hard to say.

The Royals could have competed in 2011, but would have needed to hold onto RF David DeJesus, and RHP Zack Greinke to do so, and probably would have needed to add a pricy bat or arm in free agency, and even then, the Royals would only have been a fringe contender for the AL Central.  That would have been more costly when you factor in the additional cost of keeping Greinke happy: holding on to veterans signed last year instead of shedding salary at the trading deadline of a non-competitive team.  Instead the team made the wise “money” move, and traded DeJesus and Greinke for whatever they could get, essentially ending the team’s hopes of competing this year before spring training started.  On the bright side, payroll is down under $35 million this year (thanks to the unexpected retirement of Gil Meche and his $12 million), and only Billy Butler has a guaranteed contract beyond this season.

The teams best player is closer Joakim Soria, but the real reason to expect the Royals to be better than last year despite losing their top position player and best pitcher is the quality of the teams defense.  The Royals were horrid last year at preventing runs in games not started by Greinke or Bruce Chen, and they were horrid despite some defense-independent pitching improvement from third starter Kyle Davies.  Brian Bannister has been jettisoned to Japan, Chen has been resigned, and the Royals added former Rockie left-hander Jeff Francis to replace Greinke.

The team defense will be the reason for improvement in the run prevention unit.  Going from Yuni Betancourt to Alcides Escobar at short is a two or three win upgrade, essentially the difference between Greinke and Francis.  Third base will be a defensive strength, at least until Mike Moustakas arrives in the majors (a day which no Royals fan is dreading), as will second with a continuation of a Chris Getz/Mike Aviles platoon.  First base will be average at best, but an Alex Gordon, Mitch Maier/Melky Cabrera/Lorenzo Cain, Jeff Francouer outfield has the potential to be the best defensive outfield in years for KC.  And that’s without stalwart defender DeJesus.

No matter what, an offense with Francouer, Jason Kendall, Melky Cabrera, Getz, Escobar, and possibly even Pedro Feliz is going to struggle to simply not be the lowest run producing offense in the AL (but thanks for trying, Seattle), and the bats the Royals will rely on this year don’t have a particularly impressive MLB track record (exception: Butler).  That’s why its a minority prediction to suggest the Royals will actually be closer to .500 than to 100 losses.  But improved team defense will make the rotation look better, and as long as Joakim Soria is healthy, the Royals will win a disproportional amount of close games, making this a justifiable prediction.

3) Detroit Tigers (projected finish: 79-83)

There’s plenty of optimism coming out of Lakeland this spring, if for a moment, we can ignore the fact that the team’s best player Miguel Cabrera has a serious issue with alcohol.  The latest bout isn’t career threatening, necessarily, but while similarity scores view him as a player who will be a star into his late thirties, that’s the kind of projection that could be cut short by alcohol abuse.  Cabrera was named the best hitter in baseball by LiveBall Sports last July, in the midst of Albert Pujols’ one seemingly human season in the last eight.  Cabrera hit better than Pujols in 2010, though not quite better than AL MVP Josh Hamilton, although their batting runs above average were practically identical.

The argument is not that Cabrera is the best player in baseball, as he’s a well below average defender at a non-premium position.  Pujols is a great defender, and a far superior baserunner as well.  Cabrera is the most dangerous player in baseball with a bat in his hands.  And alcohol threatens to shorten his run of dominance with the bat.

The Tigers will enter 2010 with the division’s best rotation, including Justin Verlander, Rick Porcello, Brad Penny, and Max Scherzer, and they will have plenty of firearms in the bullpen as well.  Whether they actually finish the year with the best rotation in the division depends on the quality of work of White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper, and the health of all these flamethrowers the Tigers employ.

The team’s biggest offseason acquisition was Catcher Victor Martinez, a legitimate middle of the order bat, if not the best defensive catcher on the team (that would be second year man, Alex Avila).  Both figure to see more than 350 PAs this year.  CF Austin Jackson and RF Magglio Ordonez will make up two thirds of the Tigers starting outfield, and Brandon Inge returns as the regular third baseman, but the rest of the lineup will be a series of unimpressive platoons and week-to-week sketch ups by manager Jim Leyland.  Inge and Jackson are both excellent defenders, and supersub Don Kelly’s glove will play at any position, but this is not a great defensive team, and Martinez won’t do anything to solve those issues.  Put simply, the bats must rank near the top of the AL for Detroit to win the AL Central.

2) Chicago White Sox (projected finish: 86- 78)

The White Sox should be better than last year for the same reason the Royals should be better than last year.  They made one huge improvement at the weakest position on the team.  Some of the plate appearances that were engulfed by Juan Pierre this year will belong to Adam Dunn, who should make his home nicely in the bandbox that is US Cellular Field.  A second improvement should come from rookie 3B Brent Morel, who if not an offensive improvement, will certainly provide defensive improvement to Mark Teahen and Dayan Viciedo.

The rotation of John Danks, Mark Buerhle, Gavin Floyd, Jake Peavy, and Edwin Jackson offers the deepest rotation in the AL, with the most potential upside of any rotation west of Tampa/east of Oakland.  Peavy, Floyd, and Jackson all offer value that is more speculative than the established contributions of Buerhle and Danks.

Unquestionably, however, the strength of the White Sox in the infield gives way to one of the thinnest outfields in the majors.  Left to right, the starters are Pierre, Alex Rios, and Carlos Quentin.  Quentin can’t play the field very well, but the Dunn acqusition makes him a full timer out there.  Rios was above average in center last year, but is still stretched kind of thin in center.  He’d offer more defensive value in a corner.  Pierre at least won’t be playing any DH this year, and played a good left field last season, but it’s not a position his bat can handle.  Teahen should see playing time in both left and right field.

If the staff and bullpen goes through the expected development and has the Sox competing near the top of the league in most pitching candidates, the Sox could be big-name buyers at the deadline on an outfielder.  They should be in this race longer than the Tigers, but without additional help in the lineup, the White Sox are destined to come up short, and in a worst case scenario, could find themselves selling at the deadline.

1) Minnesota Twins (projected finish: 90-72)

The Twins remain one of the best teams in baseball.  They were able to retain key contributors Jim Thome and Carl Pavano from their free agent class.  There are only two troubling things about this Twins team: first, that Justin Morneau still isn’t asymptomatic from a concussion suffered last July.  Secondly, that without Morneau, the Twins will play a very, very watered down group of infielders, one that will be tough to win with.

The Twins have had a long standing issue with outfield defense.  Last year, the trio of Jason Kubel, Michael Cuddyer, and Delmon Young combined to produce -29 UZR (runs), a staggering figure for guys playing in three positions.  The trio is back this year.

Minnesota was able to mitigate that a bit with excellent infield defense from JJ Hardy, Danny Valencia, Nick Punto, Orlando Hudson, and a great first half with the glove from Morneau.  Of the five names, only Valencia is likely to be good to go on opening day.  Gone are Hardy, Punto, and Hudson.  Japanese signee Tsuyoshi Nishioka will take over at the keystone.  Alexi Casilla is sliding over to shortstop, the only position on the diamond where his bat profiles.  His glove may project there after all, but the Twins ask so much out of their infield defenders to make up for that outfield defense.  They also must rely on Denard Span to have another strong year with the glove in center.

The Twins might have jettisoned their role contributors while holding onto dead weight, such as Cuddyer.  That’s the concern with them.  But an offense that produced enough runs to be at the top of the AL last year — led by all-world catcher Joe Mauer — should pull off the same feat again with even greater ease this year.  The Minnesota pitching staff is unimpressive on paper, but very underrated as a group.  Joe Nathan returns in the closer role this year, strengthening the entire bullpen.

My Twins projection is depressed a bit not because the team won’t be improved at all, but because the White Sox, Royals, and Indians are all improving, and part of the effect of 94 wins by the Twins last year were simply poor in-division competition from teams that weren’t the Detroit Tigers.  The four game margin of victory in the AL Central probably understates how the Twins won’t have to make a deadline trade to win this division comfortably.

Division Races ‘Central’ to AL, NL Postseason Picture

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There’s not a whole lot of space separating the top two teams in the AL Central and NL Central races.  As of today: a combined four games of cushion.  Those aren’t the only close races — every division is a heat except the AL West — and the NL Wild Card race couldn’t be tighter.  However, it’s the Central races that could determine which legitimate World Series teams will watch from home in the postseason.

AL Central

The three team race in the Central has paired itself down to just two remaining teams, as the Detroit Tigers have fallen first on injury, and subsequently, on an August full of losses.  Over the same timeframe, the Twins offense has exploded (in a good way), and the White Sox have managed to stave off disaster, keeping themselves in a tight race with the Twins.

Problem is, that the White Sox are going to have to do something in the waiver trade market to keep this race tight into September.  The AL Central has been decided in the last day or two each of the last two years, but it looks right now like the Twins aren’t going to play such games with an offensively inferior team.

In defense of the Sox, one of the reasons the Twins might look to be such a superior offensive team could be just a performance over the last three weeks.  Joe Mauer and Jason Kubel have been scorching hot.  J.J. Hardy has been far improved since the all-star break.  Orlando Hudson is back in the lineup.  Justin Morneau will be back soon.  Pretty much every offensive player for the Twins has improved his stock since the all-star break except Denard Span, who has the unfortunate handicap of being on my fantasy team.

The Twins have continued to play great infield defense, and Michael Cuddyer has stopped being an innocent bystander out there in the outfield, also helping his team by playing some first base with Morneau out.

Even if the Twins offense declines a little due to unsustainable production in August, they still figure to be one of the more formidable offensive teams in the AL, with too many bats in that lineup to not power towards October at full speed.

The White Sox just don’t have as much hitting, and they don’t have as much defense, and while they added Edwin Jackson to their rotation at the deadline, they traded a 25 year old ML ready (Daniel Hudson) pitcher to do it.  I think, man for man, the White Sox have an even rotation with the Twins, but when you’re head to head, toe to toe with a team who can pour on the runs onto opponents, “even” means that they are leavin’.

The good news for the Sox is that their schedule is a little bit easier.  A majority of their remaining games vs. quality teams are against the Yankees and Red Sox.  The Twins will be playing mostly against the Rangers the rest of August and into early September.  The White Sox also have a series against the Orioles while the Twins get the Blue Jays.  That’s not enough of a difference for the Sox to be okay with splitting their remaining six games with the Twins — and if the Twins take four out of six head to head, this race is over.

NL Central

Joey Votto vs. Albert Pujols seems like a fun water cooler discussion that can last the next five years.  But the real story of this race is not Pujols, its the Cincinnati offense, which leads the entire NL in per game average.  But against the Cardinals’ pitching, the Reds offense went silent, as the Cardinals completed a crucial sweep.  The Reds rebounded to sweep the Marlins, while the Cards dropped two of three games to the Cubs.

The schedule falls heavily in favor of the Cardinals.  The Cardinals play 17 of 41 remaining games — nearly half — against dreadful opponents in the Pirates, Nationals, and Astros.  They do not play the Phillies, but have a four game set in Atlanta.  The Reds don’t have a difficult team left on their schedule, but only have a combined 9 games against Pittsburgh and Houston, and none against the Nationals.  They do have seven games against Arizona (the Cardinals have none) so if you think they belong in that Pirates/Nationals/Astros category, then the schedule is pretty even.

In fact, half of the remaining slate for the Reds is played against all offense opponents in the Diamondbacks and the Brewers, two of the worst pitching teams in the league.  The Reds and Cardinals only play one more series, so this race is going to be decided in games that aren’t head to head.

The Reds do have an advantage with the position players, as they play better infield defense than the Cardinals, hit better than the Cards, and right now they are healthy.  If the pitching doesn’t implode, I do like Cincinnati down the stretch.  But the Cards pitching is going to have them in the race to the very last pitch, so if Bronson Arroyo and Johnny Cueto can’t carry the Reds, their hitting advantage isn’t going to matter.  This could be the best team in the NL from this point out, or it could be a .500 team that finishes a distant second.

LiveBall Picks: Twins and Reds.

Strasburg an All-Star? Not a Very Funny Joke

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With the permission of just one man, Phillies manager (and NL skipper) Charlie Manuel, Stephen Strasburg will be headed to Anaheim to pitch in the 2010 MLB All-Star game, just seven starts into his big league career.  Strasburg’s pitching “stuff” is legendary: you just wonder how a guy like that ever made it 1) out of the grasp of MLB teams out of high school in the first place, and 2) to San Diego State University to play for Aztec head baseball coach, Tony Gwynn.

Strasburg threw for SDSU for three years, gaining national notoriety in the second, and then improving to pitch himself into a household name as a college junior.  Strasburg entered the major league baseball rule IV amateur draft a polished, potentially finished product.  A year’s time passed between Strasburg’s drafting and his major league debut, but what he accomplished in the minor leagues for about 11 starts at AA and later AAA was pretty legendary: former major league baseball players went down against Strasburg in just three pitches.  To make solid enough contact to hit a foul ball back to the screen, these accomplished hitters needed to outguess Strasburg.

His remarkable strikeout rate has held up strong at the major league level, but outside of his uncanny control, Strasburg has hit his fair share of struggles in the majors.  While it says something about the kid that he’s yet to run into a lineup that has stymied him to the point where he couldn’t find a way to record outs and progress the game, Strasburg has also faced the following lineups in the majors:

• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Cleveland Indians
• Chicago White Sox
• Kansas City Royals
• Atlanta Braves

Strasburg hasn’t won since the Indians game because he hasn’t gotten a single run of support since that day, but you’d also be hard pressed to find a major league pitcher that wouldn’t be able to do exactly what Strasburg has against those teams, minus the obscene strikeout rate and tough luck.  The Atlanta Braves sport the one above average major league lineup from that bunch, and when they faced Strasburgh, they figured him out the third time through the lineup, made the adjustments, and blew his quality start — chasing him from the game in the 7th — and handed him his second loss.  Strasburg is neither the first nor the last pitcher to hold the Royals to a single run in six innings.  He will not be the last pitcher to strike out a bunch of Pirates, or beat the Indians in fairly unimpressive fashion.

He’s a remarkable story and a very bright hope for a Nationals team that needs him, but — perhaps due to luck — Strasburg hasn’t quite accomplished anything since he stormed onto the scene with 14 Ks against the Pirates in his debut.  Hey, for a 21 year old rookie, we probably shouldn’t expect the world from him right away.  His stuff is electric, and he can clearly command it at the major league level.  He’s going to learn how to pitch, because he was ahead of the curve in college, and already knows how to pitch a minor league baseball game.

Should he pitch the major league All-star game?  Of course not.  The game is for remarkable major league pitchers, not remarkable stories.  In the current offensive baseball environment, teams like the first three that Strasburg faced prior to his first lost…those teams aren’t scoring runs against any pitcher.

Without a doubt, this subject of this article will be good enough to consistently turn all-star hitters into outs, probably as soon as next season.  He figures to pitch in ten+ all-star games, and if Charlie Manuel really feels that he’s not leaving anyone off the NL roster to put Strasburg on, I don’t have a huge problem with that.  That would almost have to be a faulty conclusion, however.  The National League has the best pitching of the two leagues this year, had the best pitching prior to Strasburg, and probably can’t justify him on the roster on merit.

A year from now, when Strasburg shuts down some of the better offenses in the NL, he’s going to earn his spot on the all-star team.  This is a matter of time.  At this time, let’s go with the 13 or so all-star pitchers who better deserve it, and not cost a National like Josh Willingham or Ryan Zimmerman a spot in the all-star game because we’re not actually paying attention to what’s going on in Washington four days a week.

Ozzie Guillen is a Good Manager

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As of this publishing hour, only three teams in baseball have fewer wins than the Chicago White Sox (15).  This is a huge disappointment for a team that certainly has spent the money necessary to compete, and unlike the Royals and Indians, aren’t a perennial disappointment.  The White Sox pitching rotation and bullpen have both underachieved, and the questionably constructed lineup has been a disaster.  Plenty of city folk are calling for someone’s head, usually centered around GM Kenny Williams, and Manager Ozzie Guillen.

Neither are particularly deserving of the blame.  And while there’s plenty of it to go around, the White Sox (and their fans) should probably step back and realize: they’re still in good hands, even if there isn’t going to be any miracle salvaging of this season.

Take a look around the midwest.  Last year, the rudderless Indians fired manager Eric Wedge in August, and replaced him with the savvy, but ultimately uninspiring Manny Acta.  They too have only 15 wins.  Last weekend, the Royals fired Trey Hillman.  Former Brewers skipper Ned Yost is in charge now.  The man who replaced Yost in Milwaukee on a permanent basis, Ken Macha, is on the rocks there now.  Lou Pinella, at best, is not helping the Cubs win.  Dusty Baker is still 1) employed, and 2) sporting one of the more talented NL teams, but his Cincinnati tenure has been marred by all sorts of inconsistencies.

There’s really just three managers who have weathered the test of time in the midwest, of which Guillen is one.  Ron Gardenhire, doing pretty much the same thing in Minnesota, but he’s working with all the chips in the AL Central this year.  The third guy is Tony LaRussa, who knows how to leverage his reputation as a strategist into loyalty from a city and his players.  Of course, if you allowed me to eliminate one manager from that list and run my team with the other two, I’d toss out LaRussa.

After that realization, it’s clear that White Sox fans have little to complain about with Guillen.  Hey, managers existed to be second guessed.  Guillen and Gardenhire both make their share of questionable indefensible moves.  Some blame Guillen’s desire to play the game the “right” way as the primary reason that the White Sox lineup (which can’t exactly run the bases or do many other versions of that ball-in-play jazz) isn’t performing to standard.

Perhaps the Sox are caught in a state of flux right now, not knowing what kind of team they actually want to be.  I’ll suggest that Guillen’s desire to have a team that CAN run and CAN bunt and CAN take the extra base and CAN avoid bad fundamental baseball hasn’t actually stopped the White Sox from doing what they do best: hit the ball out of the ballpark.   Ignoring that the team chose not to return aging power players like Jim Thome and Jermaine Dye, the top four hitters in HR on the White Sox are on pace to combine for 132 HRs this season.  By contrast, the Royals 4th best HR threat, David DeJesus, was asked to bunt two runners over in the first inning last week.

Guillen has a reputation for constructing lineups that have low on-base guys at the top, and while this has actually legitimately hurt the White Sox offense this year, as a team, the Sox are walking a lot with a few outlying exceptions: Pierre, Pierzynski, Rios, and Ramirez.  Konerko, Quentin, Mark Teahen, Gordon Beckham, Andruw Jones, and Mark Kotsay are all reaching base via the walk.  The White Sox on-base problem is simple: they aren’t hitting.  That, of course, is something that Guillen takes a lot of flak for, relying too much on the singles hitting element of his team to drive his offense.  The statistics argue the exact opposite as the problem: the Sox are being victimized by batted ball luck (a remarkably low/unfortunate .238 team BABIP), not by a team-wide philosophy to hack, go for singles, and then run into outs.

Furthermore, Guillen does two things critical of every manager that helps his team in the long term: he sticks with young players who might be hurting the team (Gordon Beckham) while giving less playing time to veterans who might be doing the same (Pierre/Kotsay/Quentin), and he always manages the later innings as if he has faith that his offense can get him back into it.  The trend de jour of managing in Major League Baseball these days is to be protective of ones pitching staff when a win is merely unlikely.  Guillen, even in the face of biting bad luck this year, manages to win even when it’s not likely.  This might be more critical than anything for a struggling offense.

Baltimore manager Dave Trembley, for one example, did not manage his bullpen to shut down the Kansas City Royals last night, trailing by no more than two runs at any point.  Modern bullpens have the ability, if they so choose, to more or less set up the platoons in the later innings so that no starter in a lineup can truly expect to hold the platoon advantage in any given at bat.  Heck, in 2008, Detroit manager Jim Leyland once used LOOGY Bobby Seay to get out Joey freakin’ Gathright in the 7th inning.  Managers tend to opt for caution when trailing, even sometimes by a run late in the game.  I like Guillen because he manages for run prevention even when his team is trailing late, as long as it’s within reason.

It’s no coincidence that the White Sox typically feature lower bullpen ERAs and higher bullpen WPA than other AL teams: they put their talented players in situations to succeed.  They don’t save Matt Thornton’s arm for a better opportunity, he’ll pitch whenever a team groups it’s lefties together.

It appears that bad luck, on both sides of the ball, is mostly to blame for the White Sox’ struggles, along with a steady diet of poor defense.  Manager Ozzie Guillen is not part of the problem, and I think, if things start to even out for the South Siders, he can once again be part of the solution.  Perhaps — unbelievably to some — even without costing his team more outs than other managers in baseball.

Quentin’s Return won’t put the Sox over the Top

flickr.com/Keith Allison

Far be it a bad thing when a player who was his team’s MVP last season triumphantly returns to the lineup amidst a tight AL Central division.  The White Sox enter action tonight in third place, but only 2.5 games behind the Detroit Tigers for first place in the AL Central.

He’ll make the White Sox better.  Perhaps noticeably better.  It’s just not going to matter.

In Quentin’s absence, the White Sox have been a pretty darn good defensive team.  Scott Podsednik is a plus left fielder, signed off the scrap heap to play there after Quentin’s injury.  Neither Brian Anderson nor Dwayne Wise has the bat to play in a major league outfield, but both are better defenders than Podsednik.  With Quentin returning with his questionable range in left, the White Sox will push Podsednik over to Center Field, where his glove really doesn’t play well.  Jermaine Dye, already the team’s biggest problem on defense, will make up the third piece of a horrible defensive outfield.  Overnight, the White Sox go from being strong at four defensive positions, to being strong only at shortstop (Alexi Ramirez) and first base (Paul Konerko).  Given the fly ball tendencies of Mark Buerhle, John Danks, and most of the bullpen, this is a troubling development.

Of course, the Sox hope to make up for this defensive decline by adding Quentin back into a lineup that might still be among the most feared in the AL.  The White Sox have been led this year by their pitching and defense, but back in June, a month into Quentin’s time on the DL, the White Sox were as many as seven games below .500, and the pitching and defense were no better or worse than they’ve been since then.  The key is that, over the last 5 weeks, the White Sox lineup has gone from one of the worst offenses in the AL to a middle of the pack AL lineup.

Spearheading the improvement: the same middle of the order that’s been doing it for them since 2006.

• Jim Thome (Age: 38)
• Jermaine Dye (35)
• Paul Konerko (33)
• A.J. Pierzynski (32)

In my eyes, there’s a reason why the White Sox couldn’t produce offensively over the first two months of the season, and in making a prediction on which way the team will trend over the next two months, I feel better relying on the first two months of evidence than the last month and a half of out-of-this-world play from the middle-aged White Sox.

In this respect, Quentin (26) provides the middle of the White Sox lineup with a stable, young bat who can help the team produce, but I think that expecting last year’s production for the rest of the year out of him is wishful thinking.  In fact, the most realistic projections of Quentin’s performance for the rest of the season suggest that he’s going to add about half-a-win with the bat over the rest of the season.

Ultimately, the regression of the older players, as well as the value-limiting effect (plus regression) of Podsednik in Center Field is going to knock the White Sox off of their current pace, and from here, I think the defensive decline in the outfield is only going to worsen it.  Getting Carlos Quentin back is, in a vacuum, a positive development, but I think it coincidentally marks a turning point in the White Sox season, a point at which they fall out of realistic contention  in the AL Central.