How the White Sox win the 2015 AL Central

This might be my favorite thing to think about and write each year. How the Chicago White Sox can win the AL Central.

Last year, they didn’t have a chance to win the division. But this year? It could happen. You might need to put on glasses, or squint really hard, but you can see it if you’ve got the prescription right.

Where We Ended: 2014

The Tigers won the Central last year with 90 wins. The Sox won 73. That’s a huge gap to make up in one winter. And more bad news, the Sox were out scored by 98 runs, second worst in the AL.

But as any Sox fan knows, not all was bad last year. The team was somewhat enjoyable to watch unlike 2013. They played the Tigers tough (9-10 last year). They had a winning record in interleague. The Sox were sort of competitive in the first half, playing .460 baseball, not good, but not horrible. However, they fell apart in the second half where they went 28-38 and were outscored by 75 runs.

To figure out how the Sox can win the division, we need to set some parameters. First things first, let’s assume that 90 wins is going to win the division again. The Tigers probably aren’t ‘better’ heading into 2015. The Royals won 89 games last year and needed luck to do so,  then used some sort of super-duper-magic-dust to get to Game 7 of the World Series. Regression is likely. The Twins are a few years away.

The Indians… well, they’re the wild card in all this. The Tribe won 85 games last year, and while they didn’t add too much (i.e. anything), they also didn’t lose too much. While I don’t think Michael Brantley will be as good as he was last year, I also doubt Jason Kipnis will be as bad. The Indians offense might be relying too much on Nick Swisher bouncing back, but considering his age, he might be done and the Tribe might very well be looking at a sunk cost. Meanwhile, the Indians starting pitching appears to be strong. BUT they’re counting on a few young arms stepping up and being decent. Always a big risk. Could the Indians win 90? Easily. Could they be stuck on 85? Just as easily.

Considering that the Central is stronger this year, let’s set 89 wins is our goal. The Sox won 73. Where can we find 16 wins?

First, Short, Center: For starters, Abreu and Alexei have to be as good as they were last year. Eaton too, but he’s got to play more on top of it. If those three stay healthy and play well, the Sox are off to a good start.

Second Base: Micah Johnson appears not only to have won the starting nod, but also will get a chance to fail. I kind of doubt the Sox will sit him prior to Memorial Day unless he’s booting balls left and right. Johnson doesn’t need to hit a ton, he’s going to be 9th in the order after all, but he does need to play decent defense.

The Sox got negative 0.4 WAR last year out of second base, that’s not good. Guys didn’t hit and the fielding was just so-so (mostly Gordon Beckham’s doing). There’s a lot of room for improvement and if Johnson (and Sanchez) can just be around league average, I’ll gladly take it as it will turn a loser position into one that doesn’t hurt the team.

Third Base: Next, Conor Gillaspie needs to continue to do what he did last year and that’s hit righties. He could also stand to be better with the glove, which ain’t gonna happen. The Sox do need to figure out what to do when they’re facing a lefty since Gillaspie can’t touch ‘em. I’m not sure I know Gordon Beckham is not the answer, but he was decent against lefties last year. Unfortunately, Bonifacio’s record against lefties isn’t the best either. Thus, third might be that position where the Sox just have to hope pray for a cummulative 2 WAR from these three, there’s very limited upside here, so it’s kind of doubtful. UNLESS, Matt Davidson figures out what’s gone wrong down in Charlotte during April/May. I’m not going to count on it however. Third base is what it is…

...Which means it’s the most obvious upgrade in season. If third base turns out to be as blah as I think it will be and the Sox are within shouting distance of the wild card/division; then this should be where Hahn swings a deal to make the team better.

Left Field: Our first clear upgrade! Mekly is going to be better than Viciedo. De Aza was passable in left, but not very good. Viciedo continued to be an outright disaster. Melky isn’t very good with the glove in left, but he’s actually an upgrade from Viciedo; and Cabrera’s bat is going to play in left. This is a 3 or 4 win up grade for the Sox.

Right Field: Sox fans are bullish on Garcia. Non-Sox fans are bearish. I see both cases. Pros: Avisail looks like a ball player. He can run, he can hit, he’s got pop, he’s only 23… he’s someone that can put it together. If he cuts down on the Ks a bit, is a tad more patient at the plate, and if he stays healthy, he can easily be a better than average right fielder. But the Cons have a solid argument too: he isn’t a very good fielder, he hasn’t shown a ton of pop, and he’s had trouble getting on base in the majors.

But there were signs, especially in September, that Garcia might be putting it together. He walked a bit and there is pop in his bat. He’s never going to win a gold glove, but he should be serviceable in right. And Avisail was unlucky last year, a BABIP of .285 is pretty low for someone who can run a bit.

For Garcia to be a positive for the Sox, there are a number of things that needs to happen. First, he needs to make better contact: a 10.8% infield fly ball ain’t gonna cut it. Also of concern, Garcia’s line drive percentage was 15% last year (for comparison, Melky’s was 21%). And while Avisail swings at strikes, he’s still too much of a hacker as seen in his swing percentage outside of the zone of 42%. If that doesn’t fall a bit, he’s going to see more and more pitches outside of the strike zone, which probably will lead to more weak ground balls and infield flys.

I can go either way on Avisail. In many ways he holds the key to the Sox 2015 season. If he’s a 3 WAR player, the Sox should be around the 89 win mark if everything else goes according to plan. If he’s putting up a negative WAR? The Sox are in trouble because there is no easy fix.

Catcher: I’m not going to pretend for a second that Tyler Flowers is going to be as good as he was last year. His .355 BABIP was insane and odds are he’s going to regress to the mean there. I doubt his power drops much and Flowers has proven to be decent behind the plate, but Tyler doesn’t walk and he strikes out a near Baez like rate…

However, the Sox actually have a backup catcher this year in Soto. Sure he’ll get hurt at some point, but Soto will slow down a running game (see the A’s/Royals Wild Card game if you don’t believe me) and has a decent enough bat. I could see a near 50/50 split occurring with these two as the season progresses (if Soto stays healthy). I could actually see the Sox being a little better behind the plate this year because, you know, they actually have two major league catchers unlike last year.

DH: While I wasn’t crazy about the LaRoche signing at the time, considering everything else that Hahn did over the winter, the moves seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. And honestly, I like it more today than I did when first announced. A lefty bat who can hit… I’ll take it. LaRoche is going to play some first too, where his glove, which might not be great, is better than Abreu’s. Considering how bad Konerko was last year, and how Adam Dunn, Adam Dunn was… it’s an upgrade. Not a huge one, but an upgrade.

Starting pitching: Assuming Sale only misses a start, maybe two, to start the year; the Sox just need him, Samardzija, and Quintana to do their thing, which is be really good starting pitchers. Meanwhile, Noesi and Danks aren’t so good. But if the Sox can get Noesi to be average for two months or so, Carlos Rodon will probably be about ready to be called up in June. He could be the difference maker in July and August—even if he’s on an innings limit this year—by giving the Sox four good to great starters.

The Sox starters, compared to the rest of baseball, weren’t bad last year considering it was pretty much Sale and Quintana and pray for rain. Samardzija is a four or five win upgrade, probably putting the rotation into the top third in baseball. They’re going to have the Danks problem until his contract ends next year. But Danks in the 5th spot isn’t the end of the world. Sure it could be better, but if he gives you 180+ innings… you deal with it.

Relievers: Somehow, someway, this wasn’t the worst bullpen in baseball in 2014 by WAR. But it was darn close. The pen did lead the league in walks per 9 and had the second lowest K/9. So it was really bad.

The pen was the easiest area to upgrade over the winter just because it was so bad. There’s no doubt it’s better today with Robertson and Duke. If the Sox can get someone else to take a step forward, the pen should be fine.

There is one thing that has me worried about the pen… the Sox were 28-24 in one run games last year. That’s not bad. The issue with the Sox last year was they weren’t very good in the 8th and 9th inning in particular. The Sox allowed a run in the 8th inning 50 times, and in the 9th it occurred 47 times. The Yankees, by contrast, allowed a run 34 and 33 times in the 8th and 9th respectively. Of course, not all those innings were games where the Sox had the lead, but, if say the Sox were down a run going into the 8th, allowing another run makes the comeback all the more difficult. When you’re down, you want to stop the bleeding; the Sox weren’t very good at that last year.

So the upgrades in the pen, and assuming someone can come along and be pretty good, be it Zach Putnam or Javy Guerra (or even Daniel Webb if he stops walking everyone), then the Sox should be okay out of the bullpen.

Defense: The Sox D wasn’t very good last year if you go by the defensive metrics (fangraphs and baseball reference). The eye test would tell you about the same. The Sox weren’t very good at any of the corner positions, Alexei might be slipping with age at short, and whoever was at second last year wasn’t very good. Fangraphs didn’t think Eaton was very good in center, but baseball reference did; while it was the reverse for Flowers.

All in all the Sox defense probably won’t be much better this year. Sure, Melky’s probably a little better than Vicideo, but I’m not going to see him as a difference maker. There’s a chance Garcia, after dropping some weight, can get to a few more balls. Maybe the metrics agree that Flowers and Eaton are both good defenders. And it turns out that Johnson is an upgrade at second, while the late inning defensive replacements at third and maybe one of the corner spots saves a game or two over the course of the season. Who knows. But if there is one reason to be down on the Sox in ‘15, it’s that the defense doesn’t appear to be much better.

So, what does this all mean? One of the Sox problems last year is that it didn’t really have an average player. Alexei probably comes closest, but the ‘14 Sox were either stars or bums. 2015 looks much the same, only with more stars. That’s a good thing.

The good news is the Sox upgraded in left field, at DH, the 3rd starter roll, and the bullpen. But they also need second, third, catcher, and the 4th starter to be average; and assuming they’ll be ‘average’ is a bit of a leap of faith in all positions. I can see it happening at second and maybe catcher. But I doubt the Sox are going to get the production needed at third base for it to be considered average. And assuming anything other than below average with the backend of the rotation is optimistic.

In the bigger picture, the Sox should score more runs this year. 1-4 in the batting order is very good, and if Garcia starts to mature as a hitter, that’s a really good 1-5 in the order. With Alexei and Gillaspie at 6 and 7 in some order, really isn’t too shabby either. Flowers/Soto batting 8th is a bit of a black hole, and we’ll see on Johnson. All in all, this is a line up that should score around 700 runs. It’s not great, but it’s enough if the pitching is there.

And that’s where I have trouble with the Sox. They allowed 758 runs last year, 13th most in the AL. There’s a clear upgrade in a few of those pitching spots that were filled by below average pitchers last season, but even if the Sox cut 50 runs, we’re still only looking at an 81 win team. It’s unlikely that the defense is going to save any more runs too (if anything the defense is going to continue to cost the Sox runs).   

But the point of this 2,500 word analysis is to convince myself that the Sox are going to win the AL Central. So let’s bump the offensive output to 710 runs, a 50 run improvement.

And remember how bad I said the Sox were in the 8th and 9th inning? Well here’s the graph:

Inning	Games	No Runs Allowed	Any Runs Allowed	% Inn w/ Run Allowed	Total	Avg	Avg/9inn
1	162	116	46	28.4%	95	0.59	5.28
2	162	115	47	29.0%	81	0.50	4.50
3	162	125	37	22.8%	72	0.44	4.00
4	162	121	41	25.3%	76	0.47	4.22
5	162	114	48	29.6%	97	0.60	5.39
6	162	119	43	26.5%	77	0.48	4.28
7	162	119	43	26.5%	71	0.44	3.94
8	161	111	50	31.1%	100	0.62	5.59
9	123	76	47	38.2%	76	0.64	5.72

(source: Baseball Reference)

The Sox were horrendous late in games, opponents were most likely to score in the 8th and 9th inning. If the pen were able to cut the number of runs allowed by 30% in each of the 8th and 9th, that’s 53 runs. And if at a 40% reduction, it’s 70 runs prevented.

Inning	Games	Runs Allowed with 30% improvement	Runs Allowed with 40% improvement
8	161	70	60
9	123	53.2	45.6
Runs "Saved" from 2014		-52.8	-70.4

Things start to get interesting if the late inning pen is able to reduce the number of runs allowed by 40%. Factoring in the upgrade Samardzija brings and a huge, though not entirely impossible, improvement from the bullpen, you’re looking at reducing the number of runs allowed to somewhere around 85 to 95. Suddenly the Sox are scoring 710 runs while allowing 660. That’s an 86 win baseball team, and with a little luck...

The 2015 AL Central title goes to the Sox.

So there you go, that’s how the Sox win the division: continued improvement from Abreu and Eaton along with the addition of LaRoche and Melky and a nice season from Garcia improves the offense by 50 runs; a deal around midseason for a third baseman improves the team by a win or two the rest of the way; Robertson and Duke along with another arm solve the bullpen issues which takes a huge leap forward creating a top 10 bullpen; Samardzija (and eventually Rodon) present upgrades over Carroll and Noesi giving the Sox a top 10 rotation. All injuries are to players that are easily replaced (i.e. Danks, Johnson, Flowers, most of the bullpen).

And if the Sox make it to the dance, they’re going to roll out Sale, Samardzija, and Quintana. No one else in the AL can roll like that save maybe the Tigers. The hard part is getting there.

Spreads! A not so brief second half preview

NOTE: All numbers as of the All-Star Break. I did most of the work prior to Friday's games. But all numbers as of the All-Star Break.

Something I enjoy looking at is the spread between a team's ERA, FIP and xFIP as it gives and idea of what teams are getting lucky and gives of an idea of who may come back down to Earth (or make a charge in the win column).  Seeing that we’re over halfway through the season, now is a good time to dive into this.

Let’s get this out of the way right away. When looking at team pitching staffs, ERA matters a lot. Last year, wins were most highly correlated to ERA—not FIP, not xFIP, not K/9, not WAR—it’s ERA. A good ERA = wins. This seems intuitive, but it’s important in this day in age, and there is a lot of good info in FIP, xFIP, K/9, and they are pretty highly correlated, but it’s ERA is more highly correlated*. Anyway, here are the correlations for 2012 team pitching (source for all this is fangraphs).

Correlations
ERA	-0.81250
LOB%	0.80277
WAR	0.69665
FIP	-0.68486
xFIP	-0.66220
BB/9	-0.63836
K/9	0.49800

*As always, correlation does not imply causation.

Okay, with that out of the way... let’s go to the spreads!

xFIP and ERA: The best differentials

Team	xFIP	ERA	Difference
Pirates	3.78	3.08	0.7
Athletics	4.25	3.62	0.63
Braves	3.78	3.29	0.49
Reds	3.68	3.43	0.25
Marlins	4.11	3.87	0.24
Royals	4.03	3.82	0.21
Nationals	3.76	3.58	0.18
Dodgers	3.79	3.62	0.17

xFIP and ERA: the bottom differentials:

Team	xFIP	ERA	Difference
Rockies	4.05	4.19	-0.14
Brewers	3.97	4.13	-0.16
Angels	4.12	4.31	-0.19
Giants	3.8	4.11	-0.31
Indians	3.95	4.31	-0.36
Astros	4.46	4.84	-0.38
Mariners	3.72	4.21	-0.49
Tigers	3.35	3.86	-0.51

An easy way to think about this is that the teams with a positive differential are lucky and the teams with negative differentials have been unlucky.  However, just because a team is unlucky doesn’t mean they’re good, as the Astros have the worst ERA in the league, they’re unlucky, but still have the worst xFIP in the league.

Here’s a look at the statistical breakdown of only the differential:

N	30
Average	0.001
Median	-0.035
Standard Deviation	0.288

Three teams really stand out on the list: the Tigers, Pirates and A’s.  The Pirates and A’s both have performed much better than you’d expect—in fact, the A’s and Pirates have a differential which is two standard deviations beyond the mean.  Meanwhile, the Tigers ERA is much higher than how they’ve pitched, and fall nearly two standard deviations from the mean in the wrong direction (and with FIP they are more than two standard deviations; I’m not going to post the FIP info, but it’s similar as you’d expect).

Let’s take this team by team.

Pirates: The good news is that their xFIP is 8th best in the majors and their ERA is the best in the league.  Their HR/FB rate is a tad below league average, but nothing that screams smoke and mirrors.  The Pirates are where they are by mixing skill and luck.

First the skill.  They lead the league in ground ball rate at 50.9%, this is two standard deviations beyond the league average. That’s really good.  I think ground balls is more of a skill than luck, but obviously there is a bit of both involved.  And in a way, it’s amazing their high ground ball rate has lead to an insanely low BABIP... the luck.

The team .265 BABIP is crazy low.  Between 2009 and 2012, only the ‘11 Rays had a BABIP below .270, and only two other teams had a BABIP below .275.  In other words, some sort of regression is probably going to take place, some of those ground balls are going to get through the infield for hits. That’s going to lead to more base runners. Base runners mean runs, unless...

You’re able to keep the strand rate (LOB%) high. And the Pirates lead the league in that too with a 77.7% strand rate (again two standard deviations beyond the mean).  So guys aren’t getting on base, and when they do get on base they’re left there... that leads to not many runs and you get the Pirates.  They’re doing this on some skill and a good amount of luck.

Odds are they can’t keep up the low BABIP and high LOB%, but I don’t doubt their ground ball rate staying high.  They’re a pretty good fielding team, so that’s going to help keep runners off base.  But the best news for Pittsburgh is that they’ve got 56 wins in the bank and a 5/5.5 game lead over the Nats, Phillies and Dodgers.  Last year, 88 wins got the Cards into the playoffs; they don’t even need to play .500 baseball to reach 90 wins. So while they probably won’t keep playing .600 baseball, they’re a really good bet to make the playoffs.

A’s: Hey they’re pretty good.  What’s interesting is their FIP-ERA spread isn’t nearly as great (0.24) which while still on the positive side, really highlights the A’s success this year: they haven’t allowed home runs.  

Their 8.5% HR/FB rate is the lowest in the majors and what makes it really amazing is that they’re also last in ground ball rate at 39.2%.  In other words, the A’s get a lot of outs via the fly ball and those fly balls leave the yard at a rate well below the league average/median (10.8%).

The A’s also have a pretty low BABIP (.272), and while you’d expect that to rise, it’s not as likely as the Pirates.  But the A’s have their work cut out for them still as the Rangers are right behind them and then the entire AL East (minus Toronto) and the Indians are in this wild card race. So Oakland has had some luck, but really it’s the BABIP more than the home run rate, since their HR/FB has been around that 8/9% the last few seasons, probably due to where they play their home games.

Tigers: And now, on to the most overrated team in the majors.  The Tigers are good, they’re really good. But the ‘27 Yankees or ‘05 White Sox they aren’t.  Sure the numbers look great because they strike out everyone—9.11 per nine which leads the majors and is two standard deviations beyond the mean.  They’ve got a slight above average ground ball rate and a slightly below average LOB%. They don’t allow a ton of home runs per 9, but their HR/FB rate is right around the league average.

Yet, their FIP and xFIP spreads are huge. Like only Seattle has sort of as large of a spread as the Tigers.  Many will say that the Tigers are unlucky with a BABIP of .312 which is tied for worst in the majors. But I disagree.

What were the Tigers expecting when they trot out Miggy, Prince and Peralta every day?  Miggy’s -11.9 UZR* is brutal and Prince’s -7.7 is barely better and rank last and second to last in the league at their position.  Peralta, who came over from Cleveland with bad defensive figures was solid last year by UZR, but I wonder if that might have been because he was getting to a few balls that a ‘normal’ shortstop wouldn’t get because the third baseman would have taken care of it.  This year his UZR numbers are outright average which leads me to believe that if you hit a ground ball against the Tigers, you’ve got a good chance for it to turn into a single. 

*Like everyone I don't put much stock in single season UZR, but these two have never been all that great in the field and they fail the eye test too.

And that’s how you beat the Tigers. You put the ball in play. The Tigers power arms will expose high strikeout teams more so than anyone else in the league.  But teams that don’t strike out as much are Detroits achilles heel because the Tigers can’t field.

I think the Tigers are too good and have too many games against the Sox to not make the playoffs.  But they should be worried because I’m not sure that BABIP is going to regress.  But you know what might regress? The Indians HR/FB rate of 12.9%, tied for highest in the majors (and don't forget, the Tribe make an appearance in the worst xFIP-ERA spread).  If the Indians pitching staff can stop walking everyone and then get some fly ball luck, the Tigers might find themselves in a one game playoff against the Rangers or O’s or Yankees.  Or out of the playoff picture entirely.

Of course, if I was the Tigers, I'd sacrifice Peralta’s offense for a slick fielding shortstop.  Last year, they upgraded their defense at second when they picked up Omar Infante.  I think the smart move would be to sacrifice whatever offense Peralta is giving you for a shortstop that can cover for Miggy’s horribleness at third, because it will matter in the playoffs.