Chicago White Sox

2001 = 83-79 (.512 - 2nd in AL Central)
798 RS / 795 RA (.500 Pythagorean Win %)

2002 = 81-81 (.500 - 2nd in AL Central)
856 RS / 798 RA (.531 Pythagorean Win %)

Chicago’s overall offensive numbers from 2001 and 2002 were almost identical. They struck out about 5% less and walked about 5% more, but their batting average, on-base %, slugging %, homers, doubles and triples were essentially the same for both years.

However, they managed to score 58 more runs in 2002. How could a team finish with 58 runs more than they had the year before with almost identical offensive totals?

One reason is that they cut down on the amount of outs they made trying to steal bases. They not only attempted about 42% fewer steals, they also improved their success rate slightly. In addition to that, the White Sox hit into about 15% fewer double-plays. Those two things may seem insignificant, but a couple dozen "extra" outs over the course of a season can make a big difference.

That said, the biggest factor in their improved run totals last year was that, despite their overall numbers being the same, their performance in the most important situations for run scoring improved significantly. They improved slightly with runners in scoring position overall, but quite a bit with RISP and two outs.

w/RISP:

2001 = .281/.365/.469
2002 = .290/.364/.488

w/RISP & 2 outs:

2001 = .246/.350/.429
2002 = .268/.356/.468

Another area that they improved upon was their hitting with the bases loaded:

2001 = .287/.295/.500
2002 = .339/.356/.605

Their performance with the bases loaded is particularly impressive, because the American League as a whole hit "only" .292/.314/.462 (about 185 points of OPS worse than Chicago) with the bases loaded last year.

It is amazing what some "extra" outs and some improved hitting with "ducks on the pond" can do for a team’s runs scored totals. The White Sox finished 3rd in the AL in runs scored last season with 856, behind only New York (897) and Boston (859).

While the Chicago offense was very similar from 2001 to 2002, the pitching staff was damn near identical. 4.55 ERA one year, 4.53 the next. 921 strikeouts one year, 945 the next. 500 walks one year, 528 the next. 181 homers one year, 190 the next. You get the point. It all added up to 795 and 798 runs allowed, which ranked them 8th in the AL in both seasons, making their pitching staff their obvious weakness.

Mark Buehrle pitched very well last season, but he was the only Chicago pitcher with more than 100 innings pitched and an ERA under 4.50. The other four 100+ inning-tossers had ERAs of 4.58, 5.18, 5.20 and 6.06. In fact, their starting rotation as a whole was very poor, posting a combined 4.94 ERA. Chicago’s bullpen was very good though and they posted a 3.70 ERA, led by Keith Foulke (78 IP, 2.90 ERA), Damaso Marte (60, 2.83) and Antonio Osuna (68, 3.86).

The pitching staff’s struggles can be traced back to their inability to strike anyone out. Sox pitchers struck out only 945 batters in 2002, which ranked 11th in AL - ahead of only Tampa Bay, Kansas City and Detroit (the three 100-loss teams). Despite the lack of Ks, Chicago pitchers are certainly not control artists, as they ranked 8th in the AL in walks allowed. And when they did get the ball over the plate, it got hit very hard (they gave up 190 homers, 10th in the AL).

The White Sox have done a lot to change their team since this time last year.

They traded away Mark Johnson, Ray Durham and Keith Foulke to Oakland and let both Royce Clayton and Todd Ritchie depart via free agency (both coincidentally - or maybe not - to Milwaukee). They also traded Kenny Lofton to San Francisco and Bobby Howry to Boston and dealt Rocky Biddle and Jeff Liefer to Montreal and Antonio Osuna to the Yankees. They even traded Sandy Alomar Jr. but then signed him back as a free agent after the season.

Chicago brought in Bartolo Colon and Billy Koch this off-season, after acquiring D’Angelo Jimenez during the season, and have some young players in their system that are on the verge of becoming full-time major leaguers. The 2003 White Sox are a team that will attempt to blend in their young talent with their remaining veteran players, all while trying to compete for the AL Central Division championship.

Let’s meet the 2003 White Sox...

The Chicago lineup looks to be very strong once again in 2003. They have a superstar in Magglio Ordonez and solid, veteran contributors in Frank Thomas, Carlos Lee, Jose Valentin and Paul Konerko.

With Durham and Clayton (their starters at 2B and SS for much of 2002) gone, the Sox will shift Valentin to SS with Joe Crede sliding in at 3B and will look for D’Angelo Jimenez and possibly Willie Harris to play second base. Konerko and Thomas will once again be the men at 1B and DH.

In the outfield, Ordonez and Lee return at the outfield corners, but centerfield is wide open. Joe Borchard has a bright future, possibly as a centerfielder, but he may not start the year with the White Sox. Aaron Rowand appears to be the top candidate to begin the year as Chicago’s CF, but he had a major motorcycle accident during the off-season and there are some questions as to whether or not he’ll be able to handle centerfield duties right away. If Rowand isn’t ready and Borchard is in Triple-A, look for Willie Harris to get some significant time in center.

Behind the plate, the Sox have three candidates for major playing time: Sandy Alomar Jr., Josh Paul and highly-touted prospect Miguel Olivo. If Olivo makes the team out of spring training, he’ll be the starter. If not (which is likely), he’ll spend some time at AAA while Alomar and Paul hold the fort till he arrives for good.

Let’s take a closer look at the position players...

What you don’t see in the above stats is Frank Thomas’ .328/.436/.625 line from 2000. He hit 43 homers and 44 doubles, walked 112 times, scored 115 runs and drove in 143 runs that year.

What is interesting about his phenomenal 2000 season is that it came right after two very poor (for his standards) years that are somewhat similar to his performance last season. The Big Hurt hit .265/.381/.480 in 1998 and then .305/.414/.471 in 1999. It looked like he was in the middle of his decline and them BOOM, he went and posted a 1.061 OPS in 2000. Now, this current situation is a little different. Thomas is a few years older, first of all. Secondly, he is coming off of one injury-wrecked season and one poor season, instead of two poor seasons. But really, is Thomas’ situation now all that different from how it was at the end of the 1999 season?

Want more evidence of the similarity? Check out this quote from a CNNSI.com spring training article on the White Sox:

What’s the big deal? Well, that quote is actually from spring training 2000, not this year. It is déjà vu all over again, as Thomas once again brought in Walt Hriniak as his "personal hitting coach" and is certainly hoping he can have a similar affect on him this time around.

There were some signs of life for Thomas at the end of last season; He hit .270/.396/.513 in the second half, including a vintage Frank Thomas .359/.480/.654 in September.

If you break down his season a little further, it gets very interesting. Thomas hit .264/.364/.490 against right-handed pitching, which is actually fairly good. But he hit only .214/.352/.410 against lefties, which is not only pretty bad, but very un-Thomas-like. For example: In 2000 Frank Thomas hit .407/.549/.824 against lefties.

Actually, if you examine Thomas’ career, you find that his only three sub par seasons (1998, 1999 and 2002) have all come as a result of him uncharacteristically struggling against left-handed pitching.

When Frank Thomas is hitting like Frank Thomas he absolutely destroys left-handed pitching:

1990 = .408/.538/.732
1991 = .376/.500/.624
1992 = .357/.456/.650
1993 = .311/.419/.649
1994 = .385/.504/.798
1995 = .389/.524/.849
1996 = .403/.544/.798
1997 = .358/.435/.792

That is truly an amazingly successful and amazingly consistent run of hitting the snot out of baseballs thrown by left-handed pitchers. 7 out of 8 years with an AVG over .350. All eight years with an OBP over .400, including five years with a .500+ OBP. All eight years with a SLG over .600, including four years right around .800. Like I said, amazing.

So, after eight straight years of destroying lefties, look what happened against them in 1998 and 1999:

1998 = .226/.327/.365
1999 = .253/.387/.453

1999 was much better than 1998, but neither season is even remotely close to his established level of performance versus lefties for the previous eight seasons. Then he bounced back against lefties in 2000 and hit .407/.549/.824. Not coincidentally, he had an MVP-type season, much like many of years from 1990-1997. 2001 was wiped away with an injury and then last year Thomas hit only .214/.352/.410 against southpaws.

Throughout his career, Frank Thomas has usually been great but not extraordinary against righties (typically somewhere in the .300/.420/.525 range) and otherworldly against lefties.

His performances against righties in 1998 (.277/.396/.516), 1999 (.314/.419/.474) and 2002 (.264/.364/.490) are not so out of line with the rest of his career. It is Thomas’ performance against lefties that has determined the overall quality of his seasons and has led to him having three bad ones out of his last four full-seasons.

One other interesting aspect of Thomas’ 2002 season is his ground ball/fly ball ratio. Frank Thomas, like many great power hitters, has always been a "fly ball hitter". His GB/FB ratio, during his best years, was usually around 0.90, meaning slightly more fly balls than ground balls. Last season, his GB/FB ratio dropped all the way to 0.40, which is an amazing ratio. Thomas hit 238 fly balls and only 95 grounders. As I said, in most of his seasons he was right around 50/50. In fact, Thomas’ GB/FB ratio of 0.40 last season was the most fly ball-dominated ratio of any hitter in baseball.

As "bad" as Frank Thomas’ 2002 season was, he still ranked among the top 30 AL hitters in OPS, still smacked 58 extra-base hits and still drove in 92 runs. A lot of people seem to have already counted him out and maybe rightfully so, but before that happens I think we should all think back just a few years ago and remember that he was all but counted out then too and had one of the best seasons of his career. I think Frank Thomas will bounce back in a big way in 2003.

Paul Konerko started 2002 extraordinarily hot, hitting .371/.387/.562 in April and later .340/.409/.742 in June. He was hitting .328/.379/.571 at the all-star break and was selected to play in the all-star game. Then the second half started and everything fell apart. Konerko hit only .215/.295/.333 in July and .270/.332/.402 in the second half overall. After driving in 71 runs in the first half, he drove in only 33 in the second. The end result was a season line of .305/.359/.498, which looks very close to what he did in 2001.

During Konerko’s great first half run, there was a lot of talk about him finally "breaking out" and becoming an elite hitter. All that talk seems sort of silly now, especially when you look at his four years with the White Sox:

1999 = .863 OPS
2000 = .844 OPS
2001 = .856 OPS
2002 = .857 OPS

Now, the American League level of offense has changed over the past four years, but that is still a remarkably consistent four-year stretch and certainly not someone doing any "breaking out." Konerko turned 27 on March 5th, so he’s right in the middle of his peak years. Still, I have a hard time believing he’ll do anything different than what he’s done for the past four seasons, which is something along the lines of .300/.350/.500, and definitely nothing to sneeze at.

After not walking more than 39 times in any of his first eight years as a professional baseball player, Carlos Lee found the fountain of walks in 2002 and nearly doubled his previous career high with 75 free passes. He hit a career low .264, but still managed to have his best season with the Sox because of his newly-added plate discipline and his always-present power.

Defensively, Lee looks a lot worse than he actually is. He’s a big guy and tends to choose strange routes to balls, but the end result is an average left fielder with a decent arm.

"El Caballo" already has four full major league seasons under his belt and is only 26 years old. He is a strange player in that he has flashed many different skills, but at different times. In 1999 and 2000 he hit for average, in 2000 and 2001 he stole bases and last year he took walks. If that plate discipline remains, he could put it all together and be in line for a big season. If not, he’ll still be a productive player because he has shown that he can probably slug .450 in his sleep.

Magglio Ordonez is entering into the massively-underrated stage. He has quietly driven in 491 runs over the last four years, all while hitting .300+ each season. He slugged a career high .597 in 2002 and also reached career highs in batting average (.320), homers (38), doubles (47), runs scored (116) and runs batted in (135). In a lot of seasons (including 2002) a right fielder that hits .320/.381/.597 and drives in 135 runs is a legitimate MVP-candidate, but Ordonez finished 9th in the AL MVP balloting last year and didn’t even make the all-star team.

Ordonez is an example of a guy that came up as a solid but unspectacular player and has simply improved each and every year, turning himself into a legitimate star. His minor league numbers were never all that special and he hit only .282/.326/.415 in his rookie year, at age 24. But just look at how he has improved his power:

AB/HR:

AB/2B:

1998 = 21.4
1999 = 18.4
2000 = 17.3
2001 = 14.8
2002 = 12.6

That’s a damn near perfect developmental path. He was always a good hitter for batting average, so he didn’t have very much room for improvement in that regard. He didn’t have much plate discipline when he first joined the Sox and had shown significant improvement in that area too, but he took a step back last season in that department. As long as he slugs .597 though, I don’t think anyone will notice he only drew 53 walks. That said, plate discipline is the one area of his game that could still be improved upon and Ordonez has shown the ability to do so in the past, so I wouldn’t put it past him to jump to 75 or 80 walks this year. Heck, if Carlos Lee can do it, Magglio Ordonez certainly can.

Jose Valentin takes a lot of heat for his defense at shortstop, but I really don’t think he’s that horrendous. In fact, Diamond-Mind gave him a "Very Good" rating there last season, which is the second highest rating possible.

Most of his poor defensive reputation comes from his tendency to make a lot of errors. In his first full-season in the majors, Valentin made 20 errors in only 83 games at shortstop. He followed that up with 15 errors in only 104 games the next year and 37 errors in 151 games in 1996. His last year in Milwaukee, 1999, Valentin made 22 errors in only 85 games. In his first year with the White Sox he was the full-time SS and made 36 errors in only 141 games.

He hasn’t really gotten any better regarding errors (he made eight in only 50 games at SS last year), but that doesn’t preclude him from possibly being a good defensive shortstop. There are a lot of more advanced ways to look at defense, but much of the media still relies upon one thing to judge defenders: Errors. So, when a player makes a lot of them and the media thinks of players making a lot of errors as automatically being bad defensively, well, it is a tough label to get away from.

At the plate, Valentin has always had a bit of pop and since coming to Chicago he has really blossomed as a hitter. He has slugged .491, .509 and .478 in his three seasons with the White Sox, hitting 25, 28 and 25 homers.

Judging his hitting isn’t quite that simple though. Valentin is a switch-hitter, but he actually has a massive platoon split.

2000-2002:

vs. Righties = .270/.338/.514
vs. Lefties = .196/.284/.344

Ouch. He is a guy that should be platooning with someone, although platooning shortstops isn’t done as often as platooning left fielders or DHs. Valentin has been fairly consistent since coming to Chicago in 2000, so I would expect more of the same in 2003: Somewhere around .255/.320/.480 with 25 homers and a whole bunch of errors.

It seems like Joe Crede has been a much talked-about prospect for forever already. He was Chicago’s fifth round pick in 1996 and has been alternating good seasons with mediocre ones in the minor leagues since then.

He started his pro career by hitting .299 in rookie-ball and then dropped to .271 the next year. He slugged .514 at Single-A in 1998 but then dropped all the way to .251/.303/.347 the next year at AA. He bounced back in 2000 and hit .306 with 21 homers and 35 doubles at AAA, but then hit only .276 and saw his OBP and SLG drop by about 30 points each in 2001. He bounced back again last year and slugged .571 at AAA before the Sox called him up and he slugged .515 for them in 53 games.

Despite all his ups and downs, Crede still doesn’t turn 25 until next month and has the potential to be an impact hitter for many years. He doesn’t walk much, but he’s always shown good power and could very easily become a steady 25-35 HR threat in the majors. Defensively, he has a reputation for being below-average and, from what little I saw of him last year with the White Sox, I would have to agree.

Joe Crede should be able to give the Sox above-average 3B production this year and possibly quite a bit more.

A few years ago, D’Angelo Jimenez was one of the top prospects in all of baseball. He was in the Yankee organization at the time and ranked ahead of Alfonso Soriano in the minds of many. Jimenez suffered a severe neck injury as a result of a car accident in 2000 and many feel he has yet to show the same type of ability since.

In 1999 (pre-injury) at AAA Columbus he hit .327/.392/.492.

In 2001 (post-injury) at AAA Columbus he hit .262/.333/.393.

Just looking at those two seasons, they would seem to go along with the idea that the car accident severely tarnished his skills and abilities.

However, I think that if you look a little deeper into Jimenez’s career performances, I am not so sure that you can blame his play in the majors thus far on the car accident, at least not entirely. While it definitely stunted his development as a player and certainly may have caused him to lose some skills, his minor league track record, aside from that one AAA season in 1999, is just not all that impressive:

1996 (Low-A) = .244/.317/.343

1997 (High-A) = .281/.368/.406

1998 (Double-A) = .270/.378/.375

1998 (Triple-A) = .256/.341/.404

If you set aside his 1999 season at AAA for a moment and simply continue to look at his career since then, it fits in pretty nicely with his 1996-1998 performances...

2001 (Triple-A) = .262/.333/.393

2001 (MLB) = .276/.355/.367

2002 (MLB) = .252/.330/.347

I don’t really see a drop-off or any sort of change, let alone one so big as to be attributed to a major neck injury. The change in his performance is only compared to his 1999 campaign, which really sticks out like a sore thumb when looked at with everything else.

At this point he looks like a .260-.275 hitter with good plate discipline and very little power. Add in some good defense and he can be a nice second baseman. Either his 1999 season was his true ability level and it was ruined by the car accident or his 1999 season was a bit of a fluke and the other half-dozen seasons of his career are the true level of his ability. I think I would guess the latter, although I suppose we will never really know.

Aaron Rowand will be a good fourth outfielder on a lot of teams before his career is over, but, until Borchard is ready, he’ll probably be asked to be the starting centerfielder for the White Sox. He can play all three outfield spots well and is definitely above-average defensively in center.

Rowand had a bad year offensively in 2002, but was pretty good in 2001 between AAA and the majors. His "real" level of hitting ability is probably somewhere around .270/.325/.420, which won’t hurt a team as a starter and makes a nifty bench player, particularly against lefties (.281/.345/.471 in 153 ABs against them in his career).

The big question for him in 2003 is whether or not he is recovered sufficiently from his off-season injury to be an effective defensive centerfielder in 2003. So far he’s been limited mostly to DH duties in spring training, but he did make his first spring appearance in centerfield on the 15th (I saw the game and Rowand looked just fine in center) and the Sox feel like he’ll be ready to go by opening day.

At this point, Sandy Alomar is just about done. He’s about to turn 37 and has never been known for being particularly healthy. Plus, he hasn’t had a good offensive season in significant playing time since 1997.

Alomar started last year with the White Sox too and actually hit pretty well in 51 games with them, before they traded him to Colorado. Strangely, he hit very poorly with the Rockies, posting a .594 OPS in 38 games, including a miserable .175/.200/.222 in 63 Coors at bats. The Sox apparently liked him so much that they decided to bring him back for 2003 and they signed him as a free agent.

When you have a yo