ESPN Chalk's Joe Peta is sharing his season win total projections for every MLB team, including a reason for optimism and pessimism.
Plus, he recommends an over/under play, or a pass. This is the entry for the Chicago White Sox.
Chicago White Sox
Reason for optimism: A year after bottoming out, the White Sox got better and younger. This offseason, they've added more talent.
Reason for pessimism: Adding talent to a .500 can produce a playoff team. For the White Sox, a lower starting point means it might produce a .500 team.
On the basis of run differential, the White Sox (minus-98) were the third-worst team in baseball last year behind only the Rangers (minus-136) and Diamondbacks (minus-127). Given that, it was somewhat shocking to see the White Sox, in early March, listed at Pinnacle Sports with lower odds to win the American League pennant than all but five other American League teams, including ahead of their Central division mates, the Indians and Royals, who appear to have better rosters.
Of course, the White Sox aren't playing the 2015 season with their 2014 roster, but as the run differential above shows, it'll take a whole bunch of marginal changes to turn them into the over-.500 team the win total markets are suggesting.
To start with, the four above-average position players -- Jose Abreu, Alexei Ramirez, Adam Eaton and Tyler Flowers -- are back. At two of the other six lineup positions, new additions Melky Cabrera and Adam LaRoche are slated to start the year in left field and at designated hitter, respectively. Of the two, only Cabrera made the 2.0 WAR cut last season, although LaRoche was close in his time with the Nationals. That means the White Sox are hoping for better-to-much-better things from the other four in-house starters, all of whom saw meaningful time on last year's roster.
As such, if you want to believe the White Sox can play over-.500 ball with less than league-average run production, the pitching staff is going to have to be upper-tier good. In Chris Sale and Jeff Samardzija, the White Sox certainly have the right cornerstones for a dominate rotation. Thanks to an abnormally low HR/FB ratio of 5.1 percent, Jose Quintana may not be as good as last year's 3.32 ERA indicated, but he has made 87 starts over three seasons with a high ERA of just 3.76 in 2012 -- that's above-average for a third starter. The hope for dominance ends, though, as the White Sox are still going to have to find at least 90 starts (and maybe more if Sale's recent foot fracture requires him to start the season on the DL) from the likes of John Danks, Hector Noesi, and Erik Johnson, all of whom have 4.50 ERA (or worse) capabilities. Carlos Rodon, the thirdpick in the 2014 draft has tremendous potential, but rationally, it's more likely he'll be a meaningful contributor to the 2016 or '17 edition of the White Sox that challenges for a postseason berth.
If there is to be large improvements on the margin other than the addition of Samardzija, it will almost certainly come from the bullpen. White Sox relievers had a 4.38 ERA in 2014, third worst in the majors -- and unlike some of those other bullpens with ERAs over 4.00 the White Sox actually deserved theirs. There was no unfortunate sequencing, an excessive HR/FB ratio or any other unfortunate data point unlikely to be repeated. Chicago's bullpen ranked last in percentage of batters walked while simultaneously ranking second-to-last in strikeout rate. Their K-BB rate of 6.9 percent was the worst in baseball by nearly 3 percent. David Robertson instantly stabilizes the closer role and makes the entire pen better as a result. The White Sox are hoping the other new faces provide better relief as well, having jettisoned many of last year's worst performers.
Thanks to their rotation, the White Sox probably do have a path back to .500 but it feels like it falls under the "if everything falls into place" heading. Stripped of all hype, this is a team with a nearly minus-100 run differential in 2014 that has added Samardzija, Robertson and Cabrera. Their total wins market opened at 81.5 and has risen to 82.5 currently. That looks far too optimistic given their apparent limitations on offense and at the back of the rotation. This is a high-conviction "under" call.
2015 projection: 76-86, (fourth, AL Central)
Bet recommendation: Under