By fluke of alphabet the White Sox are up first, a feat they are unlikely to achieve in the tough AL Central.
Last year's offense gave far too many plate appearances to ineffectual bats like Darin Erstad, Juan Uribe, Jerry Owens, Tadahito Iguchi and Scott Posednik none of whom figure to see a significant starting role with the Sox this year.
Only Uribe and Owens return and the acquisitions by trade of Orlando Cabrera, Nick Swisher and Carlos Quentin push them to the bench.
Quentin is still something of a question mark but can hardly fail to be an upgrade over Posednik, at least.
With Josh Fields being returned to the minors, Joe Crede will step back in at the hot corner. Assuming Crede's unaffected by his surgery they should be a wash offensively with Crede being the significantly better defender so the move makes sense overall, except that the Southsiders are still short on hitting talent and Fields would make a big contribution both as a backup for Crede (or replacement if his return doesn't go as well as hoped) and as part of an outfield rotation, possibly pushing Quentin to the bench.
So, the White Sox offense is improved (a prime candidate for the "taller than Mickey Rooney" award) but still below average.
Jim Thome, Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye should perform right around league average for their respective positions provided another year on their clocks doesn't see their downturns continue. Unfortunately, whilst Dye and Konerko probably won't see their numbers continue to plummet quite like last year it is unlikely that their regression back to the mean will significantly improve them from 2007.
Behind the plate, A.J. Pierzynski is a little below average both offensively and defensively and Toby Hall is underwhelming backing him up.
Alexei Ramirez and Danny Richar will probably continue to compete for the second base job all year (with Uribe pushing them vaguely until he gets traded to somebody stupid in July) with Ramirez probably having the greater value with the bat but not yet comfortable at the keystone.
Ramirez' best position is shortstop but Cabrera keeps him out there (for this year at least) so the Sox have been working him at second and in the outfield but he is a long way from being able to competently field those positions yet.
With Richar fighting a back injury and Pablo Ozuna(!) the only other real competition now that Juan Uribe has been waived it seems likely that Ramirez will be the Opening Day starter at second.
Aside from the adventures in his defensive transition, Ramirez is simply not ready to hit Major League pitching. As a free-swinging fastball hitter he is going to be exploited for the time being until he can learn to work counts and hit breaking pitches. Still, he is one of the few reasons for future hope that the team can look to.
This offense should not find itself scoring a measly 693 runs like last year but it's not likely to scare anybody either.
On the mound, the White Sox received solid years from its top three starters: Mark Buerhle, Jon Garland and Javier Vazquez, all of whom posted over 200 innings with reasonable ERAs. Their combined 35-30 record was more in spite of their offensive support than anything.
Unfortunately, Garland has gone to the Angels in the Cabrera trade and Vazquez and Buerhle were both probably a little lucky last year, each posting a high strand rate and Buerhle seeing a lot of flyballs land just the right side of the fences. Still, they are both a little above average and can be reasonably expected to provide another couple of hundred innings each with ERAs around 4.00.
After that things look a little bleaker. The third and fourth spots in the rotation goes to Jose Contreras and Bobby Danks who both posted ERAs around 5.50 last year.
However, Contreras probably suffered a little from a low strand rate and certainly from letting his release point slip. The mechanical flaw appears fixed and with the strand rate regressing he could certainly bounce back with a respectable 4.50 ERA (league average is ~4.90) while providing 200 innings of his own.
Danks also can hope for better in 2008 as he saw an unusually high proportion of his flyballs sailing over the fences. For a pronounced flyball pitcher that certainly hurt his numbers and he probably fits more in the 5.00 to 5.50 ERA range though given his extreme flyball rate he's not likely to get a lot better than that without change. He's added a cutter to his repertoire this year which should help keep hitters off his fastball a little more but even at my most optimistic I can't see him as much better than 5.20 in 170 innings (which is fine from a 4th starter).
Gavin Floyd will likely fill out the rotation as another serviceable, if unimpressive, back-of-the-rotation starter. Chalk up another 5.20 in 150 innings and the rotation looks to be ok, good even!
Depth is an issue with replacement level and worse guys to fill in where needed so some luck with health and the schedule will be needed, but the rotation should come out as... not a weakness.
The bullpen is strong at the back with Bobby Jenks but getting the ball to him may be tougher, especially if the starters fail to go deep into games.
Matt Thornton and Mike McDougal can probably hold their own, giving the White Sox an ok option from either side but both probably belong in middle relief and not setting up Jenks.
Unfortunately, beyond them and perhaps Scott Linebrink if he can halt his decline there's precious little quality in the 'pen.
If the starters can consistently go deep enough to keep the pressure off the bullpen and allow most of the relief innings to be eaten by those four then the bullpen may be just above average but things are not likely to be so neat and relief pitching is probably a slight weakness overall for the Sox.
Rough estimates for offense: 800 runs scored +/-40 and defense: 855 runs allowed +/-43
Pythag W-L based on those estimates would be:
High: 84-78
Medium: 76-86
Low: 68-94
I'll give my actual prediction along with those for the whole division after compelting the round up of each division's teams but, suffice to say, I don't see the White Sox making the playoffs.
