There’s no sense beating around the bush here: the 2014 White Sox don’t look like they’ll be very good. In fact, they figure to be downright unwatchable most of the time. That is, except for roughly 30 games.

The ones Chris Sale starts, specifically.

Chicago finished last season with the second worst record in the American League, ahead of only the lowly Astros. The team’s record (63-99) was barely worse than its Pythagorean record (67-95). It has also recently concluded an offseason in which its big acquisitions were Jose Abreu (a slugging Cuban import who may or may not be awesome) and Adam Eaton (a solid outfield prospect who has played exactly 88 games in the major leagues, for which he has accrued exactly 0.2 wins above replacement).

So, yeah, Chris Sale. Let’s start with him as we consider expectations for the White Sox rotation in 2014.

*I swear this will be the only terrible Sale-related pun in this post. Honest.

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For many in my generation, when one thinks of starting pitching, the focus immediately turns to Atlanta. It’s been an overwhelming constant for the Braves, whether we’re talking Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, Tim Hudson or (at least last year) Mike Minor. In fact, since The Strike, the Atlanta Braves have enjoyed the best starting pitching in Major League Baseball. Their cumulative 3.73 ERA is well-ahead of the pack, with the Los Angeles Dodgers being the only other team with a sub-4.00 ERA from their starters since the 1995 season.

Thus, it’s not surprising the Braves trotted out yet another effective rotation last year. Even without the injured Brandon Beachy, their rotation featured three top-30 fantasy starters in Mike Minor, Julio Teheran and Kris Medlen. The trio are poised to headline the rotation once again in 2014, so in terms of a fantasy outlook, there’s plenty to like.

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Last year, I was optimistic about Indians pitchers given that the team had a very speedy outfield to gobble up fly balls. But alas, the pitching staff allowed a .302 BABIP, eighth highest in baseball and the defense compiled a weak -4.5 UZR/150, ranking 26th overall. Although the defense will mostly be the same, so that won’t be one of the reasons to like the pitching staff, it’s an exciting group despite the potential lack of help from the fielding unit.

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It isn’t quite fair to say that Clay Buchholz broke out because of his change-up. In fact, Colin Zarzycki found a much more reasonable explanation and wrote about it in his FanGraphs+ player cap. Buchholz also threw the pitch less than he’d ever thrown it before, so it’s kind of weird to focus on it. But the pitch is pretty excellent, and maybe it could have told us that more swinging strikes were on the way. And if it did tell us that, perhaps we can use that knowledge to spot a couple more pitchers that under-performed in the strikeout category last year.

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If you look at the individual player pages for each of the projected Detroit starters, you’ll see that the most recent article in which three of them were tagged was written by me. I’ll summarize the guys I’ve already written about this offseason and then cover the other two.

The only Tiger starter that Steamer projects to have a higher WAR than they did last year is Rick Porcello. I’m with Steamer in thinking Porcello can improve, but unlike Steamer, I think the improvement could be more than slight. Porcello improved in a lot of areas last year. Most notably, he went away from using his sinker as much and moved those extra pitches over to his breaking and off speed stuff. That helped him raise his strikeout rate to league average, and it didn’t hurt his above average ground ball rate. In fact, his ground ball percentage was higher than ever last year. He also improved significantly in a couple of areas in which he had really struggled. He didn’t give up hard contact as much as he had in the past as his ISO allowed was one of the 30 lowest in the league. And after the first month of the year, he almost never gave up anything hard to right-handers. He also got much better out of the stretch. His strikeout minus walk rate out of the stretch was about 3.5% before last year but jumped up to 7.3% last year.

It will be up to Porcello to continue to improve in those areas or at least maintain the gains he made last year. But there’s a factor outside his control that could help him improve this year. In fact, it’s something that will work in favor of all Tiger starters. That’s the presumably improved infield defense. Although the pitcher most likely to benefit from that improved infield is Porcello because he’s easily the most ground ball heavy pitcher in the rotation. Below is a chart showing the runs above or below average (DEF) for the Tigers who played the most at each infield spot last year and the Oliver projected DEF for the Tigers most likely to play the most innings at each infield spot this year. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my strongest beliefs as a prospect/minor league writer is that there is far too much absolutism in most discussions of prospects in the online community. Part of the reason for this is simply a matter of demand–as you read about a minor league player (or, really, any player) at a place like FanGraphs or RotoGraphs, you’re likely interested in some sort of bottom line about how good the player is and might be. As such, there is a lot of pressure on the arbiters of the players to come up with a concrete answer–to make an actual prediction of their futures. In reality, though, prospecting is all about shades of gray, particularly in the low minors, which are my main focus. Just about every player in full-season ball has something going for them, but likewise, almost every player below Double-A has several aspects which need refinement before he has a chance at big league success. Predicting the eradication of those problems and the amount to which the strengths are realized is largely an exercise in probability, not one of guessing “good,” “bad,” or “okay” and clinging to it…to say nothing of the factors of injuries, regression, and the like. Any glance at a top prospect list from five years ago, regardless of the authors or their credibility, should drive this point home soundly–many of the top players go on to struggle, whereas several off the list entirely go on to have excellent careers.

For all of my relativistic outlook, though, occasionally I run into a player who’s just so impressive that my mind can’t help but jump directly to concrete thoughts of stardom. Of the couple hundred pitchers I saw in person last year, nobody evoked those thoughts more strongly than Cardinals pitching prospect Alex Reyes.

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Last week, I wrote about Eddie Butler and how Colorado’s volatile starting rotation could open the door for Butler, and fellow prospect Jonathan Gray, to contribute earlier than expected. That got me thinking about how Matthew Wisler is in a similar situation with the Padres, especially following the news that Cory Luebke will miss all of 2014.

Ian Kennedy, one of baseball’s most durable pitchers over the last several years, is assured a spot in the rotation, as are Andrew Cashner and Josh Johnson. Cashner finally managed to stay healthy for a full season last year, and was quite good in his 175 innings, finishing the season with a 3.09 earned run average and 1.13 walks plus hits per inning. The problem with Cashner is that he had thrown a total of 316.2 innings in his five previous professional seasons.

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The Pirates starting pitchers were damn good last year. They posted a 3.27 ERA, good for third best in baseball and the National League, and delivered an intriguing mix of strikeouts and ground balls. If the entire staff was one pitcher, it would be exactly the type I love. A.J. Burnett may be gone, but the rotation is still composed of a high upside group.

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Last season, the Cubs rotation finished smack dab in the middle of baseball in ERA, but 10th among National League teams. As is usually the case with teams, the staff included a host of overperformers and several underperformers. With two new addition to the rotation, there are many questions that need to be answered on the North side of the Windy City.

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This much we know about the 2014 Texas Rangers rotation on a chilly January day: it’s going to feature Yu Darvish, and it’s going to contain some other guys. That’s no slight to the candidates to fill the latter category — some of them are quite good. It’s just that, at this point, we don’t know exactly who they will be.

So let’s speculate wildly, shall we!

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