After being competitive the previous couple of season the Chicago White Sox fell off the map last year. This was just an all around poor team that had weaknesses in their lineup and a pitching staff that was nowhere near good enough to compensate…it didn\u2019t help that the Indians and Royals suddenly got good either. <\/p>\n
This year the outlook is only slightly better as they have some players with good potential who could make this team a lot better, at least offensively. Improvement on offense would be nice but unless ace Chris Sale gets a lot of help in the rotation this team is still looking at a pretty low ceiling.<\/p>\n
Chicago made two additions to their lineup this offseason. One was at the top of lineup with OF Adam Eaton, acquired through a trade with Arizona, the other in the middle of the order with the addition of cuban import Jose Abreu. Both are untested players.<\/p>\n
Eaton was a fantastic table setter in the Diamondbacks organization but has yet to establish himself in the Majors. If he lives up to expectations he should hit around .300, score 100 runs and steal 40 bases…one day. He is a little guy but could have a big impact. Abreu is even more of an unknown really.<\/p>\n
The big slugging Cuban has always had power but you never know whether players with his kind of history are ready to make the leap in competition or even culturally (he was playing in the Mexican League last year). If he lives up to expectations he could be like Cespedes of the A\u2019s though.<\/p>\n
CF Adam Eaton
\n2B Gordon Beckham
\nRF Avisail Garcia
\nDH Adam Dunn
\n1B Jose Abreu
\nSS Alexei Ramirez
\n3B Conor Gillespie
\nC Tyler Flowers
\nLF Alejandro De Aza<\/p>\n
This could be a very powerful lineup. Adam Dunn is always good for a chunk of homers and Abreu and OF Avisail Garcia should be too.
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\nBetween the three of them they might jack 100 bombs and if they do this lineup should put some runs on the board. However, there are still major question marks at the bottom of the lineup where Conor Gillaspie and Tyler Flowers just don\u2019t contribute enough consistently.<\/p>\n
Flowers hit below .200 last season and it is going to be hard to try and carry that kind of dead weight over a full season, especially with the pitching they have.<\/p>\n
LH Chris Sale
\nLH Jose Quintana
\nLH John Danks
\nRH Erik Johnson
\nRH Felipe Paulino<\/p>\n
The rotation is going to be the undoing of the White Sox this season. Lefty Chris Sale is a true stud capable of shutting down any lineup but after that it is a real dog\u2019s breakfast. John Danks has shown occasional flashes throughout his career but he was 4-14 last season and is past the point of making us think he can turn things around to live up to his promise.<\/p>\n
Jose Quintana also has shown flashes but a lot of his good work was early last year and the league may have figured him out. Felipe Paulino – seriously?<\/p>\n
The dude wasn\u2019t even in the Majors last year and his track record is far from impressive. Chicago is throwing darts and hoping for the best at this point. .<\/p>\n
RH Nate Jones<\/p>\n
Chicago is going with untested Nate Jones as closer this year after trading Addison Reed, who was pretty darn good last year. Jones is not really a prospect at this stage but he has proven that he can at least miss bats averaging more than a strikeout per inning.<\/p>\n
If he can\u2019t handle the job look for a lot of different players to see 9th inning duty. Of all the pitchers on the 40 man roster none had more than 4 saves with any team at any level last season.<\/p>\n
I can see a scenario where this club is among the American League Leaders in runs but their starting pitching might be the worst in the league, certainly the worst in the division. As a result this team will be the worst in the division too.<\/p>\n
If you are going to make money on the Pale Hose this season find the right situations to back Sale. He should bounce back and win more often than he loses this season. Especially with a better offense behind him.<\/p>\n
2014 White Sox MLB Team Previews After being competitive the previous couple of season the Chicago White Sox fell off the map last year. This was just an all around poor team that had weaknesses in their lineup and a pitching staff that was nowhere near good enough to compensate…it didn\u2019t help that the Indians […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":64522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[670],"tags":[61271,11342,11343,1534,11712,11713,2719,11715,11716,11717,45469,2687],"class_list":["post-74333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb-baseball","tag-2014-al-central-futures","tag-al-central-predictions","tag-al-central-preview","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-chicago-white-sox-picks","tag-white-sox","tag-white-sox-futures","tag-white-sox-odds","tag-white-sox-predictions","tag-white-sox-world-series-odds","tag-world-series-futures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74333"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74370,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74333\/revisions\/74370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}