2023 PECOTA Projections Released for the White Sox

On Tuesday morning, Baseball Prospectus released their annual PECOTA standings and projections for player statistics for the 2023 season. Let’s take a look at how their system sees the White Sox performing in the upcoming season.

What is PECOTA?

First, an explanation of PECOTA from the Baseball Prospectus website:

“PECOTA, which stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, is BP’s proprietary system that projects player and team performance. PECOTA is a system that takes a player’s past performance and tries to project the most likely outcome for the following season. It looks at all of the numbers, and all the numbers that make up the numbers, to see which players are more likely to repeat their success and which ones benefited from good fortune.”

So, just like Fangraphs or Baseball Reference, PECOTA is Baseball Prospectus’ version of projections for the upcoming season.

AL Central Standings

After a disappointing 2022, Baseball Prospectus doesn’t have much faith in a better outcome for the White Sox. Projections have the team finishing third in the AL Central with a simulated 77.7-84.3 record, nearly 12 games out of first place. The disappointing .480 winning percentage gives the White Sox a 3.1% chance of winning the division, 7.3% of a Wild Card berth, and a 10.4% of making the playoffs.

As for the rest of the AL Central, Cleveland is unsurprisingly favored to win the division for a second-straight season. Minnesota sits less than two games off their mark in second place, while Detroit and Kansas City find themselves separated drastically in the cellar.

The above chart also shows the range of potential outcomes from PECOTA’s projections, with the height of the graph representing more outcomes at that win percentage. The White Sox have a pretty wide range of projected outcomes, however, most of their best projections would require the Twins and Guardians to fall well below their projections.

If you’re wondering how accurate PECOTA has been over the years in regards to the White Sox’ record, here are their projections for the White Sox every year since 2015, as well as the clubs’ actual results.

Overall, PECOTA has been both up and down in regards to the club, with their biggest misses coming in the past two seasons – though, to be fair to them, the miss of the 2022 season is pretty understandable.

Offense

The full projections for the 2023 White Sox can be found HERE (for those with an annual membership). However, here are five players of interest on offense for the club, as well as their 50th-percentile projections. As a note, WARP is Baseball Prospectus’ version of WAR:

• Oscar Colas: 128 G, .695 OPS, 0.9 WARP
• Yoan Moncada: 136 G, .702 OPS, 1.2 WARP
• Andrew Benintendi: 136 G, .728 OPS, 2.6 WARP
• Yasmani Grandal: 102 G, .722 OPS, 3.0 WARP
• Andrew Vaughn: 145 G, .697 OPS, 0.7 WARP

Obviously, both Moncada and Grandal are of interest because of the team’s need for them to have bounce-back seasons. Colas and Benintendi are both newcomers, while Vaughn has the daunting task of being the first baseman of the future for the White Sox. PECOTA projects Grandal and Moncada to be much better than last season, though at least in Moncada’s case, still well below expectations for a player in their prime. Benintedi’s projected campaign looks incredibly similar to his 2022 season, while PECOTA isn’t yet ready to make Andrew Vaughn out to be the clear heir to Abreu in terms of overall production – though, if you ask me, a sub-.700 OPS is way too conservative for Vaughn. As for Colas, conservative projections should be expected for someone who has barely played in AAA.

Pitching

Let’s take a look at some of the projected contributors to the pitching staff and their projections for 2022:

• Dylan Cease: 3.11 ERA, 11.08 K/9, 2.7 WARP
• Lucas Giolito: 3.50 ERA, 9.55 K/9, 1.9 WARP
• Joe Kelly: 2.96 ERA, 10.36 K/9, 0.8 WARP
• Kendall Graveman: 3.51 ERA, 8.68 K/9, 0.5 WARP
• Davis Martin: 4.66 ERA, 7.77 K/9, -0.2 WARP

After a Cy Young-worthy 2022 season, PECOTA keeps their projections conservative – though still incredibly optimistic – for Cease. Projections also see nice comeback seasons for both Joe Kelly and Lucas Giolito, choosing to see their 2022 seasons as blips rather than their new norms. Graveman is of interest because he would likely make sense as the team’s closer with the absence of Liam Hendriks, and while fans are pretty happy about Davis Martin’s performance in 2022, PECOTA clearly still needs to see more from Martin – which, in the case that Mike Clevinger doesn’t pitch much in 2023, could very much happen for the young right-hander.

Other Notes

As with every projection system, it’s important to keep in mind that these are exactly that: projections. Most projections are based primarily on last year’s team, which, well, wasn’t very good. So, it makes sense that this team is projected to be much worse than last season – though, that doesn’t mean that’s how things are going to go.

If you think everyone on the team we all spent years hyping up is more likely to underperform again this year as they did last year, then you most likely see these projections as spot-on. However, if any internal improvement occurs, even back to 2020 levels, the White Sox will well exceed any projections from any site. Where you believe the true talent level is for this team should guide your response to anything you see online in terms of predictions for this season. As always, the truth is probably somewhere between expectations and projections.

It’s fair to be on the lower end of expectations for this team – it will be up to them to prove themselves with the 2023 season just a little over a month away.

To view the full list of PECOTA projections, you must be a Baseball Prospectus member. If you are, click here to be redirected to download and view all of their projections.

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