2024 Team Previews: Chicago White Sox
Going through all 30 teams, looking back at 2023 and ahead to the 2024 season through a fantasy baseball lens.
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White Sox Intro
For those of you who don’t know me personally, I grew up in Pittsburgh. From a very early age I was taken with sports. Many hours I spent throwing a racquetball off the side of my house pretending to be Jay Bell or Jack Wilson playing shortstop for the hometown Pirates (I didn’t go to public school until 9th grade so none of my friends in the early years lived in neighborhood, stop thinking I was a loser).
In 2020, I moved my growing family out of Pittsburgh to northern Indiana for economic and practical reasons. For all but three years of my life (2013-2015), the Pirates were only ever interesting from like March to June. By the time summer really started, they’d be in the dumpster and the games weren’t interesting to watch. So I figured that with the move, I would attempt to do something that I have since learned to be impossible - change my allegiance. I live just about 90 minutes from Chicago, so it was logical to pick one of those two teams to follow. Having watched the Cubs beat the Pirates hundreds of times in my life (most notably in the 2014 Wild Card game when Jake Arrieta absolutely pooped on us and Kyle Schwarber hit a home run that basically skipped over the Allegheny River and went right for the Monongahela), I couldn’t pick them.
So I decided it would be the White Sox. They were coming off of a couple of decent seasons, and their roster was a pretty exciting one with some really good young players. I bought me a t-shirt, got my kids White Sox hats, and even went to a game in 2021 (Ohtani was in town…).
But by the end of April that year I just knew it wouldn’t stick around. There’s something about childhood sports fandom that just locks you in for life. Luckily for myself, I’ve been able to completely separate my emotions from the Pirates - I figured that out around the time I was 23 or something, but that doesn’t mean I can just replace them as the team I am most interested in and rooting hardest for.
So this is a lot of words to say that I tried to like the White Sox once and it didn’t last, and now they’re terrible.
That’s the intro man, take what you can get.
Hitters
Luis Robert
Age: 26
Pos: OF
The lone bright spot for the 2023 Chicago White Sox was Luis Robert, who finally put together a full and successful season.
590 PA, 90 R, 38 HR, 80 RBI, 20 SB, .264/.315/.542, 29% K%, 5.1% BB%
He is one of the dots we like on the steals and homer rate plot:
The percentiles plot tells us a lot about Robert, so let’s check that out:
So he swings a lot, he swings hard, whiffs a lot, but when he does connect he gets the ball in the air and has a ton of success.
The bad news was that his strikeout rate shot way up from 2021-2022 when he was below 22%.
So we have a guy with one of the best batted ball profiles in the league with a strikeout problem on a bad team.
The alarm bell is going off a little bit here on his .264 batting average. I looked up all the players since 2015 with a K% between 28% and 32% and a Brl% between 14% and 16%, and we find these results along with their batting averages for those seasons:
2017 Brandon Moss: .207
2022 Cal Raleigh: .211
2023 Chris Morel: .249
2021 Eugenio Suarez: .198
2022 Eugenio Suarez: .236
2019 Franmil Reyes: .249
2016 Giancarlo Stanton: .240
2018 Giancarlo Stanton: .266
2023 Giancarlo Stanton: .191
2018 Justin Upton: .257
2017 Kyle Schwarber: .211
2022 Luke Voit: .226
2023 Nolan Jones: .295
2018 Teoscar Hernandez: .239
2022 Teoscar Hernandez: .267
Robert is faster than most of these names, but his batting average did fall at the upper bound there, so it’s fair to expect some regression on that front.
I wouldn’t get overly worried about the team context. The White Sox scored just 641 runs last season, the second-least in the league, and Robert still managed a that 170 R+RBI, which is nice.
The upside is another 30+20 season with a .270 batting average (if he’s lucky), and 190 R+RBI if the White Sox improve. The downside is that he hurts you in batting average and falls short of giving you very good R+RBI production for what he’ll cost.
He is likely to go in the first 40 picks or so, and given the strikeout problem and the fact that we’ve seen different stuff from this guy almost every year, I don’t think he’ll my favorite guy to click on in the early rounds. So he’s probably not a “short list” guy for me, but of course that will be determined by ADP.
JA Projection: 658 PA, 92 R, 33 HR, 101 RBI, 21 SB, .270/.323/.499, .822 OPS
Eloy Jimenez
Age: 27
Pos: DH/OF*
*He played just 14 games in the outfield, so he’ll be DH-only at the beginning of the year in NFBC and other leagues that use the 20 game minimum threshold.
Eloy’s price is certain to hit an all-time low in 2024, and that immediately gives us a reason to like him. The truth is that we have all probably overvalued him his entire career because of the prospect hype. He steals no bases and has not been a reliable great batting average like we thought early on. And that is not to mention the health problems. He racked up 489 PAs in 2023, which is the most he’s had in the last three seasons. That is a positive sign - but the production itself in that playing time was underwhelming:
50 R, 18 HR, 64 RBI, 0 SB, .272/.317/.441, 19% K%, 6.1% BB%
The barrel rate came down to 9.3% as the GB% stayed high (it actually came up a few points to 53%). That is just devastating to see from a guy whose fantasy value comes from homers and RBI.
There’s very little super positive to say about Eloy, but one of the keys to fantasy baseball is to know when to buy-low, and if you buy on Eloy in 2024, it certainly will be buying low.
I’ll say this. In leagues where he’s DH-only, I don’t think you can justify him unless it’s clear he’ll quickly get that outfield eligibility (unlikely). In leagues where he can play as an outfielder, I am more than fine taking a shot on him as long as the price is as cheap as I’m theorizing that it will be. I can see Eloy being a third or fourth outfielder next year, and I’m perfectly fine with the risk at that cost.
The upside is that he stays healthy, lifts the ball more, and gives you a 30-homer, .280 batting average season. If he does that, the RBI would almost have to follow and exceed 80 - and all of that would make for a good player where he’ll go. You just have to make sure you prioritize steals with your other picks. He is one of the few guys in the game right now that projects for zero steals. It’s tough to pair him with an Austin Riley or Matt Olson if that’s where you go with your first or second pick.
JA Projection: 598 PA, 74 R, 24 HR, 83 RBI, 0 SB, .275/.330/.464, .794 OPS
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