Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Chicago White Sox
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
The White Sox were one of the biggest disappointments in 2022, finishing at .500 and easily missing the playoffs despite having a really solid roster at the beginning of the season. Let’s get right into it as we have a bunch of players to rank here.
Pitchers
Dylan Cease
An elite season for Cease as he breaks well into the top-ten for 2023.
32 GS, 184 IP, 30.4% K%, 10.4% BB%, 2.20 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, 30.6% CSW%, 15.8 SwStr%, 39.4% GB%
His 2.20 ERA was third-best in the league for qualified starters (Justin Verlander, Tony Gonsolin), and he was one of just four pitchers to exceed 180 innings with an ERA below 2.50 (Fried, Alcantara, Manoah). He was great, and he did it in spite of a bad 10.4% BB%. The .255 xwOBA and good 6.2% Brl% help that.
Here’s the arsenal:
Great velocity, great spin, great vertical movement:
Really great SwStr% marks on the slider and four-seamer, which makes up 83% of his pitches. That’s a pretty narrow arsenal - but if ain’t broken, don’t fix it - and he does have the curveball there and even a changeup for rainy days.
The points against Cease would probably be that a 2.20 ERA is just really tough to do, especially with a double-digit walk rate. he also may have overperformed on homers with the 0.78 HR/9 despite not having a high ground-ball rate (8.4% HR/FB is very, very low). A 30% K% goes a long way to keeping balls out of the stands, but with the extra walks a little bit of regression there could do some significant damage to the ERA.
I think Cease is going to have to be my new #1 starter, because I just haven’t gotten to many aces yet. Shohei Ohtani sits at #1 now, but I have to put Cease above him there just because he projects for 5-6 more starts than Ohtani and has much less injury risk. So that’s what we’ll do, and we’ll see how long he can hold on!
Comps/RankArounds: Shohei Ohtani, Zac Gallen
Lance Lynn
This is a tough one. Lynn will be 35 on Opening Day and will turn 36 in May. He missed half the season in 2022 with injury and then was just awful for a handful of starts before he really ramped it up.
The final line was:
21 GS, 121.2 IP, 3.99 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 24.2% K%, 3.7% BB%, 14.9% SwStr%, 28.3% CSW%
Still pretty darn good numbers there with the tiny walk rate and the really high SwStr% - so that’s a good sign.
He threw the same pitch mix in 2022 as he did in 2021, featuring those three fastball variations for about 85% of his pitches:
All of those pitches have strong SwStr% marks and then he has three other pitches to mix in.
I think Lynn will be pretty cheap next year, which makes sense for a 35 year old guy coming off of a season hampered by injury, but I don’t see much reason why he can’t be really good when pitching next year - so it seems like a decent bet to me! We’ll see where the ADP ends up, he could end up being one of my favorite SP3 picks if it goes that far.
Comps/RankArounds: Hunter Greene, Tarik Skubal
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