White Sox Preview

[fooknasty]

Well, since there is not much action on this board, I thought that I would do a little preview of the White Sox. I don't know about anyone else, but the Brandon McCarthy trade made me furious. I know that we got this left handed starter in Denks, who is supposed to be pretty good, but we had a somewhat proven McCarthy who was ready to be thrown into the mix. Now, we are going to have to wait on this Denks kid to mature into a legit starter. Our lineup is not gonna look any different from last year's. we are bringing back all of our everyday players.

LF Scott Podsednik
2B Tadahito Iguchi
DH Jim Thome
1B Paul Konerko
RF Jermaine Dye
3B Joe Crede
C A.J. Pierzynski
CF Brian Anderson
SS Juan Uribe

Our bench got a lot deeper with the adition of Toby Hall. I really think that we missed that prescence of a good backup catcher last season on Pierzynski's days off. Cintron, Ozuna, Mackowiak, Terrero, Sweeny, and Owens all are solid players that can come off the bench and make in impact. I think that our bench is one of our strongest assets going into the season, as we have several players that can play multiple positions and can all our very good contact hitters.



Our pitching is what scares me the most, because we let a 17 game winner go in exchange for a couple of prosepects, and we let our best pitching prosepect go for a couple of more prospects. Contreras and Buehrle are both question marks, only because we don't what kind of bounce back seasons they are gonna have. Both REALLY tailed off after the all-star break. Garland is the only lock for me to win 15-16 games. He has provven that the last two seasons. I firmly believe that Vazquez has potentially the best stuff on this staff, but it is just a matter of keeping him away from those big innings. Now, like 3 years ago, we have a quesiton mark at the 5th starter's spot. I would imagine thta Floyd (the player we picked up in the Garcia deal) would get the spit becuase he has the most experience as a starter in the bigs of all the starters we have. So, I expect it to look like this:

SP Jose Contreras
SP Mark Buehrle
SP Jon Garland
SP Javier Vazquez
SP Gavin Floyd

The bullpen is VERY young, and Jenks is our one solid foundation. We add young arms like Sisco, Aardsma, and Gonzalez to the mix of MacDougal, Thornton, and Tracet and we only lose Hermanson, Jeff Nelson, David Riske, and Neal Cotts. This, along with our starting pitching, our the two biggest weaknesses going into the season. The only reason I say this is A) our starting pitching is so inconsistent that you never know how many quality innings each pitcher is going to give you and B) the relief core is so young and unproven that it is going to take them some time to be able to get through their bumps and fully adjust to their roles.

Overall, I believe that the White Sox are in a bit of a rebuilding mode this year. Yes, they wll contend for a playoff spot, but with the Central increasing in strength on a daily basis, the implanting of younger arms/players is only going to hurt our chances. I hope that Williams can add another quality arm to the bullpen, a veteran to the rotation, and I really think that we need to add a veteran outfielder to the mix as well. I look for the Sox to get to about 85-90 wins again this season, and make a push for the AL Wildcard. With the Tigers and Twins performing at such a high level and the Indians getting at that stage where their talent is starting to developp into solid ballplayers, I think the Sox need to make a few more key moves if they want to stay out of 3rd place in the Central.