When, oh when, will the White Sox become competitive?

With a chance for you to answer

For the middle of winter, this has been a sort of busy week, what with SoxFest last weekend, FanGraphs posting the Steamer projections for 2025 and Keith Law coming through with his prospect rankings. So, even though this isn’t a usual spot for your input and there may not be much response, let’s give you a chance at a couple of predictions.

But first, a bit of review.

SoxFest

Without the traditional Q-and-A format, there apparently wasn’t much of a chance for unfiltered (or unshouted) queries of the powers-that-be, so there wasn’t opportunity for anyone to ask when those powers think the White Sox might again be relevant, say sufficiently so to reasonably compete for a playoff spot.

Any answer would have been pure b.s., of course, full of idle hope and mindful of ticket sales, with reference to Kansas City’s big move from 2023 to 2024 (without reference to the Royals picking up three solid free agent pitchers, including two starters, something impossible under Jerry Reinsdorf’s rule), but it would still have been interesting to see what form the b.s. took.

(It probably would have involved better defense, which was last year’s plan ... only to be at the very bottom of MLB in most categories of D yet again. Plus, the only two infielders last year who could catch or throw a baseball, Nicky Lopez and Jake Amaya, are now gone.)

You can’t really expect the White Sox to admit in public how far off any sort of even semi-competence is, but you have to hope there are private discussions that come up with a target year. Otherwise, any decision of, say, how demanding to be in a Luis Robert Jr. trade will be made without a real goal, which is how the Sox management has operated for far too long.

That being the case, let’s take a look at how optimistic the professional observers, human or electronic, are about the immediate future for members of the team.

HAVE A GO, COMPUTERS

Dan Szymborski at ZiPS had made his projections a few weeks ago, so we’ll pass over them, except for his feeling the Sox may win as many as 20 more games than last season, if only because it’s really, really hard to blow 121 games (the Las Vegas experts see the team losing more than 110, but what do they know?). ZiPS adds further humor by listing Robert tied for the team high in WAR with — wait for it — Chase Meidroth. ZiPS also shows Meidroth, Colson Montgomery and Brooks Baldwin all listed as shortstops and totaling a few thousand plate appearances, so the humor is presumably intentional.

Now, though, FanGraphs has posted the Steamer projections for all of MLB, and they look a whole lot more White Sox-ish. The initial format is sorting by fWAR, with Bobby Witt Jr. at the top, which is no surprise.

Also no surprise is that the top Sox position player in that list is Robert, but only at No. 74, and that because of how much consideration he gets for his defense and baserunning in his 3.1 WAR. The predictions for Robert’s performance seem reasonable, except the prediction he’ll play in 150 games, which he has only once even come remotely close to doing (145, in 2023). Even worse, those 150 games are supposed to lead to 674 plate appearances, which would be fine if he played on a team that actually gets to a fifth time through the order on occasion, but is utterly foolish with the White Sox.

Robert is the only White Sox player better than the 2.0 WAR threshold that indicates the performance of a major league regular, and after him, it’s a long, long time before a teammate shows up, Mike Tauchman at No. 206 and 1.4 WAR. Then it’s Miguel Vargas (yes, the .150 hitter) at No. 222, Andrew Vaughn at No. 226, Lenyn Sosa at No. 229 (largely because of defense — apparently the computer has never seen him try to catch a ball), and so on down the line. Steamer doesn’t think the catcher prospects will play much, so they’re down at Nos. 283 and 293.

WAR is a cumulative stat, so quantity counts as much as quality. Looking more directly at hitting stats where playing time doesn’t matter, Meidroth tops the team at 175 wRC+, followed by Tauchman at 157 and Vaughn at 137. Not anything to get excited about there, either, and no way to see much improvement from 121 losses.

Starting pitching had been the only position Baseball-Reference WAR had rated above-average last season, but that was only because of Garrett Crochet and Erick Fedde. With them gone, so is anything approaching above-average-ishness.

There are three familiar names predicted to be among the top dozen in the game, but Crochet, Chris Sale and Dylan Cease are all in the rear-view mirror, and what’s left if pretty disheartening.

The No. 1 White Sox pitcher in 2025, according to Steamer? None other than Davis Martin, No. 129, at 1.3 WAR. Martin is a good kid, ready to give it his all every time he gets the ball, and would make a decent team a very nice No. 5 starter. But an ace? And after him, it’s a long way to Jonathan Cannon at No. 153, Sean Burke at 154 and Martin Pérez at 156.

And let’s not even mention the bullpen, balled by ZiPS the worst it has ever measured, because that wouldn’t be polite.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THOSE INCREDIBLE PROSPECTS?

Law has five White Sox prospects among his Top 100, which is pretty good, especially if you carefully ignore that three of them came from trading All-Star pitchers.

The two exceptions are the lefty starting pitchers, Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith, and there is nary a bad word about either to be said anywhere. The only question is how soon they’ll be playing in the big leagues. what with working on pitches, endurance and, most importantly, service time manipulation.

Law also likes the two catchers acquired in the past year, Kyle Teel slightly more so than Edgar Quero. If he’s right, the catching slot should be solid for several years, and maybe the one who isn’t catching can DH or play first so Vaughn can enjoy bench time (and fans can enjoy him being there.)

Law also raves about a Montgomery, but, alas, not Colson. He sees Braden Montgomery as a five-tool player, one who could fill the huge gaping hole in right field admirably. Only thing is, that fill may be a few years away, as Braden broke his ankle coming out of college and still hasn’t faced a professional pitch.

As for Colson, not only does Law not list him in his Top 100 — he doesn’t like him at all. Further, asked in a post-publication chat, Law said there is hardly anyone left among professionals who believes Colson Montgomery will ever be a major league shortstop..

Will the White Sox force Colson into short anyway? Could be — they’re desperate. Meidroth has played a little shortstop, but his scouting grades say he’s slow and has a weak arm, not exactly qualifications for the job. There’s been some talk of newcomer Josh Rojas playing short, but there’s probably a reason the teams he’d been playing for hadn’t let him do that since 2021.

As for the warm bodies who filled in there last year? Fuggedaboudit. Although it is handy to have someone stationed between second and third.

SO LET’S VOTE!! ON WHATEVER!!!

OK, two easy poll questions:

And, of course: