The Chicago White Sox have seriously failed the expectations put upon them in the beginning of this year. Last year they lost to the Houston Astros in the ALDS. But this year it was expected by Las Vegas odds that the White Sox would around 91.5 wins O/U. They were expected to most likely run away with the division (AL Central) plus be the cream of the AL. Unfortunately it’s not working like they thought it would. They find themselves down 8 games in the AL Central to the rival Cleveland Guardians. Even worse they find themselves 6.5 games back from a 3rd wildcard spot. I looked at their hitting and it’s been a struggle especially early on in the season. But then I went to their pitching staff and found some very concerning indications of why they blew expectations.
I want to start with the analytic called FIP that’s in the title. FIP stands for fielding independent pitching. Here’s an explanation of how its calculated by Baseball Reference:
“this stat measures a pitcher’s effectiveness at preventing HR, BB, HBP and causing SO
(13*HR + 3*(BB+HBP) – 2*SO)/IP + Constantlg
The constant is set so that each season major-league average FIP is the same as the major-league avg ERA”
FIP is a good indicator of two things. The first is how good or bad is the defense behind each pitcher. The second thing is how good the pitcher actually is. I want to talk about the pitchers first then I’ll discuss the White Sox horrid defense. There are 10 pitchers on the White Sox staff with FIPs over 3. Six of those have FIPs over 4. The most concerning is SPs Michael Kopech and Lucas Giolito along with RP Jose Ruiz. All of these pitchers have FIPs of 4.49, 4.12, 4.33 respectively. Meaning they just aren’t pitching great. This is backed up by their poor ERA+ of 112, 79, and 87 respectively. If you needed any more evidence Giolito’s WHIP is 1.477 and Ruiz’s WHIP is 1.447. WHIP is BB+H/ IP and it calculates the amount of baserunners a pitcher generates over the course of an inning throughout the season. Having runners on base increases the chances a pitcher will give up runs. (Duh) But it hurts more when your offense is struggling.
Enough with grinding on the pitching staff, let’s turn to the defense who doesn’t escape blame. In the AL, the White Sox defense ranks 15th out of 15 teams. The team has made 100 errors (September 23) this season. The worst offenders have been All Star Shortstop Tim Anderson and Second Baseman/ Outfielder Josh Harrison with 12 errors each. The White Sox also have Jose Abreu and Leury Garcia committing 10 errors each. This means 44 errors out of 100 are just by 4 players. That’s nearly half!
As you can tell when the White Sox look back on this season they need to work on their pitching and their defense. Not to mention their offensive struggles. This post also gives you a nice look at how FIP and WHIP can be used to understand the difference between good pitching and bad pitching. ERA or even ERA+ doesn’t tell the whole story. It also makes the defense accountable. White Sox will probably miss the playoffs because of this.
Thanks for reading and consider subscribing to the blog. Also check out my social media page.
Thanks to baseball reference and baseball savant for the statistics.
Technically Analytics 