I actually predicted they would finish in last place in their divsion this year. Kenny’s willingness to trade away prospects for aging vets, although somewhat successful in the past, is going to come back to haunt him very soon.

Cant imagine what this team will be like next year. The 2010 version of the 2009 Giants perhaps?

Konerko was barely average in ’07 and ’08.

Beckham’s a rookie. Expecting him to put up star numbers in his rookie season is ridiculous. He’s been way better than expected since he was fasttracked.

Relievers fluctuate a lot. That’s why teams shouldn’t pay big bucks for a reliever. Thornton’s always been one of the better relievers in the game, but Dotel and Jenks have fluctuated a LOT in the past.

Rios + Peavy = small sample size

And Buehrle/Danks/Floyd have been really good. So no way they’re any part of the problem.

So, yeah, Williams needs to get his facts checked

I imagine that most GMs (and fans) probably expect their teams to overperform relative to a holistic prediction where teams had to average 81 wins…

He’s definitely having the best year of his career, but it’s not like he was mediocre before. A decent chunk of his FIP improvement can be chalked up moving into the NL and out of U.S. Cellular.

I would also wager that Ozzie moves Rios to the doghouse previously occupied by Nick Swisher and a host of others next year, meaning the chances of recouping your value on Rios goes down further, especially with that contract lingering. I would go so far to argue that the best scenario for Rios to rebound would be playing for a team that is not named the White Sox, but with the White Sox taking on a good portion of his paycheck, which would still make the Rios acquisition awful for the whitesox. And maybe its bad luck over the 120 or so PA, but maybe Chicago is a bad fit for Rios either because he can’t play for Guillen (not the first player to suffer that fate) or the park or who knows what.

Either way, even if he mean reverts for the next 480 PA and posts a OBA of 330 or so, his OBA for the last 600 PA is then still around ~=300, which is scraptacular.

So yeah, I still maintain this is one of the worst of Dave Cameron’s predictions, and he has had a few bad ones.

nosseum: Touche, your point on Joe Morgan wins. You would really think though that part of the reason for all of this analysis is to try to predict which players are worth the contracts, or if my $260 a team Fantasy baseball team really should trust Justin Upton (yes!) and Colby Rasmus to lead my team to glory (or lack of glory as it turns out this year).

Anyway Dave, you can’t have your cake and eat it too, either Rios has horribly underperformed (to the tune of at least a win or two in his 120 PA for the SOX) OR he was a bad deadline period acquisiton for a team still vaguely in contention

ZiPS: 24
Marcel: 23
CHONE: 23
Oliver: 22

And even if it did, BABIP tends to correlate with LD%, and the White Sox’s LD% is the second worst in the AL. When you’re not hitting line drives, balls tend to find gloves. This isn’t a case of bad luck.

that’s never happened before

40 homeruns is a ton.

prince hit 34 last year.
pujols hit 37.

the only person who could probably be said to be a lock for more than 40 is ryan howard. and adam dunn to hit exactly 40.

hell, quentin only hit 36 last year.