Tuesday, March 20, 2007
White Sox Preview
I’m not sure why I hate the White Sox so much, but I can tell you with certainty – I hate the White Sox. It’s not because they’re rivals of the Tigers. The Twins and Indians are both rivals of the Tigers. So are the Royals. I don’t hate any of those teams, and in fact I respect the Twins and the Indians quite a bit. I’d probably even like those teams if they weren’t in the American League Central. But not the White Sox. Oh, I do respect them for assembling a quality club, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hate them.
It’s not the players, either. I have no beef with Jermaine Dye. Paul Konerko seems like a pretty genuinely good guy. Iguchi, Crede, all those good pitchers, they’re all fine in my book. A.J. Pierzynski’s a bit of a douche, but he’s probably just that team’s Rasheed Wallace. When he’s on your team, you’re fine with him. When he’s not, you’re not. But mash them altogether and there’s no two ways about it. I hate them. So let’s talk about the players who will be on the receiving end of my very polarized feelings toward this team.
In 2006, what went right for the White Sox was their lineup, and what went wrong for the White Sox was their pitching. Since what’s bad for the Sox is what’s good for Tiger fans, let’s start there. The real unfortunate part for Sox fans – the real gut shot – was that it wasn’t their bullpen that really let them down. Sure, a couple of the steadier pitchers out of their 2005 bullpen – Neal Cotts and Cliff Politte – were awful, but overall it wasn’t a bad group. Take those two and their cliff diving 2006 seasons out of the equation and the White Sox pen was actually pretty good. What let the Sox and their fans down in 2006 was their starters. It was almost cruel to see.
Starting Rotation
You have the same guys as the previous season, with the weakest link replaced with a guy who could very well have become the staff ace. The five of them make all but three of the team’s starts in the entire season and as a crew they throw more innings than the starters of any team in the American League. That was Ozzie Guillen’s genius from 2005, right? Letting his starters work out of their jams and earn all those victories heaped upon them. Well, he got a ton of innings out of them again in 2006 and all they could muster was a 4.63 ERA (not counting the three starts from McCarthy and Haeger). The real poetry of it was the thing people blamed for their struggles as a staff were all those innings in 2005.
Don’t feel too bad for the Sox, though. Kenny Williams assessed the situation, saw he had some pitchers that would most likely be leaving soon, and scrambled things up. He shipped out Freddy Garcia and Brandon McCarthy and brought back some pretty good prospects. Two of them are fighting for the fifth spot in the rotation, so let’s start there. John Danks came over from the Rangers in the McCarthy trade. He was part of the “DVD” trio the Rangers had assembled and he’d better hope his fortunes turn out better than the other two have or a better nickname would have been “Beta”. Luckily for Sox fans, he’s considered the best of the three. He’s a young (22 next month) lefty who has three good pitches that include a low-90s fastball, a “1 to 7” curveball and an improving changeup. (Nod to Baseball America) His opponent for that fifth spot was acquired in the Freddy Garcia trade, and his name is Gavin Floyd. Floyd was once supposed to be a top flight pitcher, but he hasn’t been able to live up to his early promise. Even in 2004, when he earned a couple starts with the Phils in his first full pro season, he had some control problems that really came out in the majors, when he walked 16 in 28 innings. In 2005, every body wondered what happened to him as he got torched down in Scranton-Wilkes Barre before he earned a promotion to Philly to get torched worse by better hitters. It wasn’t much better for him in 2006, but at least he did okay in AAA this time before things went south again in Philly. I’m not pretending to know the Sox pitchers better than they do, but if Floyd gets the job to start the season, I bet 2007 will be the last season anybody argues about which of these two is better.
Whoever wins that competition for the fifth spot, the other four will be the same as last year. Surprisingly, the most successful starter for the team for most of 2006 was Jose Contreras. He was fantastic in April and May and then on June 1st he was tagged for six runs. June never got much better, and although he recuped a bit later in the season, he never duplicated that early success. Still, he was the only Sox starter to allow less hits than innings pitched. He was also able to use a very low walk rate (2.5 BB/9) to give him a good K:BB ratio despite an only average strikeout rate (6.2 K/9). Sox fans should take heart in the fact that the rest of his numbers didn’t seem very flukey so they can reasonably expect similar results next year.
Many would probably disagree, but I’d say the next most successful starter last year was Javier Vazquez. He gave up barely more hits than innings pitched. He struck out 184 batters, which was easily the most on the team. His walk rate was among the highest of the starters, but 2.5 walked per nine innings is certainly nothing to complain about. He gave up less home runs than he had since his heyday with the Expos. You can go right down the line of his stats and aside from a slight jump in his BABIP compared to his career average (.321 in 2006, .309 career), nothing offers much of an explanation as to how or why his ERA ballooned up to 4.84. If you’re a Sox fan, that’s good news for 2007 as such luck probably won’t repeat itself.
Moving on to the next starter in terms of the quality he offered in 2006, you have Jon Garland. This dude gave up a ton of hits in 2006. In fact, nobody in the American League gave up more hits than his 247 hits. You may think he had some fundamental collapse that opened the door for all those hits, but it would appear it was just a case of all the bad fortune he had avoided in prior seasons coming home to roost. In 2005, when he was giving up only 212 hits in 221 innings, he enjoyed a .268 BABIP. In 2006, the main explanation for the difference in his stats was that number jumping up to .313. That’s not such good news for Sox fans because that 2006 number is a lot closer to normal. They’ll just have to hope he gets it back to something like his career average, which even after 2006 lies at .284.
That brings us to the most celebrated pitcher of this bunch, Mark Buehrle. I was accurate when I mentioned nobody gave up MORE hits in the American League than Jon Garland’s 247. However, I would also be accurate in saying nobody gave up more hits in the American League than Mark Buehrle. While any Sox fans reading that try to figure out how that’s possible, I’ll look at just what happened to Mr. Buehrle in 2006. Even when things were going well for Buehrle, he gave up a lot of hits. He would just minimize the damage of all those hits by giving up hardly any walks and very few home runs. These things were enough to compensate for all the hits that came with his low strikeout totals. Well, in 2006, even more hits came because he struck out even less batters (4.3 K/9). Stir in career-high fly ball rate with a career high percentage of fly balls turning into home runs and you have unhappy South Siders and a disastrous ERA that was 0.01 shy of five. This was quite shocking from a guy who, as a starter, had only once before had an ERA that started with a four. I’m sure I’m not the only one who expected an injury to be revealed during the offseason, but the news never came. Even more baffling to me is the fact that everybody seems to think it was just a blip in his career and anxiously awaits his free agency. I hope that winning ticket comes with a good surgeon’s number on the back.
Lineup
As I mentioned before, it’s a shame the pitching didn’t show up for the Sox because, boy, their hitting did. This team mashed in 2007 to the tune of 868 runs. They smacked 236 long balls and as a team hit .280/.342/.464. They had two guys whose OPS cleared 1.000 (Thome and Dye) and most days neither one of them batted fourth. That’s all behind them, though. The important question not just for the Sox, but the whole American League, is can they do it again?
If their doing it again requires Jermaine Dye maintaining the numbers he produced in 2006, I’d say it’s probably a resounding no. Now 33, you cannot reasonably expect Dye to again clear what had been his career high slugging percentage by 60 points. It’s also probably not reasonable to again expect one-fourth of his fly balls to leave the yard. Similarly, reproducing his .334 BABIP when his career average (even after this past stellar season) is only .305 seems unlikely. If he can even come close, though, Juan Uribe should be able to pick up some of the slack. Uribe forgot how to watch ball four (13 walks in 495 plate appearances) and because of it saw his on-base percentage drop to an astounding .257. That’s not a batting average folks. Since he will be a free agent if the Sox don’t pick up his option at the end of this year, I can almost guarantee they will get a better on-base percentage than .257 from their shortstop whether it’s Uribe giving it to them or not. The good news for Juan is he’s just as unlikely to duplicate his .244 BABIP as he is that putrid OBP.
Another position where the White Sox have almost nowhere to go but up (as far as offense) is center field. Brian Anderson is supposed to be a fantastic center fielder, but even if he could split into two Andruw Joneses out there, he’d have a tough time making up for his .225/.290/.359 line from last season. From what I’ve read about the Sox, their outfield situation is still a little murky, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear no matter who they settle on. Then again, one of the potential candidates to fill in out there is Darin Erstad. If anybody could trip over the bar when it’s already lying on the ground, he’s probably as good a bet as anybody. The Sox will probably need to add some runs at the position, though, because somebody is likely going to have to make up for Jim Thome coming back down to earth a bit. Not only do I not see Thome again banging out a 1.014 OPS, I also wouldn’t want to have to count on him clearing 600 plate appearances again.
While we’re talking about players backsliding, I’d feel pretty confident throwing Konerko into that mix as well. I wouldn’t look for him to reproduce his career high batting average of .313, which came on the strength of a career high BABIP of .333. But even if those numbers come down a bit, Konerko’s power and walk rate should still keep him pretty effective and while there might be a slight decline, I bet it’s not much. Slight or not, it’s hard to come up with the position that will make up for any loss in production Konerko might have. Pierzynski is 30, a catcher and played right around his career averages last year. Improvement wouldn’t seem to be the smart bet on him. At least the Sox signed Toby Hall to back him up. He will almost certainly improve on what the Sox got out of last year’s backup catchers, Chris Widger and Sandy Alomar. I see Iguchi in a very similar light to Pierzynski. He’s 32, plays a pretty challenging defensive position, and has been pretty remarkably consistent the past two seasons. I’d bet on him staying the same again a lot sooner than I’d bet on significant improvement.
That leaves third base, left field and the bench. Joe Crede had a pretty big breakthrough last year, hitting thirty home runs and slugging .506. Just expecting him to match those numbers when they smoked anything he had ever done in a full season seems optimistic. Asking him to improve on them seems downright greedy. In left field last year they had Scott Podsednik most days. He was a turd, hitting .261/.330/.353, and it would certainly seem like they could do better than that. But if Podsednik is out there, he’s a 31-year old player who draws most of his value from his speed and just played his first spring game because he had a hernia surgery in January. Mackowiak and Ozuna both could probably bump up the productivity at that position a bit, but looking at their outfield candidates, it’s easy to see why a lot of Sox fans are calling for Ryan Sweeney and Josh Fields to get time out there. That pretty much covers the offensive side of things for the Sox.
Bullpen
Once the starters are out of the game, I would look for the Sox to get pretty good innings out of their bullpen again this year. That statement is dependent on Jenks’ arm staying healthy, which I believe was a concern early in Spring Training. He says he’s fine, but he wouldn’t be the first pitcher to kid himself when it comes to his own health. In front of the big boy, they will probably count on Mike MacDougal and Matt Thornton for quality innings. Both were great for the Sox last year and they’ll have to hope Thornton maintains the control he finally found and MacDougal maintains his health.
Beyond those three, they’ll hope pitching coach Don Cooper can continue to work his magic on Andy Sisco, the 6’10” giant. Sisco showed a lot of promise as a rookie in 2005, but then realized he was a Royal in 2006 and pretty much crapped the bed. He’s supposed to be a bit of a head case, but being on a winning team clears up those problems a lot of the time and we know Ozzie Guillen won’t take any crap from him even if he is giving up more than a foot and one hundred pounds. The rest of the bullpen will depend on how many bench players Ozzie wants, but it’s pretty sure to be some fresh faces whether that face belongs to knuckleballer Charlie Haeger, former Cub David Aardsma (another fireballer the Sox seem to love in their pen), Boone Logan, Nick Masset or one of their other youngsters. We should have a pretty good idea soon because Ozzie Guillen is expected to cut the roster down from 40 to 28 in the next couple days. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room for roster decisions.
Defense
I’m going to touch on the defensive facet of this team very briefly. They’re returning the same guys at almost every position, and that’s probably not great news for their defense since they’re an older team that will just be one year slower at almost every position. Not only that, but one of the positions where they were very strong was center field and Brian Anderson doesn’t seem to have really good job security, so that will likely be another step backward for the defense.
Summary
So taking all this information into consideration, where do I see the White Sox in relation to their 90 wins from last year? I’d look for them to take a step backward. I don’t think their starters will bounce back as much as many people think. Vazquez will probably improve on his bad luck, but I have a feeling Buehrle might be heading for a fall and may not bounce back as much as people expect. Then even if Contreras and Garland hold steady, Danks and/or Floyd might not have an easy time replacing Garcia’s numbers from last year. Factor in an aging offense that may have a hard time repeating last year’s success and what seems to be an improved division and things get a little hairy for the Pale Hose. I may be blinded by that hatred I was talking about before, but the Sox stepping back to something like eighty-four or eighty-five wins seems more likely to me than picking up the two or three extra wins that would probably be needed for the division.
Notes: I used just about all of the General Baseball sites found at the right of the page to compile this preview and a special mention goes out to fangraphs.com.
It’s not the players, either. I have no beef with Jermaine Dye. Paul Konerko seems like a pretty genuinely good guy. Iguchi, Crede, all those good pitchers, they’re all fine in my book. A.J. Pierzynski’s a bit of a douche, but he’s probably just that team’s Rasheed Wallace. When he’s on your team, you’re fine with him. When he’s not, you’re not. But mash them altogether and there’s no two ways about it. I hate them. So let’s talk about the players who will be on the receiving end of my very polarized feelings toward this team.
In 2006, what went right for the White Sox was their lineup, and what went wrong for the White Sox was their pitching. Since what’s bad for the Sox is what’s good for Tiger fans, let’s start there. The real unfortunate part for Sox fans – the real gut shot – was that it wasn’t their bullpen that really let them down. Sure, a couple of the steadier pitchers out of their 2005 bullpen – Neal Cotts and Cliff Politte – were awful, but overall it wasn’t a bad group. Take those two and their cliff diving 2006 seasons out of the equation and the White Sox pen was actually pretty good. What let the Sox and their fans down in 2006 was their starters. It was almost cruel to see.
Starting Rotation
You have the same guys as the previous season, with the weakest link replaced with a guy who could very well have become the staff ace. The five of them make all but three of the team’s starts in the entire season and as a crew they throw more innings than the starters of any team in the American League. That was Ozzie Guillen’s genius from 2005, right? Letting his starters work out of their jams and earn all those victories heaped upon them. Well, he got a ton of innings out of them again in 2006 and all they could muster was a 4.63 ERA (not counting the three starts from McCarthy and Haeger). The real poetry of it was the thing people blamed for their struggles as a staff were all those innings in 2005.
Don’t feel too bad for the Sox, though. Kenny Williams assessed the situation, saw he had some pitchers that would most likely be leaving soon, and scrambled things up. He shipped out Freddy Garcia and Brandon McCarthy and brought back some pretty good prospects. Two of them are fighting for the fifth spot in the rotation, so let’s start there. John Danks came over from the Rangers in the McCarthy trade. He was part of the “DVD” trio the Rangers had assembled and he’d better hope his fortunes turn out better than the other two have or a better nickname would have been “Beta”. Luckily for Sox fans, he’s considered the best of the three. He’s a young (22 next month) lefty who has three good pitches that include a low-90s fastball, a “1 to 7” curveball and an improving changeup. (Nod to Baseball America) His opponent for that fifth spot was acquired in the Freddy Garcia trade, and his name is Gavin Floyd. Floyd was once supposed to be a top flight pitcher, but he hasn’t been able to live up to his early promise. Even in 2004, when he earned a couple starts with the Phils in his first full pro season, he had some control problems that really came out in the majors, when he walked 16 in 28 innings. In 2005, every body wondered what happened to him as he got torched down in Scranton-Wilkes Barre before he earned a promotion to Philly to get torched worse by better hitters. It wasn’t much better for him in 2006, but at least he did okay in AAA this time before things went south again in Philly. I’m not pretending to know the Sox pitchers better than they do, but if Floyd gets the job to start the season, I bet 2007 will be the last season anybody argues about which of these two is better.
Whoever wins that competition for the fifth spot, the other four will be the same as last year. Surprisingly, the most successful starter for the team for most of 2006 was Jose Contreras. He was fantastic in April and May and then on June 1st he was tagged for six runs. June never got much better, and although he recuped a bit later in the season, he never duplicated that early success. Still, he was the only Sox starter to allow less hits than innings pitched. He was also able to use a very low walk rate (2.5 BB/9) to give him a good K:BB ratio despite an only average strikeout rate (6.2 K/9). Sox fans should take heart in the fact that the rest of his numbers didn’t seem very flukey so they can reasonably expect similar results next year.
Many would probably disagree, but I’d say the next most successful starter last year was Javier Vazquez. He gave up barely more hits than innings pitched. He struck out 184 batters, which was easily the most on the team. His walk rate was among the highest of the starters, but 2.5 walked per nine innings is certainly nothing to complain about. He gave up less home runs than he had since his heyday with the Expos. You can go right down the line of his stats and aside from a slight jump in his BABIP compared to his career average (.321 in 2006, .309 career), nothing offers much of an explanation as to how or why his ERA ballooned up to 4.84. If you’re a Sox fan, that’s good news for 2007 as such luck probably won’t repeat itself.
Moving on to the next starter in terms of the quality he offered in 2006, you have Jon Garland. This dude gave up a ton of hits in 2006. In fact, nobody in the American League gave up more hits than his 247 hits. You may think he had some fundamental collapse that opened the door for all those hits, but it would appear it was just a case of all the bad fortune he had avoided in prior seasons coming home to roost. In 2005, when he was giving up only 212 hits in 221 innings, he enjoyed a .268 BABIP. In 2006, the main explanation for the difference in his stats was that number jumping up to .313. That’s not such good news for Sox fans because that 2006 number is a lot closer to normal. They’ll just have to hope he gets it back to something like his career average, which even after 2006 lies at .284.
That brings us to the most celebrated pitcher of this bunch, Mark Buehrle. I was accurate when I mentioned nobody gave up MORE hits in the American League than Jon Garland’s 247. However, I would also be accurate in saying nobody gave up more hits in the American League than Mark Buehrle. While any Sox fans reading that try to figure out how that’s possible, I’ll look at just what happened to Mr. Buehrle in 2006. Even when things were going well for Buehrle, he gave up a lot of hits. He would just minimize the damage of all those hits by giving up hardly any walks and very few home runs. These things were enough to compensate for all the hits that came with his low strikeout totals. Well, in 2006, even more hits came because he struck out even less batters (4.3 K/9). Stir in career-high fly ball rate with a career high percentage of fly balls turning into home runs and you have unhappy South Siders and a disastrous ERA that was 0.01 shy of five. This was quite shocking from a guy who, as a starter, had only once before had an ERA that started with a four. I’m sure I’m not the only one who expected an injury to be revealed during the offseason, but the news never came. Even more baffling to me is the fact that everybody seems to think it was just a blip in his career and anxiously awaits his free agency. I hope that winning ticket comes with a good surgeon’s number on the back.
Lineup
As I mentioned before, it’s a shame the pitching didn’t show up for the Sox because, boy, their hitting did. This team mashed in 2007 to the tune of 868 runs. They smacked 236 long balls and as a team hit .280/.342/.464. They had two guys whose OPS cleared 1.000 (Thome and Dye) and most days neither one of them batted fourth. That’s all behind them, though. The important question not just for the Sox, but the whole American League, is can they do it again?
If their doing it again requires Jermaine Dye maintaining the numbers he produced in 2006, I’d say it’s probably a resounding no. Now 33, you cannot reasonably expect Dye to again clear what had been his career high slugging percentage by 60 points. It’s also probably not reasonable to again expect one-fourth of his fly balls to leave the yard. Similarly, reproducing his .334 BABIP when his career average (even after this past stellar season) is only .305 seems unlikely. If he can even come close, though, Juan Uribe should be able to pick up some of the slack. Uribe forgot how to watch ball four (13 walks in 495 plate appearances) and because of it saw his on-base percentage drop to an astounding .257. That’s not a batting average folks. Since he will be a free agent if the Sox don’t pick up his option at the end of this year, I can almost guarantee they will get a better on-base percentage than .257 from their shortstop whether it’s Uribe giving it to them or not. The good news for Juan is he’s just as unlikely to duplicate his .244 BABIP as he is that putrid OBP.
Another position where the White Sox have almost nowhere to go but up (as far as offense) is center field. Brian Anderson is supposed to be a fantastic center fielder, but even if he could split into two Andruw Joneses out there, he’d have a tough time making up for his .225/.290/.359 line from last season. From what I’ve read about the Sox, their outfield situation is still a little murky, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear no matter who they settle on. Then again, one of the potential candidates to fill in out there is Darin Erstad. If anybody could trip over the bar when it’s already lying on the ground, he’s probably as good a bet as anybody. The Sox will probably need to add some runs at the position, though, because somebody is likely going to have to make up for Jim Thome coming back down to earth a bit. Not only do I not see Thome again banging out a 1.014 OPS, I also wouldn’t want to have to count on him clearing 600 plate appearances again.
While we’re talking about players backsliding, I’d feel pretty confident throwing Konerko into that mix as well. I wouldn’t look for him to reproduce his career high batting average of .313, which came on the strength of a career high BABIP of .333. But even if those numbers come down a bit, Konerko’s power and walk rate should still keep him pretty effective and while there might be a slight decline, I bet it’s not much. Slight or not, it’s hard to come up with the position that will make up for any loss in production Konerko might have. Pierzynski is 30, a catcher and played right around his career averages last year. Improvement wouldn’t seem to be the smart bet on him. At least the Sox signed Toby Hall to back him up. He will almost certainly improve on what the Sox got out of last year’s backup catchers, Chris Widger and Sandy Alomar. I see Iguchi in a very similar light to Pierzynski. He’s 32, plays a pretty challenging defensive position, and has been pretty remarkably consistent the past two seasons. I’d bet on him staying the same again a lot sooner than I’d bet on significant improvement.
That leaves third base, left field and the bench. Joe Crede had a pretty big breakthrough last year, hitting thirty home runs and slugging .506. Just expecting him to match those numbers when they smoked anything he had ever done in a full season seems optimistic. Asking him to improve on them seems downright greedy. In left field last year they had Scott Podsednik most days. He was a turd, hitting .261/.330/.353, and it would certainly seem like they could do better than that. But if Podsednik is out there, he’s a 31-year old player who draws most of his value from his speed and just played his first spring game because he had a hernia surgery in January. Mackowiak and Ozuna both could probably bump up the productivity at that position a bit, but looking at their outfield candidates, it’s easy to see why a lot of Sox fans are calling for Ryan Sweeney and Josh Fields to get time out there. That pretty much covers the offensive side of things for the Sox.
Bullpen
Once the starters are out of the game, I would look for the Sox to get pretty good innings out of their bullpen again this year. That statement is dependent on Jenks’ arm staying healthy, which I believe was a concern early in Spring Training. He says he’s fine, but he wouldn’t be the first pitcher to kid himself when it comes to his own health. In front of the big boy, they will probably count on Mike MacDougal and Matt Thornton for quality innings. Both were great for the Sox last year and they’ll have to hope Thornton maintains the control he finally found and MacDougal maintains his health.
Beyond those three, they’ll hope pitching coach Don Cooper can continue to work his magic on Andy Sisco, the 6’10” giant. Sisco showed a lot of promise as a rookie in 2005, but then realized he was a Royal in 2006 and pretty much crapped the bed. He’s supposed to be a bit of a head case, but being on a winning team clears up those problems a lot of the time and we know Ozzie Guillen won’t take any crap from him even if he is giving up more than a foot and one hundred pounds. The rest of the bullpen will depend on how many bench players Ozzie wants, but it’s pretty sure to be some fresh faces whether that face belongs to knuckleballer Charlie Haeger, former Cub David Aardsma (another fireballer the Sox seem to love in their pen), Boone Logan, Nick Masset or one of their other youngsters. We should have a pretty good idea soon because Ozzie Guillen is expected to cut the roster down from 40 to 28 in the next couple days. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room for roster decisions.
Defense
I’m going to touch on the defensive facet of this team very briefly. They’re returning the same guys at almost every position, and that’s probably not great news for their defense since they’re an older team that will just be one year slower at almost every position. Not only that, but one of the positions where they were very strong was center field and Brian Anderson doesn’t seem to have really good job security, so that will likely be another step backward for the defense.
Summary
So taking all this information into consideration, where do I see the White Sox in relation to their 90 wins from last year? I’d look for them to take a step backward. I don’t think their starters will bounce back as much as many people think. Vazquez will probably improve on his bad luck, but I have a feeling Buehrle might be heading for a fall and may not bounce back as much as people expect. Then even if Contreras and Garland hold steady, Danks and/or Floyd might not have an easy time replacing Garcia’s numbers from last year. Factor in an aging offense that may have a hard time repeating last year’s success and what seems to be an improved division and things get a little hairy for the Pale Hose. I may be blinded by that hatred I was talking about before, but the Sox stepping back to something like eighty-four or eighty-five wins seems more likely to me than picking up the two or three extra wins that would probably be needed for the division.
Notes: I used just about all of the General Baseball sites found at the right of the page to compile this preview and a special mention goes out to fangraphs.com.
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