Otto von Ballpark

I don't know about the willowy part, but Kepler has definitely been a doubles/triples guy in the minors. Not unlike Aaron Hicks' minor league power numbers, although he did rack up doubles/triples at a pretty high rate last year.

The way the lineups performed in 2015, Sano and Abreu were probably equally important to their clubs. Buxton could lessen that, of course, as could Park, but those two are fairly big question marks for 2016 in their own right.

I don't know if Latos, Danks, and Johnson are that much worse than Duffey, Milone, and Nolasco (our commonly projected 4-6 right now). Latos has the upside, Danks brings the health (although that could be a bad thing given his performance!), and Johnson has a 96 ERA+ across 3 seasons, and had a great bounceback campaign at AAA last year. Of course, I am a bit more pessimistic on Duffey as a starter than most around here (looking at his 2nd and 3rd time through the order splits). Your "deep reserve" of Dean, Darnell, and Rogers frankly isn't all that different than what the Sox have in deep reserve too, all basically replacement level. I don't see the Twins taking May out of the pen this year, so that leaves Berrios as the biggest difference, which is slightly neutralized by likely being 7th on the depth chart and not on the 40-man roster yet. It would obviously hurt the Sox a lot to lose one of their top 3, but I don't see the Twins depth mattering all that much in that calculation. I wouldn't be on any group of 3 pitchers staying healthy for 6 months, but Sale has only missed about 5 starts in 4 seasons. Quintana hasn't missed any. Rodon has the makings of a workhorse too. Hughes and Milone might have the biggest health/durability question marks of either team's top 5 right now (assuming Latos is #6 per the MLB.com depth chart).

I just read a better mind than me say that 6 wins off actually may not be bad, given all the variables involved: "Even if you had perfect information about playing time and performance level of every player the standard error on team level projections can't be lower than 5-6 wins." http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/newsstand/discussion/pecota_hates_the_royals_part_ii/#5157584

No, you're right. The Twins have depth, and more than the Sox at most spots. I don't disagree there. It's just been referenced as a "huge" advantage, but that doesn't seem to hold up on closer inspection.

This is true. Back then, posters here claimed our rotation would be OK but they were pretty much just stretching and squinting at the same 5 guys the rest of us were worried about. There wasn't really 7-8 guys in the mix like today.

The Twins could have just as much trouble replacing Sano, and while their rotation is deeper, I'm not sure it's that much deeper to make a huge difference. Judging by current projected rosters, if a Twins starter went down early, Nolasco probably takes his place. At some point that should be Berrios which would be great, although I think there is a decent chance he might be needed to help cover Duffey's sophomore slump instead. Aside from them, our depth is May who probably isn't moving from the pen (they seem to have built it around him), and then Dean and Rogers. Meyer is an interesting wild card, but you probably can't count on him as rotation depth right now. The White Sox depth chart currently has Latos at #6, and it looks like they have a few guys who could approximate Dean and Rogers likely starting contributions (Carroll, Beck, etc.). EDIT TO ADD: They also have Carson Fullmer and have shown a willingness to promote aggressively. Not great, but in practical terms, I'm not sure it's likely to be a huge difference.

All I've heard this winter is how bad it is to sign FA relievers, not sure why we'd do that for Jepsen. If they wanted a 30 something FA reliever beyond 2016, seems like the smart thing would have been to sign one this winter, let him overlap with Jepsen in 2016 while the kids work their way up, and let a youngster replace Jepsen in 2017.

Adam Eaton, who played 153 games last season? And who has played a similar number in 3 of his 5 full pro seasons to date? Is there something I am missing about him?

Hmmm... I don't read USA Today. I haven't gotten that impression. I've heard about the White Sox having a good offseason before, but more just about improving their team, not "running away with the division."

Doesn't seem that overlooked, the words depth/deep have already been mentioned a few times in this thread, in reference to a Twins advantage over the White Sox. That said, we also shouldn't overrate the advantage of depth. The Twins had better rotation depth in 2015 too, but their rotation performance still trailed that of the White Sox. Just one of Sale, Quintana, or perhaps even Rodon pitching up to expectations probably neutralizes any wins gained by depth there, that's the power of star level talent. Position players are a different story, with Sano in the fold, the Twins might very well match the White Sox for plus talent on that side of the ball. It's a pretty close match, which should make things interesting!

Who's freaking out? Fangraphs projects the White Sox at 81 wins right now, and the Twins at 78 but with 2-3 top 30 prospects breaking in. That's about as even as you can get. Heck, our whole division is about as even as you can get. And that pretty much mirrors the more pessimistic comments here so far. EDIT: PECOTA has the Indians at 92 wins. That seems like the closest thing to a fan/projection freak out in the AL Central right now.

What's to call bull on? BABIP is among the factors to consider when trying to project future performance from past performance. There's nothing controversial about that, I am sure teams use it all the time. If you are just looking for a "stat geek" thing to pick on, there are a lot better targets than this application of BABIP.

I'd probably take our pair too, but projecting 2016 involves a lot more than looking at 2015 stats. Cabrera and LaRoche are both just a year removed from ~125 OPS+ seasons.

Barring injury (part of an useful definition of floor), elite prospects will almost always at least reach MLB. And the closer to MLB they are, like Berrios, the more likely they are to get extended MLB reps in the very near future. Jay and Stewart, though, I agree. They're not particularly close to elite or close to MLB right now, although the potential/pedigree is there.

No, I had the same thought. (Of course, I am known for picking nits. ) Even putting aside injury risk, it's very hard to put a MLB floor on pitchers in A-ball who still have massive adjustments to make like Stewart and Jay. I think you pretty much have to be an elite prospect/performer in A-ball to get any kind MLB floor. Although, to be fair, "long reliever" floor from the article isn't that high, with as fleeting as long reliever careers can be, it could be interpreted as just a cup of coffee, which is probably a fair floor given their draft pedigree. Seth's "dominant reliever" floor comment is way too high, though -- Jay has 18 pro innings at A-ball and wasn't especially dominant in them yet either. He's definitely a good prospect, but it is just WAY too early to give him that kind of a floor.

Again, you're back to repeating that statement without accounting for its context, not sure why.

You could check it yourself, if you want. Perkins only had 21 games last year where he exceeded 15 pitches. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.cgi?id=perkigl01&t=p&year=2015#pitching_gamelogs::21 Just eyeing some of those, his blown save against the Yankees, he gave up a HR to A-Rod on his first pitch, 2 singles, and then the 3 run HR to Murphy on his 14th pitch. Another loss to the Yankees, doubles to Bird and McCann on his 1st and 5th pitches, respectively. HR to Kang vs the Pirates on his 8th pitch. HR to Colabello vs the Blue Jays on his 8th pitch. HR to Cruz vs the Mariners on his 11th pitch. The bloop single to blow the save vs Oakland on his 12th pitch. Late season, double to Castellanos of the Tigers on his first pitch, then HR to Rajai Davis on his 18th pitch. Of course, he was probably struggling much earlier than that, allowing the Davis at-bat to reach 8 pitches. You might be on to something with progressively losing velocity and movement, but I don't think you will find it in a neat pattern with pitch count and results. I wonder if some of the PitchFX data might be better?

No one is taking them out of the equation in determining the player's overall contributions or value. It's only taking them out to help answer a very specific question: how likely is it that this player can repeat the portion of his contributions/value derived from batting average? Success due to BABIP has less predicting power than success via walks, limiting strikeouts, or home runs. A ton of Santana's success in 2014 was due to BABIP. Thus, it was very relevant in projecting his performance for 2015. Had Santana drawn more walks, struck out fewer times, or hit more home runs in 2014, his chances for success in 2015 would have been much better.

That post was a response to a quoted statement "We do not need the traditional LOOGY - we have Perkins." Given that context, plus the additional observations that "the slider not being sharp against LHBs and the FB losing a couple ticks", the statement "Perkins can't get lefties out" could just as easily be interpreted as "Perkins hasn't demonstrated a reliable ability to get lefties out lately." I certainly didn't interpret that post as such an absolute conclusion based only on stats.

This can be checked fairly easily at B-Ref. Glen Perkins, LHB faced by year 2015: http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/batter_vs_pitcher.cgi?pitcher=perkigl01#gotresults&pitcher=perkigl01&min_year_game=2015&max_year_game=2015&post=1&opp_id=&bats=L&opponent_status=&c1criteria=&c1gtlt=eq&c1val=0&c2criteria=&c2gtlt=eq&c2val=0&orderby=PA&orderby_dir=desc&orderby_second=Name&orderby_dir_second=asc&ajax=1&submitter=1 2014: http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/batter_vs_pitcher.cgi?pitcher=perkigl01#gotresults&pitcher=perkigl01&min_year_game=2014&max_year_game=2014&post=1&opp_id=&bats=L&opponent_status=&c1criteria=&c1gtlt=eq&c1val=0&c2criteria=&c2gtlt=eq&c2val=0&orderby=PA&orderby_dir=desc&orderby_second=Name&orderby_dir_second=asc&ajax=1&submitter=1 2013: http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/batter_vs_pitcher.cgi?pitcher=perkigl01#gotresults&pitcher=perkigl01&min_year_game=2013&max_year_game=2013&post=1&opp_id=&bats=L&opponent_status=&c1criteria=&c1gtlt=eq&c1val=0&c2criteria=&c2gtlt=eq&c2val=0&orderby=PA&orderby_dir=desc&orderby_second=Name&orderby_dir_second=asc&ajax=1&submitter=1 Maybe someone with a more keen eye than mine can glean more from that, but I don't see a ton of differences -- Perkins got to face Adam Dunn in 2013-2014, but he also got to face Pedro Alvarez in 2015. He was better in 2015 vs Alex Gordon than in 2014, etc. I don't see anything that jumps out as an explanation for 6-7 fewer strikeouts and 8-9 more hits from his 2013 levels. I won't say his 2014 or 2015 represents his true talent level versus lefties, but given the sum total of our quantitative and qualitative observations about him, I also wouldn't count on him being a weapon versus lefties as suggested in the post that inspired this conversation.

By the time the youngsters come up, the current good bullpen pitchers (Jepsen and Fien in particular, May too if he was needed to start) may be gone, and Perkins not far behind. Thus, the youngsters might just be offsetting those losses and maintaining an "OK" bullpen, rather than improving it towards "very good."

I doubt the end-of-game issue is any kind of factor. Teams have such short benches that they probably aren't pinch hitting much for anyone. Thrylos actually included some pitch observations in his original post on the subject, so it's not all stats based. I also don't think teams can afford to wait too long for reliever stats to stabilize.

Unfortunately, Perkins and Abad both have that reverse platoon split, and might be the two LH RP most likely to make the roster...

Of course, I didn't say otherwise. I just used those names as examples. Same principles apply to the other spots.