The Bernstein Brief: White Sox Are Far From Good
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Dead last and underwater is the wrong place to be this far into a season, for a team that thought it was going to be good.
The White Sox aren't good, aren't close to being good and are more likely now to be early sellers of assets in an effort to salvage something out of this lost year to get them closer to winning something later on.
The 12-17 record is misleading, with the Pythagorean calculation using runs scored vs. runs allowed putting them at a more truthful 10-19. What's more ominous, however, is what Fangraphs.com noted Monday: The White Sox are dead last in MLB in total WAR for position players.
They are below replacement level, in fact, with a team aggregate of -1.0. That's significantly worse than the 29th-ranked Phillies at -0.1. Per the specific components of the statistic, they have the third-worst offense and the second-worst defense. Alarmingly, they also are by a mile the game's worst baserunning team, having cost themselves 12 runs already this season, which equates to more than a full win value of bad baserunning already.
This is a face-plant out of the starting gate, the White Sox lying in the dirt as the field gallops away.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
