At the traditional halfway point of the season, the Chicago White Sox enjoyed a small renaissance.
In the 14 games between our 81-game survey and the All-Star break, the White Sox were trending more positively in terms of value, with eight batters and nine pitchers increasing in surplus value (SV), which is nearly half of the roster.
For the 2018 White Sox, that qualifies as a major gain.
[FanGraphs, our stats partner, generates dollar values for WAR. For the White Sox roster, FanGraphs is valuing 1.0 WAR at $8,120,879. By prorating salary, we can subtract salary paid from each player’s dollar war value to generate SV.]
Though he took a minor hit prior to the All-Star break, Tim Anderson remains the team leader in SV at just a sneeze less than $14 million. With Yoán Moncada gaining and Reynaldo López in the picture, it’s not quite the foregone conclusion it once was that TA will join former team luminaries like Alexei Ramirez and Chris Sale as season SV champs.
Prior to this survey, some minor gains and losses had been missed on the pitcher’s side, from their offensive WAR in interleague play. That’s been incorporated now.
The biggest mover on the SV chart this time around is Avisaíl García, who added nearly $6 million to his tally before getting sidelined again with a hammy (although he comes off the DL today). Top SV tumbler was our lone All-Star, José Abreu, who lost $6 million-plus in value on the strength of a WAR that has fallen to 0.0. He has taken a hard value fall over the past two surveys/25 games.
White Sox vs. average team breakdown
To offer perspective on how the White Sox are doing relative to the league, we compare Chicago to a generic “average” MLB team (average payroll, average WAR production). The White Sox are doing far worse than that club when it comes to overall value this season:
The average MLB team has 19.4 WAR, which is $157,154,050 in value, $81,255,677 in salary and and SV of $75,898,372.
The White Sox have 9.1 WAR (+1.3 WAR from just 14 games ago), which is $73,900,000 in value, $40,571,679 in salary and $33,328,321 in surplus value.
So, the White Sox are 10.3 WAR worse than an average team, which is $83,254,050 worse in value, despite spending just $40,683,998 less in salary.
Thus the White Sox SV is $42,570,051 less than the average team. Another way to look at it, on a per-game basis the White Sox are getting $448,105,80 less SV from its roster than the average major league team.
So every two games, the White Sox have an SV of nearly a million dollars less in average SV than the average team.
Quick Peeks
Top Hitter Value: Tim Anderson, $14,500,000
Top Pitcher Value: Joakim Soria, $9,800,000
Lowest Hitter Value: Trayce Thompson, -$9,800,00
Lowest Pitcher Value: Lucas Giolito and Hector Santiago, -$5,700,000
Top Hitter SV: Tim Anderson, $13,913,580
Top Pitcher SV: Reynaldo López, $8,877,469
Lowest Hitter SV: Trayce Thompson, -$10,003,704
Lowest Pitcher SV: Hector Santiago, -$6,872,840
Biggest Hitter SV Jump: Avisaíl García, $5,920,988
JBiggest Pitcher SV Jump: Biggest Pitcher SV Jump: Joakim Soria, $2,208,642
Biggest Hitter SV Drop: José Abreu, -$6,223,457 (massive drop, in second straight survey)
Biggest Pitcher SV Drop: Hector Santiago, -$1,772,840