The Cubs and White Sox conclude their season series this weekend in a weird Friday/Saturday set. With the Cubs taking the pair at Wrigley back in June, the Sox would need a sweep just to tie on the year. At this point, though, even one victory for the South Siders would be meaningful, and it would also be enough to frustrate their guests, who remain on the fringe of the playoff fringe.
It’s a weird season on both sides. The Cubs have been a disappointment, and while expectations for the Sox were low, the A’s took the brunt of preseason fire, making 28–89 even more galling than it would have been with the proper anticipation. How bad has it been? Here’s one way to look at it: If you were to build the best roster possible from Cubs and White Sox this year, that team still wouldn’t win 90 games. Allow us to explain.
What we did here was look for an all-Chicago team. How we did it was rather simple: Find the players from each team with the best performances so far this season, measured by fWAR. We could have limited ourselves to players currently rostered, but we didn’t. We could have excluded injured players, but we didn’t. We included Erick Fedde, we counted both Christopher Morel and Isaac Paredes as options, and this team is still merely on the hypothetical playoff bubble. We had a pool of 105 MLB players to choose from. This is what we got.
How did we determine how good the team would be? We added up the starters’ WAR, extrapolated “bench” players’ performances over sample sizes which fill in the starters’ gaps, then added them to a replacement-level team.
The roster:
Starting Pitchers: Garrett Crochet, Shōta Imanaga, Erick Fedde, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon
Together, this starting five is at 13.3 fWAR so far this year, tied with the Phillies for the best mark in baseball.
Bullpen: Mark Leiter Jr., Tanner Banks, John Brebbia, Porter Hodge, Tyson Miller, Colten Brewer, Tim Hill, Yency Almonte
Together, these eight relievers have amassed 4.8 fWAR this year. However. There are more innings to fill than these eight men have thrown. Extrapolating their performance to fill those innings—the ones the particular five starters haven’t thrown—gets us to a 20.7-WAR staff led by an unrealistically healthy and lights-out bullpen. A very unrealistically healthy and lights-out bullpen. Especially the healthy part.
Catchers: Christian Bethancourt, Miguel Amaya
Both Cubs here. Bethancourt would be the starter in this arrangement, but the whole thing is below replacement level. Negative 0.3 fWAR from the catching position.
Starting Infield: Michael Busch (1B), Nico Hoerner (2B), Dansby Swanson (SS), Isaac Paredes (3B)
…Still just Cubs. 9.6 fWAR from these guys, which brings us to 9.3 from the position players so far. These four leave only 159 PA’s for the bench players to fill.
Starting Outfield: Ian Happ, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Seiya Suzuki
…Again, it’s the Cubs. 5.0 more fWAR gets us to 14.3. 345 more PA’s for the bench here, since PCA spent some time in the minors and Suzuki was briefly hurt.
Starting Designated Hitter: Cody Bellinger
…Yes, the entire lineup is Cubs. The White Sox have been so bad. Up to 15.5 WAR. An even 100 extra plate appearances for the bench to make up.
Bench: Paul DeJong, Mike Tauchman, Luis Robert Jr.
Finally, some White Sox. Two of them, and then Mike Tauchman as the defensive replacement for Suzuki. Given Bellinger’s ability to play first base and DeJong’s middle infield abilities, this conveniently gives us a backup at each position. There are 604 PA’s to fill, and together these three have far more than that, so extrapolating downwards, we get 1.7 wins worth of production from the non-catcher bench. That leaves us with 17.2 WAR overall from hitters, which would rank only 10th in the majors.
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Combining the pitching and hitting, we get to 37.9 WAR, or a team 38 wins better than a replacement level team, which is therefore 36 wins better than the White Sox. That team would be 64–53, good enough for fifth place in the National League’s playoff picture or eighth in the American League’s.
Overall, then, what did we find? If you added Garrett Crochet and Erick Fedde to the Cubs and upgraded the bullpen a little, you’d have a team on an 89-win pace.
It’s been a bleak summer.
White Sox news/injuries/moves/speculation:
- The White Sox ended their losing streak. Will there be another one? If so, Pedro Grifol won’t be around to see it. He, Charlie Montoyo (bench coach), Eddie Rodriguez (third base coach), and Mike Tosar (assistant hitting coach) were all fired yesterday. Grady Sizemore will be the interim manager.
- Who will the Sox’ next manager be? Chris Getz only said it’ll be someone from outside the organization. We would hope.
Cubs news/injuries/moves/speculation:
- Adbert Alzolay will have Tommy John surgery, likely keeping him out for all of 2025 in addition to the rest of 2024.
- Jordan Wicks is in Iowa for a rehab outing tomorrow. His injury was an oblique injury, so his arm could theoretically be well-rested. He’ll be eligible to come off the IL sometime next week, but we don’t know when. Barring something bad these next few days, I’d guess he goes to the bullpen when he returns, which should accelerate the process. Ultimately, you’d like him back in the rotation ahead of Javier Assad or Kyle Hendricks, but it makes more sense for him to contribute sooner than later as long as there’s some playoff chance to play for.
- On the topic of the rotation: The Cubs have a lot of guys on minor league deals right now, but one to watch is Adrian Houser, who had bad numbers with the Mets early this year but was consistent and reliable in a swingman-adjacent role for a long time in Milwaukee. He could become important depth down the line if this gets interesting.
The games:
- Friday, 7:10 PM CDT: Cubs at White Sox (Marquee/NBC Sports Chicago)
- Saturday, 6:15 PM CDT: Cubs at White Sox (FOX)
The air and water show’s going on, so expect airplanes. Jameson Taillon opposes Garrett Crochet tonight. It’s Justin Steele vs. Chris Flexen tomorrow.
(My favorite part about the hypothetical roster is that while seven of the 26 players come from the White Sox, four of the seven are not currently on the White Sox.)
Another Caleb Williams Debut
As far as NFL quarterbacks’ debuts go, the first preseason game is a big one. The first OTA and first training camp practice and all the other little milestones deaden the impact, but the first time seeing as ballyhooed a player as Williams playing in a game setting in a Bears uniform is a big deal. Will we learn anything from it? Of course not. But it’s a milestone.
News/injuries/moves/speculation:
- Matt Eberflus shared updates on Nate Davis, Kyler Gordon, and Patrick Scales yesterday. In order: Davis had a setback and is now “week-to-week,” Gordon is close to returning, and Patrick Scales is “on track.” There are other injuries around the roster, but most of them are either to backups or aren’t really injuries, but instead starters getting rest. As for Davis: Dan Graziano speculated at ESPN that the Bears could try to add some offensive line depth through trade or after training camp cuts, but that seemed to be speculation more than a report. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but it’s not smoke.
- Hard Knocks debuted, and there isn’t much more to say. Comparing Caleb Williams to Michael Jordan was absurd, but Hard Knocks is absurd and Ray Clay is well within his rights to have a little fun. I doubt the Bears set that up.
The game:
- Saturday, 12:00 PM CDT: Bears at Bills (NFL Network)
The starters will play. Probably a quarter or so.
Lonzo Ball Is Only 26
The Bulls news for the week came again from Joe Cowley, and it’s that Lonzo Ball has been playing some 5-on-5. Ball is still an underdog to make it back into an NBA game—it’s a good bet his knee is fragile, given he had all three of bone, cartilage, and meniscus transplanted into it—but it’s the most positive news in a long time for him.
If Ball does make it back, will he stay with the Bulls long-term? Probably not. Josh Giddey’s five years younger than him with nothing close to that injury history. The best case for the Bulls is that Ball stays healthy up until the trade deadline and plays well in his limited role. Even then, though, it’d take someone rather desperate to give up much for a player that risky. More likely, he’s a Bull until this coming season ends, and then he finds somewhere else to continue the comeback attempt.
That all said: The guy’s 26. He’s missed so much time, but he does have a decent amount of time in front of him if he wants to keep trying. Hopefully for his sake, he takes it slow.
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Nothing on the Blackhawks this week. Rookie camp is still more than a month away. The Sky resume play next week, but that’s a matter for next week.
