Dr. SB Nation: Your offseason guide to team wellness

Most hoped it was just exhaustion down the stretch that did the White Sox in. It wasn’t. The Sox spent the first nine days of the 2013 season tied for first place, but they never led. They lost early and often, and their last day of the season with a .500 or better record was May 26^th; in late July, they suffered a 10-game losing streak, erasing any hope that there would be a resurgent push for the postseason. September couldn’t come soon enough; they finished the season 36 games under .500 and came in last for the first time since 1976. Their 99 losses was the worst performance by the team since 1970. It seemed ironic that the Sox wore throwback uniforms in honor of the 1983 Winning Ugly team, since the notion of replicating their performance was just wishful thinking. If this year’s team had a slogan, it’d be something along the lines of Losing Ugly, Inexplicable Regression, or Dear Lord, is it over yet?

In hindsight it’s easy to say that the Sox didn’t do enough to catch the Tigers, but at the same time they entered this season with largely the same roster that nearly won the division the year before; while they could have expected a bit of regression, no amount of planning or forecasting could have predicted they’d be that bad. Players who reached their upsides last year didn’t just regress, they completely bottomed out and put up some of the worst numbers in the majors when compared with their peers. When things got rough they tested some prospects in hopes that they could fill bigger roles, but they weren’t ready. Then there were the injuries. While a team’s record is a reflection of the sum of their parts, if forced to parse out blame for why the Sox lost 99 games, it’d be something like 70 percent offense, 15 percent defense, 10 percent relievers, and five percent starters.

There’s good news though. Edwin Jackson’s terrible 4.98 ERA hid what was actually a pretty normal year from him, as he compensated for reduced velocity by inducing more grounders than ever before. And Samardzija’s 4.34 ERA similarly masked his second straight solid season at the top of the Chicago rotation. In spite of this, the bottom line is that the Cubs secretly had a terrible pitching staff last year -- their 4.13 xFIP was the third worst in baseball -- and still need to do significant work to build their rotation for 2014 and beyond. This explains why Phil Rogers has connected them to top Japanese import Masahiro Tanaka (24-0, 1.27 ERA), suggesting that the Cubs will go hard after the 24-year old righty, who they can pursue without international spending cap restrictions.

Again, Castro remains the most reliable out-maker in the National League while flashing diminished skills with the glove and on the bases. His concentration remains terrible in the field. He seemed to make a concerted effort to not swing at the first pitch he was offered this year, but still saw his walks fall along with his strikeouts. He is simply incapable of controlling the strike zone. If Javier Baez can stay at shortstop, Castro has one more season, at the very most, to prove he still deserves to be a starter in the majors. If he can’t, he’ll become the most expensive utility infielder in baseball history.