Other then dumping some salary, and, in turn, dumping a player or two that apparently didn’t mesh well with Ozzie Guillen (oxymoron?), the Sox have been pretty quiet this offseason. This tends to happen when payroll is tight, and you are unloading, rather than reloading. Unless of course, they all of a sudden want to pick up Michael Young’s salary. Argh.

One thing that is pretty apparent? They need starting pitching, seeing as Jose Contreras is still beat up, and Javier Vasquez is gone. But, who cares about the people? Everybody knows baseball players are really just pieces of data now, used by sabermaticians to project, predict and explain the game. And to prove that everything you think is wrong. Bunting and stealing is stupid … and here are the numbers to prove it! Batting average is a terrible indication of how good a hitter is … I just VORP’ed your mom! Bow to our supremacy! Ha. No. It’s not really like this. Just kidding.

Anyway, Replacement Level Yankees Weblog has run 100 trials of the 2009 season using rosters as of Thursday and projections from the Hardball Times, and this is what we have for NL Central:

And for the AL Central:

Nothing too surprising with the Cubs here: They are a very good team. We know this. But, is it surprising that the Sox are projected — remember, these are super early projections — to finish dead last in the AL Central? Well, yes and no. No, because they were projected to be pretty bad last year by PECOTA, but thanks to the back half of their rotation throwing better than expected, and the Indians (and the Twins, sort of) crapping the bed, the Sox were your AL Central champs. Seeing as they’ve made no big moves this offseason and their offense is a year older, this projection isn’t really that shocking. But below the Royals? Damn. That’s cold.

Yes, because this team won the division last season. To go from first to last is a pretty dramatic drop, even if, by all accounts, it was a team that overachieved a season ago. The Sox’s roster is far from set, and again, these projections are mad early, but it does give us the indication that the White Sox as of Jan. 12, 2009 have a bit of work to do if they want to be projected better. (Though, I would assume some roster moves — more starting pitching, etc. — would have them preforming better, as well.)

If things don’t change too much this offseason for the Sox, odds are Baseball Prosepctus will project the Sox somewhere in the 72-90 department as well. Which, they did last year, and then the Sox laughed in their face when they did much better than that on their way to 88 wins and a division title.

The odds of that happening two seasons in a row, though? Probably not very good.

Spotted at: Bleed Cubbie Blue.