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All right, having looked at the Cubs through the statistical prism of The Bill James Gold Mine 2008, let’s see what it says about the White Sox. First, the bullpen was awful last season. No surprise there. Excluding the closers — and Bobby Jenks was exceptional — Sox relievers posted a 5.98 earned-run average. The only stunning fact is that there was a worse team in the American League: the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, with a 6.33 ERA. Just how badly that horrendous bullpen hurt the Sox is shown in another nifty stat: the Sox were ahead more often than not through each of the first four innings last year. (Specifically, through four innings, they were ahead 71 times, behind 64 times, and tied 27 times.) That’s an amazing figure for a team that wound up 72-90. Of course, from the fifth inning on, when the middle relief typically entered the game, things got progressively worse. Here’s hoping Scott Linebrink and Octavio Dotel are cures for what ailed the bullpen.
