One of the first signs of the upcoming baseball season, prior to pitchers and catchers reporting, is the annual Baseball Prospectus computer projections for the coming year.

You'll recall vividly in 2007, the White Sox were predicted to finish fourth, sending White Sox nation into a tizzy.  Unfortunately, they were dead on with their prediction of 73 wins.  Last year, however, they were off a little bit.  So, there is a kernel of truth in this not necessarily being foolproof.

According to this year's numbers, your 2008 Central Division champions will win a mere 74 games, finish last in their division and be the third worst team in the entire league, behind only Seattle and Texas.  They will also be better than the Pirates and Astros and as good as the Marlins.

Since I am not a subscriber, I cannot give you their specific reasoning for the Sox big tumble (I'll leave that to the number crunchers.)  I can however speculate some reasons including decreased production from the Sox big three of Konerko, Thome and Dye; a slow comeback from injury by Carlos Quentin; the return to earth for the young Sox pitchers and perhaps the Sox all-around shaky defense, especially in center and third base.  Again, I am only guessing, but I think those possibilities are out there (at least according to Captain Obvious.)

To support my hypothesis, BP has the Sox fourth in runs scored in the central and dead last in runs allowed.

Baseball Prospectus has the Indians finishing in first, the Twinkees in second (five games out); the Tigers in third (six games out); the Royals in fourth (nine games out) and finally, your defending division champs, ten games off the Indians pace.  

So, you can take these things with a grain of salt or you can go into the season with that sinking feeling.  I am not surprised that a computer, void of emotion and loyalty, would make a pick like this.  I believe that the race for the AL Central will be very tight and may possibly come down to the last weekend as it did last year.  I also think the Royals may have something to say about how things may go this year, although I don't think they will be this year's D-Rays.

Personally, I take this with the same seriousness that I take a groundhog on Groundhog's Day or Al Gore's predictions on global warming..  There are so many things that can happen during a season to realign the cosmic tumblers that it is not theorectically possible to accurately, computer or not, pick divisions this early in the game. I doubt that last year PERCOTA made accurate predictions regarding John Danks, Gavin Floyd, Carlos Quentin and Alexi Ramirez.  I doubt that it predicted that Jose Contreras would blow out his Achilles, that Javier Vazquez was totally clueless down the stretch and that Ken Griffey Jr. would be in a Sox uniform at the end of the year.  I doubt it could have predicted what a bust Nick Swisher turned out to be and that Clayton Richard would even see the big leagues last years. 

Take solace, Sox fans, it's only a computer.