Jake Peavy's return and what it means for the White Sox rotation

Jake Peavy's Sox debut will give fans a taste of the 2010 rotation. (AP)

Jake Peavy's first start with the White Sox won't have any implications on the Sox' playoff chances. That was a fact established a long time ago—specifically, on the Sox' disastrous road trip Aug. 24-Sept. 2.

However, Peavy's debut will give us our first glimpse at what the Sox' 2010 rotation will look like. Chances are that Peavy, Mark Buehrle, John Danks, Gavin Floyd, and Freddy Garcia will compose the White Sox' starting rotation come next April—which is reason enough to be at least somewhat excited about this team. No, they won't win in 2009, but that rotation should give the White Sox every opportunity to win in 2010.

While we shouldn't draw any sweeping conclusions from the little we see from Peavy at the end of this year, it will be nice to see Peavy get his feet wet in a new league and park before next year.

So let's just examine next year's rotation a little more, because it's looking very promising.

The core of this year's rotation—Buehrle, Danks, Floyd—will remain intact. All three have been very solid this year despite accomplishing success in different ways.

Buehrle has been, well, Buehrle. That means a heavy dose of ground balls and a low walk rate while all the advanced pitching stats (FIP, tRA) don't like him. But, as usual, those models don't accurately show Buehrle's success, as he's on pace to throw another 200+ innings with a sub-3.90 ERA. In his nine full seasons in the majors, Buehrle's only failed to accomplish that plateau twice.

I think stats like FIP have some merit, but not when analyzing Buehrle. That's because they value strikeouts and generally penalize pitchers who pitch to contact—which is exactly what Buehrle does. Not all pitchers can have success when pitching to contact, but when you have a knack for keeping hitters off balance like Buehrle does, you can have success with it.

Danks hasn't developed into the ace that some (including me) thought he would in 2009, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been good. His walk rate jumped from 2.63 in '08 to 3.29 in '09 and he's giving up fly balls at nearly a five percent higher clip, both of which can probably explain his regression this year.

Again, though, Danks has still been solid. His K/9 is roughly the same this year as it was last year (7.34 to 7.10) and his 3.71 ERA isn't anything about which to complain. He still struggles to go deep into games, but when you consider that he'll be the White Sox' No. 4 starter in 2010, that shouldn't be that huge of an issue.

Then there's Floyd, who I was completely wrong about. I thought Floyd was going to regress because he had a high fly ball rate and FIP and a low BABIP in his very successful 2008. After eight shaky starts to begin the year, Floyd corrected something in his motion that apparently led to him tipping his pitches, and since then, he's taken off.

In Floyd's first eight starts, he had a 7.71 ERA with a 35/23 K/BB in 44.0 innings. When you eliminate his first eight starts of the year, Floyd has a 2.84 ERA and 127/35 K/BB in 145.2 innings. If the Sox can find a way to capture that post-May 22 version of Floyd and have him pitch like that for all of 2010, the Sox could have an ace on their hands.

Now add Peavy to that mix of Buehrle/Danks/Floyd and you have what could be one of baseball's best four-starter combinations next year. Add in the mix of Garcia and possibly Dan Hudson as the fifth starter, and the Sox could be looking at their best starting rotation since 2005*.

Nobody really knows how Peavy will respond to the new league and smaller park, but as long as his strikeout rate doesn't tail off he should be fine. Peavy has the ability to get a good percentage of ground balls—he's been as high at 44 percent twice in his career—and if he can concentrate on keeping the ball down, the transition to the AL and U.S. Cellular Field should go smoothly.

Yes, the 2010 White Sox are going to have questions—starting with the bullpen and defense—but a good starting rotation is often the foundation of a playoff team. Barring something unexpected, the White Sox will have that next year.

*I hate to invoke 2005 as a comparison, just for the record.

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