The AL West defied some expectations this season. Houston and Texas performed better than pundits expected, Seattle and Oakland a bit worse. The Angels came into the season as the favorites in the division, and they wound up in first place at the break.
Angels
The Angels moved into first place in the AL West on the last day before the All-Star break, taking a 1/2 game lead over the Astros. It reminds me of the qualifying crew race for the US Olympic eight in 1968:
Indeed, Harvard trailed by more than a second throughout, and it wasn’t until the final stroke that the Crimson pulled ahead by a few inches and five-100ths of a second in a photo finish. “I could see that I had at least a seat or a seat and a half [on his Penn counterpart],” says Brooks. “I didn’t know what the issue was. I thought we had them.”
Penn, though, was rowing a Pocock shell that had a longer bow than Harvard’s Staempfli, so it was uncertain whose ball had crossed the line first. It was the Crimson by a handsbreadth.
The big strength of the team is their big pair of sluggers, the resurgent veteran Albert Pujols and the young phenom Mike Trout. The two are tied for the AL lead in home runs with 26, and their 52 combined home runs are 12 more than the next nearest competitors (three teams have pairs that total 40 HR). Despite the combined power of those superstars, the team does poorly scoring runs. At 4.18 runs per game, the teams ranks 11th in the AL. They are near the bottom of the league in both doubles and triples and they steal poorly. Pujols and Trout are the entire offense.
The pitching is good, despite the decline of Jered Weaver. The team uses three strong starters, and the bullpen does an excellent job of limiting walks and home runs. The are helped by a solid defense.
Offensively, the team is weak in leftfield and designated hitter. Those are positions where it should be fairly simple to find help, if the front office wasn’t in disarray.
Astros
The Astros, like the Orioles, get a lot out of a little by focusing on what players can do, not what they can’t do. They brought in players who walk a lot and hit home runs (sounds like Moneyball to me), and that was enough to put them in the top half of offense in the league. At 4.34 runs per game they rank 6th, just behind the Orioles. Houston augments their offense by being better at base stealing than Baltimore, and grounding into fewer double plays.
They also did a marvelous job of developing pitching. Dallas Keuchel is an excellent Cy Young candidate. Lance McCullers slipped seamlessly into the rotation and might win rookie of the year. With those two pitching so well, the bullpen can be used to support the other three starters, who just are not that good. With a 2.67 ERA, the bullpen is up to the task.
As a whole, the pitchers walks and strikeouts are about league average, but where he offense hits home runs, the pitchers are excellent at preventing them That leads to the third lowest runs per game in the AL, 3.79.
The team does show poor range, but again, it’s what they can do, not what they can’t. They’ve been a bit unlucky, with their Pythagorean projection two wins better. During their current six game losing streak, the pitching has been fine, the offense was just shut down. A few days off might do them some good. I suspect that Houston will be in the division hunt until the end.
Rangers
In some ways, the Rangers are as surprising as the Astros. Texas started the season wracked with inuries, losing their best pitcher and their second baseman for the season. No one knew if Prince Fielder would come back from his neck surgery and hit like he did in the past.
Fielder is up among the AL batting leaders, Yovani Gallardo filled the spot of Yu Darvish admirably, and Rougned Odor is hitting decently enough at second base. Mitch Moreland suddenly developed power, and that’s been enough to make the Rangers a decent team. There’s not enough depth for them to compete for a division title, but they are getting a chance to look at some younger players. This season gives them hope if they wind up with a healthy team next year.
Mariners
It’s somewhat easy to blame the Mariners demise on the illness of Robinson Cano, but most of the offensive players are performing poorly. Nelson Cruz, Kyle Seager, and Seth Smith are the only good hitters on the team. Brad Miller is okay, but the rest are so poor that the Mariners score just 3.51 runs per game, 14th in the AL.
The pitching is just slightly above average at 4.04 runs allowed per game. The bullpen has been especially good at giving away games, owning a 7-18 record, the worst of any pen in the majors.
At least the team has upside. Cano seems to be coming around, and I suspect Austin Jackson is a better player than we saw in the first half. Mike Montgomery makes the starting rotation a little deeper. It’s not a great division, so there is still hope.
Athletics
The Athletics are nine wins below their Pythagorean projection. Winning those nine game would put them in first place instead of last. They are 8-22 in one run games, by far the worst performance in the AL. The are also 15-8 in blow outs (games decided by five runs or more), so their run distribution is a bit skewed. They are an all or nothing team.
I’m not sure how a team makes changes to overcome that particular problem. I suppose the pitchers could strike out a few more batters, which might prevent some balls in play from leading to runs. The hitters could use a bit more power, which would push a few more runners across home plate. A return to a more Gaussian distribution of runs would help more than any particular move.
Outlook
My best guess is that the divisions is an all A fight, as the Angels and Astros chip away at each other, and the Athletics start winning like they are scoring. I don’t see Texas and Seattle improving enough to stay in the race. I will give the Astros a bit on an edge, simply because their front office seems to know what they are doing, and the Athletics have a long way to go to catch them.