Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 24, 2003
AL West
  • Anaheim Angels: The Angels stood pat over the winter, never a good sign. Almost any team has weaknesses that need to be addressed. One of the reasons the Braves have stayed so good so long is that they address the little weaknesses every year, moving one or two players, so they always have a good team.

    In this case, however, I don't think standing pat was such a bad idea. This hunch is based on two players; Troy Glaus and Darren Erstad. Each had an off year last year, and the Angels were still one of the top teams in terms of run differential. The Angels hit very well with men on base last year, and that may continue if the team continues to do an excellent job of putting the ball in play to take advantage of defensive holes. Pitching wise, K-Rod and Percival could be the Rivera-Wetteland of 2003.


  • Oakland Athletics: If you like pitching, this is your team. With Ted Lilly having a good spring, the A's have the best rotation 1 to 4 in the league, if not the majors. And with all their players having good to great OBA's they'll score more than enough runs to win. Billy Beane continues to move players around to show the rest of baseball how to win on a budget. They may be boring again, but I'd rather have a boring winner than an exciting loser.

  • Seattle Mariners: I was going to say something bad about Mike Cameron, but when I took a close look at his stats, they really weren't much different than his career. In other words, Mike's 2002 is pretty much what you should expect from him. Randy Winn give the Mariners their best everyday leftfielder in a long time, and 1 to 5 the lineup is very good, although it's starting to age. A rebound by Jeff Cirillo would be key to the Mariners sucess this year.

  • Texas Rangers: They are going to score and give up a lot of runs. Actually, there's going to be a huge falloff in offense at catcher. Palmeiro may finally get old. Oh well, they are going to get blown out a lot.

    The only time Hart impressed me with his pitching decisions is when he picked up Hershiser and Martinez as the final pieces that led to the AL pennant in 1995. Otherwise, he seems to be a one-dimensional GM; all offense, no defense. That's going to make it another ugly year in Texas.



I expect the division to be a toss-up between the A's and the Angels. The Mariners will be in the hunt, but they are going to need a little luck, and Martinez and Moyer in good health to win the division. Texas remains an example of how not to build a winning team.

Update: Fixed a typo.


Posted by David Pinto at 09:56 PM | Predictions | TrackBack (0)