A New Year A New Season (AL Breakdown)

So it's less than a week until opening day for baseball and several teams look quite sharper than they did at the end of last year, let's tale a quick look at the changes to each division over the offseason and subsequent spring training.

AL East

• Yankees signed McCann, Beltran, Ellsbury, Tanaka, Johnson and Roberts to cover for departures at C, CF, LF, 2B, 3B and SP (I personally think most of these position player signings will come back to bite the Yankees, though I believe thats because most of the position players have shown to be injury risks and have all been signed onto lengthy contracts, so I expect for the first 2-3 yrs they will get what they paid for but then the players will degrade like what happened with Texiera, Granderson and others and the Yanks will be stuck with their dick in their hands once again)
• Red Sox didn't do all that much, signed A.J. Pierzynski and nabbed some other players including Grady Sizemore (whose spring training may indicate he can play up to around the same level he could before, if he manages to stay healthy, which would make the Red Sox a dangerous team again. Although their loss of Dempster in the rotation does put a small hole in their pitching as well)
• Rays, like the Red Sox didn't do a hell of a lot, they re-signed players, snagged some more bargain free agents, which is what they do, and given their ability to develop players, they will undoubtably be a force come postseason time
• Orioles signed some new pitching, specifically guys like Ubaldo Jimenez, now I don't like this guy much (as a pitcher not a person) and thats because he has been incredibly inconsistent bouncing back and forth from good yr to bad yr and on top of that people are over hyping what he did last year since he only managed it for HALF a season. In addition to improvement to their rotation they changed around their bullpen with the departure of Jim Johnson and also filled holes left by Brian Roberts and others as well as finding a temporary fill in for Machado. Like the Rays they have had winning in their eyes and will likely again be a competitive team this year
• Jays, well unfortunately my team didn't do much of anything, they made several rather meaningless minor league deals (except getting Kawasaki back), signed Dioner Navarro (who would be a fantastic signing if he can get to the numbers he had last year in a part time role with the Cubs. In addition they have taken Happ out of the rotation (mostly due to injury) and slotted in 2 of the 3 returning from Tommy John, Drew Hutchison and Dustin McGowan, both who have had productive spring training numbers. The level of success the Jays see this year will solely depend on 3 things, first the teams ability to stay healthy (while lots of people say the Jays were just bad last year there was not a single game where we fielded the lineup AA had set up and a lot of bad performances can be attributed to injuries, like Melky and the tumour or Dickey and his back issues), second the starting rotation needs to pull it's weight and not fall flat on it's face like last year (while injuries were a big part of it the Jays got off to an incredibly slow start due to the rotation, no pun intended, dropping the ball for most of the year and the depth we used to fill being unable to keep up), and third breakouts or progression from McGowan, Hutchison and Lawrie, we all know that Encarnacion, Bautista, Reyes and Rasmus (to a lesser extent) have the ability to drive this offence but the problem we had offensively last year was an inability to hit with runners in scoring position (in essence our first 4 batters would set the table but everyone after was unable to clear it)

AL Central

• Tigers made one decent to 'meh' trade and one really crap trade, they obtained Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder (a not so great trade for them since Fielder is obviously the more premium player in the deal and Kinsler's skill set has been declining in recent years and moving him to a less hitter friendly park will hurt his numbers more. Then they also let go of Doug Fister for some prospects from Washington, those of which were not of high quality, this was terrible as they were giving up a very solid #2-#3 starter for no real immediate pay off, which is what they need and given that Fister is a ground ball pitcher he would have benefitted from the better defence provided from the newly acquired 2B and Iglesias once he's back. All in all the Tigers slightly downgraded and since last season showed us Miggy is human as he got injured, now while this open the floodgates for Miggy injuries? Maybe but we'll have to see
• White Sox, now I really like what these guys did, they secured through trade and signing some real stellar young talent and then managed to sign some key young players like Jose Abreu that will hold as the core of their roster for years to come. If their pitching in the minors catches up the White Sox could very well be contenders within the next 3-4 years.
• Royals, now I'm in awe at what they have been able to do, they increased their offensive ability and defensive ability by taking on Norichika Aoki as well as Omar Infante, they re-signed Shields and they are bringing up a fireball throwing youngster in Yordano Ventura to cover the last spot in their rotation and if any of the Cardinals young pitchers have shown us anything, these young guys can be stars right off the bat. The Royals will, in my opinion, likely take the AL Central or at least give a real close chase with the Tigers
• Twins, not much of anything to say. They signed Nolasco, Hughes and other mediocre pitchers who are unlikely to really change their situation, I expect they will still be at the bottom of the barrel
• Indians will be in a similar situation to the Tigers in that they let go some key players and didn't do a hell of a lot to make up for their absence and this year they don't have that ridiculously easy schedule to rely upon to get by. All in all in order for the Indians to replicate their 2013 success all of their players are going to have to play at 100+% and they will need breakouts from some of their younger guys like Danny Salazar, Trevor Plouffe or Lonnie Chisenhall

AL West:

• Athletics, now I love most of these small market teams because they manage to be so damn smart about winning, now the Athletics like many small market teams didn't make much of a splash this offseason, they changed closers to Jim Johnson, which couldn't hurt since Oakland has a smaller ball park and better infield defence. In addition they traded away some guys for some pitching depth. Now recently however a couple of their starters have managed to get themselves injured, specifically Jarrod Parker who is out for the year getting Tommy John surgery, which will undoubtedly hurt them in the long run. However the A's still have a good set of pitchers including one of the star young pitchers from last year Sonny Gray and given that every team in the AL West seems to be getting hit by the injury bug I expect them to be the main source of competition in the AL West.
• Rangers, now on the other side of the Tigers trade, they got the best f the deal and they even managed to sort out issues they would have initially had in their bullpen by bringing back Feliz and setting up Soria as the set up man. Now that was before all the injuries hit, Derek Holland, Matt Harrison and countless others will be out for extended periods of time putting a big dent in their pitching as well as their offence (Profar and Andrus). If these players can come back in good shape in a hurry they will probably finish second in this division
• Angels, made a couple 'meh' trades to increase pitching depth but similar to the Jays if their players can stay healthy, they get breakouts from some of the younger players and these new pitchers deliver then they could be a force to be reckoned with, especially with the potential ceiling with guys like Tyler Skaggs
• Mariners, these were the big guys who signed Robinson Cano to the most ridiculous deal in the history of baseball, in addition they made other additions like Corey Hart to their offence and brought up some of their high end pitching prospects to start the year (Taijuan Walker, James Paxton, etc.). They have the same kind of out look as the Angels, though their offence has several more questions than the other teams so they aren't likely to make the playoffs or anything
• Astros, while they will likely be looking at another at or around 100 loss season looking at the progress of their prospects and how close they are to the majors, the Astros are going to be a very scary team in the next 4-5 years and the addition of Dexter Fowler will help with holding things down now and maybe helping ease in the new kids when they get called up. All in all I look forward to seeing the progression of the Astros as their farm system risings from the grave to take a shot a the post season.

Well thats the run down for the AL, I'll post the NL version shortly they I'm going to go back and let you know what I would have done if I was in Alex Anthopolous' position during the offseason.

-Eric