2011 MLB Preview: The Junior Circuit

West:  1. Tex 2. Oak 3. LAA 4. Sea The Rangers ran away with the division and they’re not old, so they’re the presumptive favorites, and I see no reason to pick against them — their offense is easily the best in the division and they have interesting young pitchers (albeit in a park where it’s tough for young pitching to develop.)   For the last couple years I’ve been saying that the A’s have been massively overrated by the sabermetric community and they’ve turned out to be mildly overrated, so now that I think they’re only mildly overrated maybe now they’ll win?   Perhaps.   The young pitching is impressive, but then so is Texas’s.   And while the lineup is improved it’s still pretty bad.   And I also think its passable-to-good on base with little power structure is badly designed to their home park, which murders sequential offense.   I don’t they’ll score enough runs to win.   My pessimism about the Angels should be viewed in the proper context — i.e. that I’ve predicted 7 of their last 1 bad years.   But I’m still willing to write them off; the core lineup is old and not terribly good, the back end of the rotation poor, the once-outstanding bullpen essentially vanished.   I think they’ll be closer to Seattle than Texas.  The Mariners have had exaggerated good and bad luck for four years, so I’d expect them to settle in as a below-average but not awful team.   The best pitcher in the league has some not-bad support, but while the offense will surely be better merely “terrible” would be an improvement over “historically inept.”   Third place is the upside.

Central 1. Chi 2. Min 3. Det 4. Cle 5. KC The top three teams in this division are almost dead even on paper, so my choices are essentially random.   I think the White Sox have the best mix of depth and front-line talent and depth, and especially like the Dunn acquisition.   The Twins have a little more support for their core than the Tigers, although I’d rather have Cabrera/Verlander/Scherzer than Maurer/Mourneau/Liriano; if the Tigers get anything out of the back end of their rotation they could win the division.   Choo and Santana give the Indians a nice core and the surrounding talent has some upside, but the starting pitching is ghastly.   The Royals have even less pitching and their interesting core players aren’t as interesting — a lot of talent in their pipeline, but they’ll be working against a GM who thinks that the likes of Francoeur and Melky are playable.

East 1. Bos 2. NYY(*) 3. TB 4. Bal 5. Tor Everyone likes the Red Sox, and I don’t disagree; they have the strongest mix of pitching and offense in the toughest division in American sports, even if Beckett and Lackey are question marks and you’d like them more if they had a real shortstop or catcher.    That isn’t to say that they should be huge favorites, though — age or no age the Yanks still have an absolutely devastating offense, and a killer bullpen than might help their very thin rotation get by until the cavalry arrives from eliminated small markets.   I can’t pick a team with Burnett as their #2 starter to win the division, but only improvements by Toronto and Baltimore can keep them from the wild card; they’re the second-best team in baseball, but whether the record will reflect that is another story.   The Rays remain real contenders, and the rotation could well be the best in the division.  But while they scored a lot of runs last year, they greatly overachieved the actual performance of their hitters based on exceptional baserunning (some of which has fled to Boston) and and luck (which can’t be counted on.)  I don’t think they have the power to win this division.   The Orioles’ addition of veteran hitters is irrelevant to their long-term success but may help to make them more respectable, and Showalter’s short-term record is good.   The Blue Jays could actually win almost any other division, so I don’t mean this as a diss, but the injuries to the rotation worry me, and the offense projects as the weakest in the division.