I’m already running late, so I will move quickly to the AL East, which by all accounts holds the best three teams in baseball despite them all getting off to shaky starts. As I pointed out in the AL Central preview, it’s hilarious that one of the Rays, Sox, and Yankees will miss the playoffs, […]
I’m already running late, so I will move quickly to the AL East, which by all accounts holds the best three teams in baseball despite them all getting off to shaky starts. As I pointed out in the AL Central preview, it’s hilarious that one of the Rays, Sox, and Yankees will miss the playoffs, while one of the jokers from the Central and West will each make the playoffs.
Toronto and Baltimore are the 13o-pound-men-in-prison of this division, with Toronto having a chance to lose 95 games. The Blue Jays are horrendous. They’re in full-on rebuilding mode, and said as much by talking only about 2010 during the offseason. It makes me wonder whether Halladay might be spun out at the deadline, but they seem convinced that contention is just a year away.
In this division? Rotsa Ruck.
Fourth place belongs to Baltimore, a city for which I suddenly feel sympathy having watched an episode or two of The Wire. At the very least, they have stud rookie catcher Matt Wieters up to inspire hope.
That brings us to the Yankees, who – in a delightfully Yankee-esque combination of poor timing and poor taste – dropped nearly a half a billion on three pricey free agents amidst the greatest economic catastrophe in 80 years, some 12 months after extorting an extra $300 million in taxpayer money from a city whose tax base has fallen by nearly a third, for a new stadium that its owner has admitted has many seats that are overpriced.
You have to love the Yankees, if only so as to hate them. If they didn’t exist, we would have to invent them.
By all accounts, the MFYs improved significantly in response to missing the playoffs with a $200 million payroll in 2008. However, I look at that team and see an aging squad (Jeter, Damon, and Matsui will turn 35, Posada is 38, and Rivera is 40) with major defensive liabilities across the field. The Yankees have legitimate defensive liabilities at shortstop, left, right, catcher, and second base, which doesn’t bode well for pitchers like Wang, whose inability to miss bats has prompted me to predict his decline ever since he came into the league. While two starts doesn’t make a trend, his early struggles suggest that the league may have caught up to him.
The Yankees’ high-priced acquisitions will keep them in the hunt, but teams that old tend to break down all at once. I have for years predicted the fall of the great Mariano Rivera, and at 40, I think it’s time. Nothing would give me more pleasure than for him to collapse, forcing the Yankee braintrust to freak out and yank Joba Chamberlain back into a closer role mid-season. In any case, this team made big strides at a few positions this winter, but just got older everywhere else, and I’m not sure that’s enough to improve an 89-win team in this division.
The Rays did the opposite, simply holding pat after last year’s surprise pennant. They are the deepest, youngest, healthiest team in the division, and that’s got to count for something. They did catch lightning in a bottle to an extent last year, outperforming a 92-70 pythagorean record by five games. I see a dropoff, like the 2007 Tigers, who similarly came out of nowhere to win the AL pennant before falling back to earth. The question is, how big?
Finally, there’s Boston. The Red Sox have looked so horrible in the first week of the season that it may be necessary to hire Bill Walton to come in and shout “Hoooooooooooooooorible!” to describe their play. Outside of Youkilis, the team isn’t hitting above the Mendoza Line, and the defense looks almost Yankee-esque. As a Sox fan, I have serious concerns about the bottom third of the lineup – Ellsbury belongs there, Varitek belongs in a beer league, and the Lowrie/Lugo combo is a gruesome offensive black hole. To think that 1500 ABs are going to go to those four hitters is frankly pretty scary, not to mention the huge questions marks surrounding Lowell’s hip and Ortiz’s age and wrist.
However, despite looking like a second-division team for the first week, I can’t count the Sox out just yet, because of their pitching. They have more depth in both the starting rotation and bullpen than any Sox team I can remember. They’ll look a lot better when either Lester or Dice-K gets through the sixth inning, but the rotation of Beckett-Lester-Matsuzaka-Penny-Wakefield, with Buchholz and Masterson waiting in the wings, is the deepest in the AL. It’s probably not quite as good as the Yankees at the top, but it’s far deeper in the event of injury. Meanwhile, Epstein has assembled a bullpen that has a chance to be historically good. Even if Smoltz doesn’t have anything left in the tank, the power arms of Papelbon, Saito, Ramirez, Delcarmen, and Masterson, paired with Okajima and last night’s loser Lopez as a LOOGY gives me a lot of optimism. Ultimately, I don’t think this Red Sox lineup is good enough to keep pace with the rotation and win the division, but could squeak into the Wild Card…
Unless the economy is really as bad as everyone thinks it is. Several teams – the Mariners, Astros, White Sox, Padres, and Tigers – could hold fire sales in July if they struggle early. Expensive contracts like Miguel Cabrera and Lance Berkman could be available for a song, and with that pitching, the Sox will have the chips to make a play for distressed talent to shore up a lineup that suddenly looks very old.
This is the hardest division to pick out of all of them. I’ve written this three times, and each time I’ve chosen a different team to be left on the outside looking in at the playoffs. All three teams could legitimately win 95 games, and Pecota thinks they’ll all win north of that. In the end, it’s probably half heart, half brain that says New York misses the playoffs. Time Waits For No One, and this team is old and slow, with a crappy bench and limited pitching depth despite the stars at the front end, and Posada, Jeter, Damon, Matsui, and Rivera are living on borrowed time.
The Pick: BOSTON, TAMPA BAY, New York, Baltimore, Toronto