Will The Angels walk away with the AL west after capturing Pujols and CJ (that one really hurtzzzzz)?
Will the Rangers make it 3 in a row to the WS?
A's and M's? You happy to make up the numbers? Nope didn't think so...

Get it on..

I don't think the Halos will walk away with it, but they are obviously red hot favourites at the moment with the Rangers left to fight for a Wild Card spot, which I think they should get. Having two weak teams in a four team division should be in their favour.

Mariners should have no trouble finishing third, but are likely to be sub .500. The only question for the A's is will they manage to avoid setting a new record for the number of losses in a season, right now I'm not hopeful.

I think it will be a really good battle but at this moment I would have us as slight favourites over the Rangers. I think whatever team finishes second will have a great chance at winning the Wild Card. There are still a lot of things that could change with the Rangers potentially adding Fielder or the Angels adding Madson.

I have no idea what is going to happen with the A’s but we will probably split the season series with them and more than half the games will be decided by 2 or less runs.

The Mariners are an interesting team with King Felix and Pineda at the top of the rotation and potentially could call up some of their top pitching prospects. If they could add Fielder then the line-up would improve with him and a full year of Ackley. I still think Smoak can perform a lot better than he has which would help them a lot. They still wouldn’t be contenders if they added Fielder but they would become a much better team.

Was just reading about the Fielder situation..

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20...ws_mlb&c_id=mlb

Smoak at the Mariners is a better fielder than he is..gotta admit havn't seen the stats for him last year so dunno if he was off colour last season..

With Texas it's a wait and see who the hell we go for..

But yeah the Halos are the favs.with me to...gonna be some great games between the 2...

Gal ya really think it's gonna be THAT bad for The A's????

Right now our lineup is:

Cowgill - Very unimpressive in a much better hitter environment in his rookie year
Reddick - Basically a straight swap for Sweeney, who couldn't gt regular playing time (either of them)
Taylor - who has failed to impress even at AAA since we traded for him
Allen/Barton/Carter/Ka'aihue - One will be at first, the other at DH, none of them inspire any confidence whatsoever.
Weeks - If he can continue at last year's pace our best player, just pray he doesn't have a sophomore slump
Pennington - poor defensively and far too streaky with the bat
Sizemore/Sogard/Rosales - none of them are genuine 3rd basemen, and only Sizemore belongs in the majors, and even then only as a utility bench player
Suzuki - Who has been in steady decline both offensively and defensively for two straight years

Our starting rotation at the start of the season is now:

McCarthy - if he doesn't get traded, which is far too likely
Moscoso - I really can't see last year as anything but a flash in the pan
Outman - if he's healthy
AN Other
AN Other

At some point we may get Bradeen and Anderson back, but if they show they have recovered their health and form figure them to be traded by the deadline

Pen

De Los Santos, Balfour, Fuentes, Blevins, J. Devine

In other words we've got worse at every facet, Offence, Defence, Rotation and bullpen, and we lost 88 games last year, how can se hope to not lose 100+ games this year? Remember also the trading hasn't finished yet either, I can't see Balfour Blevins, McCarthy and maybe Suzuki still being around come the end of March.

Addendum:

Basically the front office have given up, not just on 2012, but 2013 and 2014 also. They are basing everything on being able to move to San José in 2015/6, they are basically starting the building process for the new stadium now.

It looks like there will be a lot more media attention on the AL West this season. It’s nice that they are paying more attention to the Angels-Rangers rivalry, especially after they basically ignored the most closely fought rivalry in baseball for years, but I do hope they do a better job than this article.

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/i...ale-of-the-tape

Firstly, it’s Jered Weaver in the picture and not Jeff Weaver and it is Hisanori Takahashi and not Hisanori Takayashi.

Secondly, I’m not sure how they can call it a tie between Washington and Scioscia. Mike is a much better manager and Washington made a lot more mistakes than Scioscia did over the course of last season.

I’m not really going to go into an argument about the individual player v player battles but a few things annoyed me. In general they got most things right about the Angels but they made a few mistakes with the team that has won the American League the last two seasons. Hamilton will be the Rangers left fielder next season and not the centre fielder that they claim he will be. Murphy will be the 4th outfielder and it looks like being a battle between Borbon and Gentry for the centre field job. I wouldn’t have ordered the Rangers rotation in that way either but that can at least be debated. I like that they have included a pitcher that hasn’t even signed for the Rangers yet while ignoring the fact that all being well Morales will be our DH next season.

I did like the comparison between Pujols and Moreland.

I'm not going to debate the article piecemeal but overall the Halos definitely have the edge, an much as I love Ron Washington, Sciosia's easily the better manager.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20...ws_mlb&c_id=mlb

Hamzen will be dancing with delight!

Carlos Guillen has agreed a Minor League deal with the Mariners. Our games against the Mariners have just got a little bit more interesting, as long as he manages to make the 25 man roster.

He's the 26th free agent they've invited to ST, it's going to be a ridiculously difficult job sorting the wheat from the chaff.

So the non-roster invitees now number 28, many more and they'll have to hire the local army barracks to house them all. I'm glad I don't have to try and figure out the line-ups for their ST games; and does any ST venue have a bench big enough to hold them? I suspect not, they'll have to buy tickets for most of them so they can sit behind the dugout!

Ah well, no matter how crazy things get for the Athletics we can always rely on Seattle to look even crazier.

PS It seems one of the above is on the roster as they SFA'd Wislon to make room for him; still madness.

We at least have an excuse of a lousy stadium and crap attendance, what's Seattle's excuse for being consistently rubbish? Simple answer is a history of even more rubbish GMs of course.

It probably explains why the Mariners pitchers and catchers are reporting a week before any other teams.

Here is when all the AL West teams are due to report for Spring Training

Organization Pitchers & Catchers First Workout Position Players First full workout

Angels Feb. 19 Feb. 20 Feb. 26 Feb. 27
A’s Feb. 18 Feb. 19 Feb. 24 Feb. 25
Mariners Feb. 11 Feb. 12 Feb. 17 Feb. 18
Rangers Feb. 22 Feb. 23 Feb. 25 Feb. 26

I'm not quite sure why you all think the Angels are favouites, bearing in mind an 8-10 game margin of error I have the Rangers ahead by 2, and that's with a fairly conservative approach to Darvish's figures.

It really wouldn't surprize me if it came down to the final week.

Really good to see that at last the Angel's have got rid of their awful GM and replaced him with someone decent.

Galraen, what's your take on the A's surprize signing today. I really don't know how much hype he is, and how mych he's likely to be for real?

Great to see you back Hamzen, have you got over the extension you gave Wash yet?

The Halos have, IMO the better rotation, even if Darvish can adjust, they have improved their pen and top to bottom should have a better or at least equal line-up, especially if Hamilton regresses. They also have a better manager, and although Saber tries to play down a manager's impact I think that is a crucial edge when two teams are otherwise fairly even.

I don't think the Angels are going to walk away with it, but I doubt the race will still be alive come the last week-end, possibly even the last week.

As for Cespedes, I'm still trying to get my head around it; to say the A's have been sending out mixed messages this off-season is an understatement.