AL West Case Study

The Texas Rangers (73-65) came into this game just one game back of the Houston Astros in the AL West, and they looked dominant in the series so far against the Seattle Mariners (67-73). The Rangers had won two in a row and had to feel good about their chances tonight, but laid an absolute goose egg in a 6-0 defeat to the putrid Seattle Mariners. Martin Perez (2-5, 5.43 ERA) took the loss for the Rangers and Vidal Nuño (1-2, 3.25 ERA) took the win for the Mariners.

Training camp has begun and fans are gearing up for another exciting season. They are hoping for a repeat of last year’s performance. People are already speculating that the Toronto Blue Jays are contenders to win the World Series even with the changes that have been made in the club. Is it too early to think about the playoffs and the World Series? Will the team be able to overcome the changes that have been made? I guess only time will tell as the season progresses, but it should be interesting to watch the team develop with the new management and

First off, we have the unstoppable, heartthrob, phenom known as Kris Bryant our third basemen. With only his second season ever in the

Boston has one of the best farm systems in baseball. The scouts for the Red Sox are doing God’s work for Major League Baseball, but not the hometown team. A team grows their farm system with the intention to build the Major League roster for the future or use these prospects to attract strong, veteran trade candidates. Instead, the Sox give up guys only to watch them flourish for other ballclubs. Every other team benefits thanks to Boston and we get nothing remarkable in return.

What is interesting is that this year he is outperforming based on performance against hitters when runs are in scoring position. He’s faced 54 batters in that situation and he’s allowed 8 walks (2 intentional), 4 home runs and caused 7 strikeouts. This is pretty awful because pitchers that give up more walks than strikeouts usually struggle and giving up a home run every ten batters on average is awful. He’s allowed seventeen fly balls and given up four home runs for an HR/FB of 23.5%. Simply put, those numbers are dreadful. Two of the remaining thirty-five batters have hit doubles which is pretty reasonable and shows that hitters aren’t struggling to hit for power against him when runners are in scoring position. The area where Miggy has excelled is that he’s only allowed one single with runners in scoring position. That’s absolutely incredible and

Just because a team has the money to go out and pay the high price free agents, does that mean that they are going to be successful? Not necessarily, as the Baltimore Orioles have shown, they have one of the higher team payrolls in the majors but they are at the bottom of their division. So maybe it is what you do with the money that matters. And in the Minnesota Twin's case this year, who are a small-market team, they got the best out of their relatively unknown players. But the thing that eventually hurt them was their inability to go out and get a key player before the trading deadline.

In the first inning Beltre got the hardest of the four legs out of the way, hitting a triple to deep left center and scoring Roughned Odor and Prince Fielder in the process. He's certainly not a speedster at this stage of his career, but he hit it to the deepest part of the park and was able to leg one out. In the second inning Beltre went to the left center field gap again, this time stopping at second base and officially being put on cycle watch. In the bottom of the third Adrian stayed hot and placed a single into right field. In the fifth

The A's recent success is attributed to the innovative approach taken by Billy Beane in assembling a baseball team with a very limited amount of financial resources. Billy Beane has built a successful ball club because he has found an efficient and cost effective way of measuring baseball talent thus essentially creating a loophole in this unfair game because winning percentage is a result of talent not

The Los Angeles Dodgers were expected to make a playoff runs this year, but by the time Clayton Kershaw fell injured with a back problem, their chances looked grim, but somehow the Dodgers got all the way to Game 6 of the NLCS. Look, Dodger fans felt like they could have gotten to the World Series, but just getting to the NLCS was something incredible. This year in particular saw a record number of players on the DL, especially pitchers. Between August and October, pitchers like Julio Urias, Jose De Leon, Brock Stewart and Ross Stripling carried the load. The Dodgers had high expectations coming into this year with a number of star pitchers, but the season looked botched by the time the pitching rotation seem depleted and still got far in the

Most notably, 2015 American League MVP Josh Donaldson is still here and producing at an elite level. With one more year on his contract after this season it is the right time to ship him away before his trade value lowers or he walks in free agency. If the Blue Jays want to do this rebuild right, they have to be patient. That means not be a winning team for around four to five years. Most of the teams young core of players such as Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez, and Roberto Osuna have begun or about to begin their arbitration years.

Rhys Hoskins and Scott Kingery should form the right side of our infield in 2018, but are they definitely going to be better than Tommy Joseph and Cesar Hernandez? Only time can tell. We don't have any Mike Trouts or Kris Bryants in our system, kids we know who will be major league talents. JP Crawford couldn't hit till July, Mickey Moniak has struggled, and our best minor league pitcher is 19. We have a lack of spectacular relievers in the minors, as nearly all our top pitching talent is starters. Some of them won't be busts, but some will, and it will be a large problem. Of the prospects we have brought up in the past year, only Nick Williams seems to have worked out. Hoskins, Kingery, Crawford, Moniak, Haseley, Jorge Alfaro, and countless others are supposed to be our future, but are we really sure they can all be solid and put up numbers worthy of the major leagues? Only time can tell, but a dearth of surefire talents may hurt our

If you look at the other major sports, there’s always more than a handful of contenders in any given season. Looking ahead to the upcoming NFL season, the Seattle Seahawks, Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots, Carolina Panthers and Pittsburgh Steelers should all be solid contenders. There’s a plethora of talent spread throughout those teams, and there are always dark horse teams in the NFL that defy expectations. The MLB just passed its All-Star break, and there are no heavy favorites to take the 2016 World Series the fall. The San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Washington Nationals, Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Texas Rangers and Cleveland Indians are all realistic contenders, and who knows which teams will make runs over the last couple months of the

their team to teams with deeper pockets. The A’s have the least money of any major league team. The cards are stacked against them with no star players, no money, and no edge in scouting new players. About six months later, the team had won more than 100 games including a twenty-game winning streak in August. (2002 Oakland Athletics Season, 2017) How did they do it? By all measures used at that time, the A’s should’ve had a down year. They should have been one of the weakest teams in baseball. Despite this, they finished first in their division and tied for the most wins in the league. (2002 Oakland Athletics Season, 2017) The secret to their success was data driven analysis of player performance, which they used to find

Texas Rangers can bring more revenue to the group if they reach the American Championship Series and

They went into the season and made it well known they will not spend in free agency, rather use that money towards the draft. In my recent conversation with ESPN analyst Buster Olney, he said, "rival GMs say what the Astros are doing will produce a juggernaut in the 2-3 years." Although he doesn’t agree with not spending money in free agency, the Astros are doing the right thing. The Astros also lost out on Abreu this offseason, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Nobody should be ready to give up on top first base prospect Jonathan Singleton after one down season, and you don't have to pay him 68 million dollars when he does arrive. At least not yet. Along with Singleton, they have completely re stacked the farm system and are built to win sooner than most people believe as they have more top 50 prospects than any other team in baseball. I