With opening night just four days away let's get started with looking at the American League.

 

The Winner: Toronto Blue Jays

 

Obviously the Blue Jays were the biggest buyers this past winter. Their line up is loaded and they even have six solid starters, well as solid as Ricky Romero can be. What the hell happened to him? Was his rookie year just a total fluke? He has this coming out party, then John Farrell, widely known as the best pitching coach in the game, becomes the manager of the Blue Jays and the wheels fall off? He has pitched thirteen innings in five spring training starts, and has a 6.23era. Conversely, J.A. Happ pitched 23.2 innings and had a 1.90era. Romero was sent back down to single A ball.

 

Besides Happ and his strong start, they have reigning NL Cy Young winner, R.A. Dickey, is their ace. Josh Johnson, Mark Buerhle, and Brandon Morrow round out the staff. Really a strong five and if Romero can ever get his head screwed on straight they are going to be tough to score runs on for the first six or seven innings of every game.

 

That gives Jose Reyes, Melky Cabrera, Jose Bautista, and crew plenty of time to tear the cover off the ball as they have been prone to do. The Blue Jays hit a lot of home runs last year, and now they have become even better, more complete as well.

 

 

The Competitors: Baltimore Orioles, Tampa Bay Rays

 

The Orioles found ways to win last year and their pitching staff was a big part of it. This year they will need to be just as good. They don't have an offense that is going to score a lot of runs too often. So their starting pitchers need to really step it up again, or they need to go shopping. Regardless, I think they are finishing third in this division in 2013.

 

The Rays are going to grab the second place spot and maybe even a wild card bid. The Rays get it done with their pitching. They have maybe even the best top to bottom rotation in the league even if David Price is incredibly overrated. Don't get me wrong I like him, just he shouldn't have won Cy Young last year and until last year he had been mostly disappointing, despite what your memory is telling you. He is still young and has all the talent a top tier pitcher needs. I just am not sold on him yet like it seems every one else is.

 

That being said along with him they have quite a few young guns that could take the next step. Desmond Jennings is a guy I have had my eye on. Two years ago I picked him up, in my fantasy league, late in the season when he was called up and I rode him all the way to the finals. He was a machine. He had 64 hits and 111 total bases in just 63 games played. That equals 9 doubles, 4 triples, 10 home runs, 31 walks and 20 stolen bases. Not bad for a season never mind just playing in the final third.

 

So I scooped him up last year only to be very disappointed. In twice as many games played he put up only slightly higher numbers. Sure he was due to have a little sophomore slump after getting off to such a hot start to his career. So again this year I made sure I drafted him because, Evan Longoria is back and healthy ready to knock him in. Desmond Jennings is going to have a nice bounce back year and a nice kick off to a new stars prime and even lead the Rays to the playoffs.

 

 

The Bottom: Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees

 

Who the hell is taking the Yankees at 3-1 to win this division? I mean besides A-Rod, Jeter, Granderson, and Texeira starting the year off on the DL, they only have to overcome four poor starting pitchers and possibly the worst bottom half of a lineup in the AL, well maybe if we count the Astros as NL still.

 

As weird as it is. The Yankees and Red Sox are going to be duking it out for last place. Don't take the wrong way, this is the best division in baseball once again, but neither of these teams will even sniff the playoffs. Seems to be a shame to have all that money spent on two non playoff teams, maybe the Astros are on to something.

 

mlz

Wednesday, March 27, 2013