2005 MLB Preview - AL East
American League East
I’m being realistic here. Please, don’t kill me faithful co-members of Red Sox Nation. I’m trying to look at this as objectively as possible, and right now, the Yankees do have better pitching…
It begins and ends with the gangly 6’10” frame of Randy Johnson. Period. If he’s right, I think he’ll go about 25-7. Left-handed batters thrive in Yankee Stadium, and he kills lefties. Now that he’s got an offense behind him, the games when he only allows 2 or 3 runs shouldn’t be too close.
(Great aside – last weekend a few friends came over to play some poker. Afterwards, my buddy Tim decided to go through a stack of about 100 old issues Sports Illustrated from the mid 90’s that I had lying around. He found about 5 with Randy Johnson on the cover, which he promptly grabbed. I have no doubt that each one has been defaced in its own special way and hung on his refrigerator by now…)
As for the rest of the Yankees, well for the first time in recent memory they didn’t go after the biggest offensive name on the free agent market, opting instead to bolster an aging rotation. Granted, they don’t really need any more offense. But they could have done better with their dollars, and they certainly could have helped out the bullpen a little.
Johnson, Mussina, Pavano, Wright, and Kevin Brown make for a pretty solid 1-2, a good 3, and a decent 4-5. But this rotation could quickly get caught in the same “funk” that hit the Bombers last season, if Kevin Brown isn’t healthy (which is pretty much a given at this point in his career), and if Carl Pavano can’t adjust to the AL, and if Jaret Wright’s resurgence was nothing more than a contract year coming out party helped along by the genius that is Leo Mazzone. But that’s a lot of “ifs”, even if they are all good possibilities.
In any case, the Yankees have an offense capable of putting up about 900 runs, and they have the best left-handed pitcher of the last 50 years at the top of their rotation. I think they take the division.
I’ll begin accepting hate mail tomorrow.
Defending the World Series trophy is never an easy task, and especially not when just winning it in the first place was such a cathartic event for such a large group of people. I mean, there are were entire generations of Red Sox fans that just wanted to see their team win it once in their lifetime, myself included. Can you even imagine that? Unless you’re from Chicago or Cleveland, I doubt that you can.
So how do you rebuild a champion? Well, you start with pitching. You lost 2/5 of your rotation, including the best pitcher in history, inning-for-inning, and a guy who contended for a Cy Young just two years ago before he lost his mental game. You replaced them with three guys: an overweight, aging lefthander with a history of both back problems and of not walking anybody, a strikeout king from the National League who can blow the ball past any given batter, provided he can find the plate, and a young flamethrower coming off of rotator-cuff surgery. Hmmmm…
Well, maybe the pitching won’t be a big deal. Let’s try to focus on the offense. You traded away the face of your franchise mid-season last year and it helped you win the title. Unfortunately, his replacement also walked in the off-season, so you needed to find your third shortstop in six months. Luckily, you happened to lose your first two shortstops in an off-season that saw more quality free agents at that position than any before, and you were able to sign the best of the bunch.
You were forced to trade away a starting first baseman, since you had two of them. You chose offense over defense, which, considering the team philosophy, makes sense. Finally, you were able to re-sign the heart and soul of your team, the team backstop that is actually the team’s backbone. And you did so without giving in to his agent’s ludicrous demands of $12M yearly and a blanket no-trade clause. Kudos.
And yet, with all of that, you’re still trailing in your own division, let alone in your league. But you know what?
You were trailing last year, too…
Tampa Bay
I think it’s about time for these young guys to step it up and prove that they’re actually a Major League team, and not just something between Triple-A and the Big Leagues. They’ve got the talent, they’ve got the manger, there’s no reason not to make a move this year.
There’s a very fine line between the way the Devil Rays operate and the way the Pittsburgh Pirates operate. Neither team has contended in about a decade (yes, the Devil Rays only started playing in ’98 – I know…) But while the D-Rays trade off big names that are home-grown prospects, much like the Royals do, the Pirates scavenge the bargain-basement at the end of the free agent period, signing players like Raul Mondesi and Randall Simon, then trading them at the deadline for top prospects and draft picks.
The loss of Rocco Baldelli will be big in ‘05; in fact, it could be catastrophic. But the young talent on this team (Baldelli once he’s healthy, Crawford, Huff, Kazmir) leads me to believe that sometime soon, the D-Rays will be – GASP! – a playoff team. In fact, I believe that they can make a strong run this year, as long as they aren’t forced to sell off their team for fear of impending free agency.
Of course, no one in
Hey, you do nothing in the off-season, you don’t get any better. Simple. Last year I predicted them to go 80-82. And that was after they had made three major free agent signings. This year, they’ve done nothing aside from acquire an aging outfielder on the downside of his career with a history of nagging injuries and a poor clubhouse presence, so they’re getting no respect from me.
In the American League, and especially in the AL East, you need pitching. You’re not going to out-hit
I can think of at least five guys on both the Red Sox and Yankees that are legitimate 30-home run threats year in and year out. But the difference is this – on the days when the offense isn’t getting it done, both of those teams have the pitching to hold the other team down and keep the game within reach. The Orioles just don’t, and until they realize that, it’ll cost them.
When your biggest off-season acquisitions are the closer that you dumped a few years back because of his inability to close, and a third baseman that has been shipped around the game three times now for his inability to produce consistently, you know you’ve got problems. But when you also lose a legitimate yearly MVP candidate in the process, well, that’s a hell of a hole to fill.
And while Roy Halladay is probably the best pitcher in
Corey Koskie, Vernon Wells, Orlando Hudson, and whatever is left of Eric Hinske will provide numbers, but not enough to contend, and probably not enough to keep Toronto from ending the season looking up at the rest of the division.
But there is a silver lining – maybe this will be the first year that the AL East hasn’t finished in the same order (
posted by Big D @ 5:49 PM
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