An AL West Update
The Rangers change management for...reasons. The A's seem a long way off. The Angels plummet and the Mariners might be really good.
I track what goes on in the American League West closely. And I do so for a very simple reason—winning the AL West is the most important goal for the Astros to achieve every year.
And there is good news to start this AL West update: the Astros are going to win it.
Don’t believe me? Actually you probably do, but just to show my work: look at this graph that shows the probability of winning the AL West across the season. Yep, a 99.9% chance for the Astros.
Oh, and a 0.1% chance for the Mariners.
Or you can think of it this way. The Astros are 11.5 games up on the Mariners with 42 games left in the season. If the Astros go .500, they’ll finish the season 98-64. To reach that record, the Mariners would have to go 33-10 the rest of the way, winning more than 3 out of every 4 games. Oh, and even if that happens, the Astros would still win the West; there are no Game 163s anymore and the Astros won the season series to hold the tiebreaker.
But one reason to track the AL West is to look ahead to the future. The Astros have been the dominant team in the division ever since 2017, and this year has not changed that pattern.
But what will happen in the future? When will the other four teams in the division rise up to challenge for the division title?
There have been several stories in the baseball news recently that can provide more information to answer this question. Let’s go through each of the teams that the Astros compete against for the division title.
The Rangers Change Management
On Monday, the Rangers fired their manager Chris Woodward. The move seemed slightly odd as the move happened with a quarter of the season left, yet the Rangers are too far out of contention for an in-season firing to have much effect on the standings. Yet, the Rangers have treaded water for the four seasons in which Woodward was in charge and almost none of their young prospects had developed on the major league roster.
Then on Wednesday, the Rangers announced that they had fired long-time President of Baseball Operations Jon Daniels. This move was even more curious than the Woodward firing. Rangers owner Ray Davis had apparently already decided to fire his POBO when Daniels and General Manager Chris Young recommended firing Woodward. Why let the guy you have lost trust in make a major organizational decision? Only Davis knows the answer to that question.
The Rangers aren’t cleaning house though. Instead, the are handing the reins of baseball operations to Young, Young had been brought in from outside the organization to serve as General Manager under Daniels in December 2020.
As I watched the Rangers play the Astros in the first half of 2021, a question came to my mind—will any of these players on the Rangers be on their next playoff team? And the answer was always maybe 1 or 2 could be bit players on that team.
This year, the number seemed to grow. For one reason, the Rangers signed star players Corey Seager and Marcus Semien to long-term free agent contracts. And players with some potential—like Glenn Otto, Josh Smith, and Ezequiel Duran reached the majors. The Rangers have the 7th ranked farm system in the majors, according to the constantly updated rankings at Fangraphs. Their top prospect Josh Jung has recovered from an off-season weight lifting accident and is playing at AAA, and pitchers Jack Leiter, Cole Winn, and Kumar Rocker have arrival dates in the majors expected for 2023.
The growth of the Rangers players development system would seem to be a recommendation to keep Daniels on. Instead, ownership replaced him with his #2. This leads to the question of whether this was a slow motion transition planned by Rangers ownership that has been ongoing for 20 months.
The one conclusion that we can make is that Rangers ownership preferred Young making decisions over Daniels. Young has an excellent reputation, being hired as a MLB Vice President in their On Field Operations department less than 2 months after retiring as a player, and then being hired as the Rangers GM two-and-a-half years late. But that, as Richard Justice of Texas Monthly points out, is not only a thin resume for a contemporary head of baseball operations, it is also uncommon these days. Most GMs today began in the front office right out of college, or after getting their graduate degrees.
Young enters a promising situation. He has star players in his middle infield and a promising farm system. But it is a team that needs upgrades to compete for an AL West title in the near future. Can Young deliver? We’ll find out.
The A’s Move On From Their Few Remaining Veterans
The only team to dethrone the Astros as AL West champs since 2017 is the A’s, who won the division easily in the pandemic shortened 2020 season. It was one of 4 straight winning seasons in Oakland.
But this off-season, the A’s decided to rebuild, trading the stars of their recent run—Matt Olson and Matt Chapman. They also traded starting pitchers Chris Bassitt and Sean Manaea in Spring Training and Frankie Montas at the trade deadline.
This week, they released two more veteran players—Elvis Andrus and Stephen Piscotty. Astros fans are of course happy because Andrus was a certified Astros killer.
The releases symbolize two things about the A’s decision making. One, they desperately want to save money. Andrus’s $15 million club option for 2023 would turn into a player option if he accumulated 550 plate appearances. But by releasing him, Andrus can’t meet the incentive, and the A’s ownership can save some money next season.
And second, it shows how committed the A’s are to their youth movement. Andrus will be replaced in the lineup by rookie Nick Allen. Piscotty’s roster spot was taken by catcher Shea Langeliers, who was the best prospect the Braves dealt for Olsen.
But there is one problem with the A’s youth movement. It’s not clear that the kids are any good. None of their batters under the age of 27 this season have an OPS+ over 100, the league average. They have only used five pitchers below the age of 27 this season. And their farm system, including the additions from their trade of 5 veteran players, is ranked only 17th in the Fangraphs ranking.
The A’s rebuild seems in the very early stages of a long process.
The Mariners and Angels Head in Opposite Directions
The Mariners and Angels just faced each other in Anaheim for the first time since Angels manager Phil Nevin employed an opener for the purpose of beaning Mariners hitters. The Mariners understandably objected. And an actual brawl broke out.
Since then, well, the two teams have headed in completely opposite directions.
As always, reality is slightly more complicated than what one can put in a single tweet. The Mariners had started their kick a week earlier and had one 5 straight entering that game. And the Angels massive losing streak had started a month earlier than this game (note that it was interim manager Phil Nevin orchestrating the beanings; Joe Maddon had already been fired).
But the broad story the tweet tells is true. The Angels have absolutely plummeted and the Mariners have been on an impressive run lately.
Let’s tackle the Angels first. The Angels swoon is yet another in which the franchise has failed to put a supporting cast around stars Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani that can play winning baseball. The stars are great, but everyone else is…well, there are some nice stories here in players like Taylor Ward and Patrick Sandoval. But overll, there is not enough depth surrounding Trout and Ohtani. And injuries have taken a huge toll on the Halos. Again.
Tungsten Arm O’Doyle lives.
This year’s annual collapse comes with a looming deadline up ahead. Ohtani can become a free agent after the 2023 season, and the rumor mill thinks that he will not re-sign with the Angels unless they win big next season. So this creates a dilemma for the Angels—go for it in 2023 to prove to Ohtani that he should stay, or accept that he will leave and trade him this off-season to get future value for the franchise.
Neither seems a good option, yet the Angels will have to forge one of those two paths. It’s a fraught choice for a franchise that seems cursed. And a reminder that the inability to develop mid-level players is crucial for a baseball front office. Until the Angels do that, it is hard to see them as AL West contenders.
The Mariners on the other hand are moving in the right direction. They began a turnaround on June 20 and have gone 35-15 since then. They had the 14 game win streak, but even if you take that out, their record is 21-15; a 94 win pace.
The Mariners are no threat to the Astros in 2022 because of the huge lead the Astros have in the division, but the high quality stretch of the Mariners over the last two months raises the question of whether they can challenge the Astros in 2023.
The Mariners are finally receiving big contributions from three rookies this year, as Julio Rodriguez has developed into a star level centerfielder, George Kirby into a quality starting pitcher, and Matt Brash into a bullpen weapon. The improvement of two second year players—Cal Raleigh and Logan Gilbert—are helping to raise the level of quality of the team overall. And Luis Castillo looks like an ace, and he will be in arbitration this off-season.
In 2021, the Mariners used a lot of smoke and mirrors to win 90 games. This season, they are on an overall pace to win 88, but the team is of much higher quality this year. The Astros will be favorites to win the AL West in 2023, but the margin between them and the second best team in preseason projections is likely to be closer than it has been in six seasons.