I don’t know. How much Swiss cheese do they have?
A little surprised you’re not more enthusiastic about the Jays. The two guys I know well whom you picked up (directly and indirectly) from the Mets, Reyes and Dickey, are just terrific players, absolutely top-rate dependable winning ballplayers. I just hope they treat Toronto better than Alomar and Tony Fernandez treated NYC.
Boston won’t have a hole in left field. Jackie Bradley Jr. has been looking like this year’s Mike Trout.
John Lackey decided to shut up and get in shape, finally, and he and the other starters have been looking good, too. And that’s with pitching coach John Farrell moonlighting as the manager. He seems to have made all the difference.
But then it’s still March.
The AL East will be very interesting this year. Pretty much the only prediction I feel comfortable making is that the Orioles will finish last, and even they have a small shot at respectability if lightning strikes in the same place again.
Every other team feels like it has >90-win upside and <70-win downside, depending on how injuries, regression, aging, and impact prospects end up playing out.
The Yankees seem best positioned to win the division, despite their injuries - they just have a strongest base corps of talent than the other teams. And the spring training injuries that have happened so far will mostly be taking some key players out for a month into the season at most. Not insignificant by any means, but probably only a net loss of 3-4 wins, enough to hurt their chances of making the playoffs but not to take them out of contention. PECOTA, just to cite one projection system, already expected them to take the division by four wins. That being said, if they end up playing Vernon Wells for any significant length of time (i.e. if Granderson et al.'s injuries persist beyond what is currently expected), New Yorkers could be looking at a long season.
The Rays, Jays, and Red Sox will all fumble around in the middle of the division ranks. PECOTA projects all three teams to finish between 83-84 wins, although in my estimation, the error bars around that mean vary a lot from team to team. I think both the Blue Jays and Red Sox could end up anywhere within that full 70-90 win range, as they have some serious upside (the Blue Jays in the form of their new trade acquisitions, and the Red Sox in the form of a better-than-you-think core and some intriguing high-level prospects), but also some big questions.
I feel more comfortable predicting Tampa Bay to win 84-88 games, given that their team is mostly known quantities at this point. Although Wil Myers could really push them to the next level, if they call him up soon and he performs as expected - far moreso than Jackie Bradley Jr (who I’m quite high on), he’s the most likely Mike Trout Redux in baseball this year.
On a personal note, last year was a weird one for me, as a Boston resident born in the Bay Area who roots for the Red Sox and the Giants. On the one hand, Fenway’s 100th anniversary ruined by Bobby Valentine and awful on-field performance. On the other hand, World Series champions. 
Here’s hoping for another year as interesting as the last!
They can’t win a pennant by themselves.
PECOTA’s projections are a bit on the stupid side, but the fact remains that there are players in the lineup who can’t get on base. Arencibia, Rasmus, and Lind are all highly effective rally killers. Jose Reyes is a very exciting player whose career OBP is .342, not really what you want from your leadoff guy, and he’s a defensive step down from his predecessor. There’s one reliably high OBP in the lineup, Jose Bautista.
Of course, all that said, the fact is the rotation was dramatically upgraded. Toronto had, quite literally, no good full time starting pitchers in 2013; everyone who was good was hurt, and everyone who wasn’t hurt was awful. The addition of Dickey, Buerhle and Johnson, and a healthy Morrow, just by itself adds 15 wins even without any of them having a Cy Young season. If they’re healthy. So perhaps more concerning is that this is a team with a recent history of persistent injury problems. You can chalk that up to bad luck, but it’s been going on for years, and makes one question the team’s skill at managing player health.
I really see the AL East as a highly variable crapshoot, and with so many games in-division, one team’s struggles or streaks radically change other teams’ records. Toronto could win anywhere from 75 to 105 games, depending on whether their trainers are more competent than I think they are.
A lot also depends on New York’s pitching staff. Their lineup could be absolutely horrible; everyone is hurt, everyone is old, and they’ve replaced the second-best OBP on the team with Vernon Wells. But every pitcher on the staff can pitch. They may be in a lot of close, low-scoring games, very un-Yankeelike stuff.
The Dodgers actually have a surplus of good pitchers right now, and are trying to unload Harang, Lilly, Capuano and/or Guerrier. We’ve got a couple of hot up-and-comers Mattingly would like to make room for.
I am cautiously hopeful about the season. Everything looks good to great, and the owners are certainly not averse to spending money, but I have been a Dodger fan all my life. I’ve gotten used to having my heart broken.
I’ll admit, I don’t see what’s been so heart breaking about being a Dodger fan, other than maybe if you lived in Brooklyn when they moved.
Billy Hamilton has ludicrous speed. I can’t wait until the Reds bring him up. He’s ridiculous. And now he’s learning how to hit too. Could be a really dangerous piece for the Reds later in the season.
How well does he slide?
For the fellow Dodger fans in here, is anybody else kind of hoping for Crawford to fail so Puig gets a shot? Man, I know it’s only spring, but he has been exciting so far, particularly with Kemp not being himself yet.
Well enough. Last season in 132 games between A and AA he had 156 stolen bases.
That’s pretty good. The original Slidin’ Billy didn’t do better than 111 in a season (in the majors, mind).
Yes and no. Yes, in that Puig is exciting and would bring a ton of energy to the team. No, in that we paid a ton for Crawford, so we’d better gets our money’s worth out of the useless punk. I also try to keep in mind that it is still Spring Training, which bears little resemblance to the Regular Season. Lots of players have great ST and then flop hard in May.
Even *after *giving us Webster and Rubby? They’ve both looked pretty good this spring, especially Webster, who ought to make the jump to Boston midseason or so. He’s been lights-out with the fastball.
Right now the starting rotation looks like Kershaw, Beckett, Greinke, Billingsley and Ryu. That leaves Capuano, Lilly and Harang available to be dealt, if needed. They won’t get rid of all of them, but one or two could bolster the teams weak spots if dealt smartly. But it doesn’t have to be done immediately. We can wait until left field solidifies and short gels.
Looks like the Aroldis Chapman as a starter experiment is officially dead in the water. He pitched pretty well in Spring as a starter but made it clear he isn’t comfortable with it so back to the closing role he goes. Looks like the Reds rotation will be pretty much the same as last year: Arroyo, Cueto, Homer Bailey (whom I would keep a serious eye on…he was pitching incredibly well the last third of the season last year and seems to be really coming into his own), Mike Leake and Mat Latos.
It appears the Yanks have found a way to pay Wells $13m and have it actually help next year’s luxury tax. Story here. In a nut shell, they pay him the bulk of the $13 million this year they owe him getting the Angels to pay the bulk of next year and end up with a $2 million credit.
PRR, I still think the Yankee pitching is fine, strange to have a Red Sox fan slamming it as you have more question marks on the staff up there then the Yanks do.
The Sox are full of problem spots, no question about it, but I don’t see how the Yankees pitching rotation is going to hold up: CC is hurting, Pettitte is older than dirt and more fragile, Kuroda is a decent pitcher but no better than that, Hughes is ok, Nova is coming off injuries…l just don’t get it.
… and Mo is probably not going to be the real Mo in this, his final year, coming off a major injury.
I wasn’t aware Sabathia is hurting, and Hughes and Nova are better pitchers that people are giving them credit for being. Even assuming Pettite blows up, a front four of CC, Kuroda, Hughes and Nova is solid, and the bullpen’s solid whether or not it’s the real Rivera. It was great last year without Rivera.
New York’s problem is the lineup. Today they apparently signed Lyle Overbay. I didn’t even know Lyle was still playing baseball. A pretty good guideline is that if you think acquiring Vernon Wells and Lyle Overbay will help your team, you’re in trouble. I quite honestly have no idea what their lineup might look like come Opening Day.