{"id":12504,"date":"2012-01-04T07:01:48","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T07:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=12504"},"modified":"2012-01-07T11:30:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-07T11:30:00","slug":"mlb-offseason-so-far-al-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=12504","title":{"rendered":"MLB offseason so far: AL West"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We now move onto the American League section of our offseason (so far) review, starting in the West.<\/p>\n

Texas Rangers<\/strong><\/p>\n

A club that has reached two successive World Series doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need too many changes, subject to replacing any players departing as free agents.\u00c2\u00a0 However, the extravagance showed by the Los Angeles Angels this offseason (as we shall see) means that the Rangers cannot rest on their laurels.<\/p>\n

C.J. Wilson is the main departure, heading to those Angels on a five-year contract, and that creates a spot in the Rangers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rotation.\u00c2\u00a0 Former Twin Joe Nathan has been signed on a two-year contract to be the team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s closer, leaving Neftali Feliz free to make the transition to the starting rotation that was aborted at an early stage one year ago.<\/p>\n

The Rangers haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stopped there, though.\u00c2\u00a0 They are currently negotiating with Japanese pitching sensation Yu Darvish after tabling a record $51.7m posting fee. If, as expected, the two sides work out a contract, Texas will once again have a deep pitching staff to call on.<\/p>\n

The one area they might still want to improve upon is by adding another impact bat.\u00c2\u00a0 Repeating their 2011 approach of using Mike Napoli, Mitch Moreland and Michael Young on a rotation at first base would still be a decent option, but adding a hitter of Prince Fielder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s calibre would clearly be a significant upgrade.\u00c2\u00a0 The investment in Darvish may make signing Fielder a non-starter; however the Rangers may feel they need to match the Angels in the first base stakes and will also be looking ahead to the possible departure of Josh Hamilton as a free agent at the end of the 2012 season.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles Angels<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no doubt that the Angels have stolen the offseason spotlight, even overshadowing the revolution taking place in Florida with the Marlins.<\/p>\n

In a stunning double signing, the Angels acquired Albert Pujols on a ten-year deal that could be worth up to $265m and the aforementioned C.J. Wilson on a five-year deal worth $77.5m.\u00c2\u00a0 For a team that has shied away from adding that one extra impact player in recent years, it is a shocking turnaround and one that genuinely changes the competitive landscape in the American League.<\/p>\n

The deals give the Angels an excellent front four to the starting rotation (Wilson joining Jered Weaver, Dan Haren and Ervin Santana) and a nice \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcproblem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 at first with Mark Trumbo now needing to find a new position or potentially a new team via a trade, with Kendrys Morales coming back from his injury problems as well.<\/p>\n

New GM Jerry Dipoto has also brought in Chris Iannetta from the Rockies to be the Angels’ new catcher, trading Jeff Mathis to Toronto to make space, and picked up free agent reliever LaTroy Hawkins.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Oakland A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/strong><\/p>\n

This has been a depressing offseason for A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fans. \u00c2\u00a0With the team facing an eye-watering disparity in financial resources compared to the Rangers and Angels (not to mention most other teams in the Majors), General Manager Billy Beane has taken the approach of rebuilding for 2015-16 when the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hope to be in a new ballpark in San Jose, although MLB is still to decide whether they can make the move.<\/p>\n

So far the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s have traded away their best two starting pitchers (Gio Gonzalez to the Nationals and Trevor Cahill to the Diamondbacks) and their closer (Andrew Bailey to the Red Sox), while\u00c2\u00a0two of their three main outfielders from 2011 already have departed via free agency (Josh Willingham\u00c2\u00a0to the\u00c2\u00a0Twins and David DeJesus to the Cubs) and DH Hideki Matsui doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look likely to be re-signed either.\u00c2\u00a0 However, it was reported on Tuesday evening that the A’s would be bringing back Coco Crisp on a two-year deal, so not everyone is leaving town; just the vast majority of the established players.<\/p>\n

In short, 2012 isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t shaping up to be a vintage year for the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. Fans, including me, can only live on the gallows humour involved in predicting Oakland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Opening Day roster and the hope that some of the prospects received in these trades will flourish in the years to come.<\/p>\n

Seattle Mariners<\/strong><\/p>\n

Things aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t much more positive in Seattle, although they do at least appear to be resolute in holding onto their best players. \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Considering the returns that have been received for Mat Latos and Gio Gonzalez, the cost of trading for Felix Hernandez would be huge and there has to be a slight temptation for the Mariners to consider it. However, whether any team would be prepared to give up the vast amount of talent required to make the M\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s say \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcyes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is doubtful.<\/p>\n

The Mariners continue to be linked with Prince Fielder, although it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still questionable whether there is any real prospect of that or if the rumours are mainly being fuelled by the storyline of General Manager Jack Zdurienick reuniting with the player he drafted when with the Brewers. Such a signing would certainly make Seattle fans sit up and take notice, much more so than the deals that they have made this offseason (trading for catcher John Jaso and acquiring free agent reliever George Sherrill).<\/p>\n

Seattle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relatively quiet approach is to be expected.\u00c2\u00a0 They are a fair way from being competitive so even a couple of big free agent signings might not push them to the playoffs, and the only players they have that others would want to acquire in a trade (Hernandez, Dustin Ackley, potentially Michael Pineda and Justin Smoak) are players that the M\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s would not be keen to lose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We now move onto the American League section of our offseason (so far) review, starting in the West<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12504"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12536,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12504\/revisions\/12536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}