Baseball

Related: 2004 season overview

By Charlie in the Trees
For Outsports

AMERICAN LEAGUE WEST

1. 1. ANAHEIM ANGELS

Hot Halo: Jarrod Washburn. Got that blue-eyed, blond Nordic outdoorsman lumberjack thing going on. Newbies: Vladimir Guerrero (OF), Kelvim Escobar (RHP), Bartolo Colon (RHP), Jose Guillen (OF) Goners: Scott Spiezio, Brad Fullmer, Shawn Wooten Upside: The best everyday line-up in the game. The Angels in the outfield – Garret Anderson, Jose Guillen, Vlad Guerrero – are the best in the game. Troy Glaus at third is among the elite at his position. The pitching set with the addition of innings-eating Bartolo Colon. The bullpen id deep and talented. Manager Mike Scioscia is one of the best in the game. The middle infield situation is a bit of mess as World Series sparkplug David Eckstein may lose his job. But other than that, this team is set. Downside: Depth? The Angels have a thin bench. In 2002, the Angels stayed healthy and won a World Series. Hit hard by the injury bug in 2003, their win total dropped by over 20 games. If the glass is half-full, all the injuries could may helped develop the bench. Bottom Line: No team whose performance declined by 20 games or more has ever declined again the following year. The Angels are an absolute lock to improve in 2004. By adding the great Vlad Guerrero in right field, the Halos open this season looking even better than their World Series winning year. 2003 record: 77-85, 3rd place 2004 prediction: 95-67, 1st place, World Series champs

2. TEXAS RANGERS

Hot Ranger: Michael Young. Moves over from second to fill the hole at short. Think he was shocked that the position of Ranger shortstop did not automatically come with a quarter-billion dollar paycheck? Newbies: Alfonso Soriano (2B), Brad Fullmer (DH), Brian Jordan (OF), David Dellucci (OF), Eric Young (2B), Kenny Rogers (LHP), Jeff Nelson (RHP) Goners: A-Rod, Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, Shane Spencer, Todd Greene Upside: Manager Buck Showalter has a track record of building winners. He is perfect for developing the very young and very talented Rangers. He already has his infield corners manned by two superstars-in-training, both born in the ’80s: All-Star hero 3B Hank Blalock and 1B Mark Teixeira. Despite losing A-Rod, the Ranger offense will be a run-generating machine. Downside: Texas pitching, likewise, will be a run-generating machine. The 2003 Rangers surrendered almost 1000 runs. Texas pitching performed even worse than Detroit’s, giving up about of 0.25 runs per game more than the Tigers. Correcting for park effects, Tiger pitching may have been worse. So that means Ranger pitching was 29th, not 30th. Showalter is going to have to piece together some semblance of a pitching staff from this team to compete. Bottom Line: Back when he was a talented Boston-based sportswriter, before he became a shameless name-dropping celebrity sycophant, ESPN’s Bill Simmons coined the phrase “Ewing Theory.” Named it for ex-Knick center, this refers an interesting, occasionally-observed phenomenon for some superstar athletes to be a catalyst for dramatic improvements in a team they leave. Alex Rodriguez already invoked the Ewing Theory when he left Seattle. The 2001 Mariners improved by 25 games, and rang up a record-breaking 116 wins, all in the year after they lost A-Rod. Will history repeat? Is A-Rod the archetypal Ewing Theory athlete? Should it be renamed the “A-Rod Theory”? Yes. Yes. And, yes. 2003 record: 71-91, last place 2004 prediction: 91-71, 2nd place

3. SEATTLE MARINERS

Hot M: Gil Meche. Tired noticeably late in the year in his first full season in the Bigs. Nice to see him recover from two years-plus worth of arm problems. Newbies: Eddie Guardado (LHP), Rich Aurilia (SS), Scott Spiezio (3B-1B), Raul Ibanez (OF), Eric Owens (OF), Ron Villone (LHP) Goners: Kazuhiro Sasaki, Mike Cameron, Jeff Cirillo, Carlos Guillen, Mark McLemore, Arthur Rhodes, Armando Benitez Upside: In their current run of competitiveness, the M’s have been one of the two best defensive teams in baseball. Will the new acquisitions damage the “D”? The switch from Carlos Guillen to Rich Aurilia will hurt defensively, but that should be more than offset by Aurilia’s superior offensive skills. Scott Spiezio will handle his move back to third. Again, the offensive production from that position should improve dramatically. Randy Winn, moving over from left, cannot replace the acrobatic Mike Cameron in center. The M’s up-the-middle defense still will be very good, even if it will not be as good. That could have a detrimental cascading effect on team pitching, even as the M’s improve offensively. Downside: For two straight seasons, the Mariners won much less frequently over the final two months of the season. Play an NBA or NHL length season and the M’s would be world beaters. Age alone is not an adequate explanation. While the Mariners are among baseball’s older teams, the Yankees are even older. They seem to have no problem handling a seven-month season, while the M’s struggle in Month Five. Bottom Line: Seattle did nothing to get younger and improve their durability. New players, such as leftfielder Raul Ibanez (who, incidentally, has a head shaped like a light bulb), or Everyday Eddie Guardado (who merely offsets the loss of Kaz Sasaki back home to Japan) will do nothing to reverse the unforgiving passing of the sands of time. The 2004 Mariners will not wait until after the All-Star Break to tank. The may even start the year pre-tanked. 2003 record: 93-69, 2nd place 2004 prediction: 83-79, 3rd place

4. OAKLAND A'S

Hot A: Bobby Crosby. Rookie shortstop takes over for Miguel Tejada. If this is the reason the A’s let Tejada walk: what took so long? Newbies: Mark Kotsay (OF), Bobby Kielty (OF), Eric Karros (1B), Damian Miller (C), Mark Redman (RHP), Arthur Rhodes (LHP) Goners: Miguel Tejada, Keith Foulke, Ramon Hernandez, Terrence Long, Ted Lilly, Chris Singleton, Jose Guillen, John Halama Upside: Stars come and stars go, but as long as their three front-line starters Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito pitch effectively, the A’s will remain competitive. The first warning signs are out: Zito’s strike-out totals were down, and bases-on-balls were up, in 2003. Downside: This is the stupidest team in baseball. Not in the sense of I.Q. points. They may well spend their locker room hours solving differential equations and translating ancient Sanskrit texts, but they play the game stupidly. They spend six weeks of spring training and six months of the regular season honing an offense based on drawing walks and banging home runs. Come playoff time, they are clueless about basic fundamentals like baserunning, which cannot be properly adjudicated via their sabermetric formulae. The A’s build up a gaudy regular season record exploiting the other team’s mistakes. Come playoff time, facing a team not making mistakes, the A’s struggle and flail. And GM Billy Beane refuses to acknowledge that there is even a problem, shrugging off the A’s repeated playoff failures as simply random chance. Hey, Billy, it was not a random event that Eric Byrnes decided to go looking to shove Jason Varitek rather than touch home plate in Game Three of the Red Sox. It was no fluke that Miguel Tejada stopped running halfway to home later that inning. When you refuse two runs in a single playoff inning, you will lose. And that’s not some unpredictable earthquake or tornado. Year after year, the A’s are a waste of perfectly good playoff spot. Bottom Line: The A’s will be a little worse in many different ways, especially if Zito or one of the other front-line pitchers struggles this year. Don’t expect them to waste a playoff spot again this year. 2003 record: 96-66, 1st place 2004 prediction: 81-81, last place