Today are the final five team previews, featuring the imposing Astros and the muddled rest of the American League West.
Houston Astros
Usually, it's pretty easy to say the reigning World Series champions are good, but not this easy.
Before we get into specifics, let's talk big picture. Last season, the Astros won 101 games; by BaseRuns and Pythagorean record, they were merely a 99-win team. Just subtracting 2017 fWAR lost from 2017 fWAR added, they have gotten 4.7 wins better since November 2.
In 2018, Baseball Prospectus has them winning 99. FanGraphs has them winning 101.3, the joint-highest projection the site has had since 2005. In January, NEIFI had them winning 103.5, the highest in the history of the system. The computers love this team.
And for good reason. The 2017 Astros' offense was fantastic, leading baseball in runs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, isolated slugging, and strikeout rate. Relative to their peers, only the Murderers' Row Yankees were better. Yes, really.
(And this Astros team won't have to force the corpse of Carlos Beltràn into the middle of the order anymore. Of Beltràn's 118 starts last season, 85 were in spots 4, 5, and 6. His season OPS was .666. I would say it's not the best conclusion to a Hall of Fame career, but he got a ring out of it, so I won't.)
Few, if any, teams can rival a top of the order featuring reigning MVP José Altuve, reigning World Series MVP George Springer, and former Rookie of the Year Carlos Correa. Those three combined for a .315 average and 82 homers last season. They are supported by some more excellent players, like young third baseman Alex Bregman, utility-man-turned-offensive-juggernaut (but still kind of a utility man) Marwin Gonzàlez, veteran outfielder Josh Reddick, and platooning catchers Evan Gattis and Brian McCann. None of them hit worse than average last season. Try to find the hole in this lineup, and you'll be looking for a long while.
Or, for that matter, in this pitching staff – the part of the team that was "weak" enough to necessitate the midseason acquisition of Justin Verlander and the winter acquisition of Gerrit Cole. In 2017, without Cole or new relievers Héctor Rondon and Joe Smith, Houston pitchers were in the top half of the league in most broad statistics, including third in strikeout rate. With them, the Astros' rotation rivals those of the Dodgers and Indians, and their bullpen becomes one of the few that comes close to that of the Yankees. Only Cleveland can claim to have an equal better staff overall.
Between a historically great offense and an intimidating collection of arms, the Astros have all they need to repeat as champions.
Los Angeles Angels
The Angels have seemingly taken the old cliché of "You can't win if you don't score" and turned it around on their opponents. Already one of baseball's best defensive teams in 2017 – led by the best defender at any position over the past six seasons, shortstop extraordinaire Andrelton Simmons – Los Angeles further improved in the field by adding Ian Kinsler, Zack Cozart, Justin Upton, and René Rivera (to pair with an even better defensive catcher in Martín Maldonado) this winter. Even with the occasional day of Albert Pujols "occupying" first, this is the best defense in the majors.
The other side of run prevention, pitching, is a less sure situation, but it is significantly improved from where it was before.
Thirteen pitchers started games for the Angels last season, and most of them were bad. Very bad. Once Garrett Richards left his first start of 2017 with a bad biceps, the team had to rely heavily on the likes of Jesse Chavez, Ricky Nolasco, and Troy Scribner, which went about as well as you would expect. Unable to strike hitters out, generate ground balls, or keep the ball in the park, Angels starters were of little value.
The team increasingly relied on what turned out to be a pretty good bullpen. Players like David Hernández, Blake Parker, and Yusmeiro Petit saved their season and almost got them into the playoffs. Hernández, Petit, and a couple of other contributors are gone now, but the Angels have enough arms for the bullpen to not kill them. Jose Álvarez, Cam Bedrosian, and Parker look like they'll man the top end.
Meanwhile, I don't know if you heard, but the rotation has undergone some reworking. Shohei Ohtani, the best player on the international market, joins the team having dominated both hitters and hurlers in Japan. Ohtani's numbers abroad look absurd, especially from his age-21 season, when he hit for a 1.004 OPS and pitched for a 1.86 ERA, with his two-way efforts adding up to more than 10 wins of value (according to the Japanese site DeltaGraphs).
Ohtani brings plenty of talent, but his arrival requires some accommodating. Because he'll DH on many of his days off from pitching, he needs a little more time between starts. The solution: a six-man rotation.
The likely head of this rotation, Richards, returned in September and looked quite fine. Over five post-injury starts, Richards struck out a batter per inning, allowed six walks and one homer total, and held opponents to a .227 wOBA. Ohtani should fill the second slot; while he's had a rough spring, I strongly believe he'll do at least adequately. Tyler Skaggs and J.C. Ramírez pitched reasonably well in 40 combined starts last season; they could once again provide some value. If Matt Shoemaker stays healthy, he has the command to be an alright option at the back of the rotation.
The various choices for the No. 6 slot are less appealing: Andrew Heaney, despite his ability to get strikeouts, was just about eaten alive last year, finishing his 21.1 innings with a 7.06 ERA. If Heaney's elbow isn't ready for Opening Day, Parker Bridwell will take his place. Bridwell does a good job of avoiding walks and posted a solid ERA last season, but his ERA predictors forecast doom; he had a 5.07 xFIP, a 5.06 SIERA, and a 5.12 DRA. Nick Tropeano missed all of 2017 recovering from Tommy John surgery; we don't know how he'll pitch when he eventually returns to the majors. Alex Meyer, despite his propensity for walks, would have been a viable candidate, but since he tore his labrum last year, the next we'll likely see of him will be in 2019.
One benefit of a six-man rotation, you would think, is a less taxed bullpen, but with these options, Mike Sciosca may have to rely heavily on his relievers every sixth day.
Offensively, the Angels should be around average. A full season from Mike Trout (still the best player alive), as well as contributions from new arrivals Ohtani and Justin Upton and fewer reps for Pujols, should be enough to bring this lineup out of the league's bottom third.
Will all these changes make Los Angeles a postseason team? Maybe. I'm inclined to think they have the talent, but it'll be hard to beat out a rising Twins team, the potentially above-average Blue Jays, and all the competition the Angels face from within their own division.
Thirteen pitchers started games for the Angels last season, and most of them were bad. Very bad. Once Garrett Richards left his first start of 2017 with a bad biceps, the team had to rely heavily on the likes of Jesse Chavez, Ricky Nolasco, and Troy Scribner, which went about as well as you would expect. Unable to strike hitters out, generate ground balls, or keep the ball in the park, Angels starters were of little value.
The team increasingly relied on what turned out to be a pretty good bullpen. Players like David Hernández, Blake Parker, and Yusmeiro Petit saved their season and almost got them into the playoffs. Hernández, Petit, and a couple of other contributors are gone now, but the Angels have enough arms for the bullpen to not kill them. Jose Álvarez, Cam Bedrosian, and Parker look like they'll man the top end.
Meanwhile, I don't know if you heard, but the rotation has undergone some reworking. Shohei Ohtani, the best player on the international market, joins the team having dominated both hitters and hurlers in Japan. Ohtani's numbers abroad look absurd, especially from his age-21 season, when he hit for a 1.004 OPS and pitched for a 1.86 ERA, with his two-way efforts adding up to more than 10 wins of value (according to the Japanese site DeltaGraphs).
Ohtani brings plenty of talent, but his arrival requires some accommodating. Because he'll DH on many of his days off from pitching, he needs a little more time between starts. The solution: a six-man rotation.
The likely head of this rotation, Richards, returned in September and looked quite fine. Over five post-injury starts, Richards struck out a batter per inning, allowed six walks and one homer total, and held opponents to a .227 wOBA. Ohtani should fill the second slot; while he's had a rough spring, I strongly believe he'll do at least adequately. Tyler Skaggs and J.C. Ramírez pitched reasonably well in 40 combined starts last season; they could once again provide some value. If Matt Shoemaker stays healthy, he has the command to be an alright option at the back of the rotation.
The various choices for the No. 6 slot are less appealing: Andrew Heaney, despite his ability to get strikeouts, was just about eaten alive last year, finishing his 21.1 innings with a 7.06 ERA. If Heaney's elbow isn't ready for Opening Day, Parker Bridwell will take his place. Bridwell does a good job of avoiding walks and posted a solid ERA last season, but his ERA predictors forecast doom; he had a 5.07 xFIP, a 5.06 SIERA, and a 5.12 DRA. Nick Tropeano missed all of 2017 recovering from Tommy John surgery; we don't know how he'll pitch when he eventually returns to the majors. Alex Meyer, despite his propensity for walks, would have been a viable candidate, but since he tore his labrum last year, the next we'll likely see of him will be in 2019.
One benefit of a six-man rotation, you would think, is a less taxed bullpen, but with these options, Mike Sciosca may have to rely heavily on his relievers every sixth day.
Offensively, the Angels should be around average. A full season from Mike Trout (still the best player alive), as well as contributions from new arrivals Ohtani and Justin Upton and fewer reps for Pujols, should be enough to bring this lineup out of the league's bottom third.
Will all these changes make Los Angeles a postseason team? Maybe. I'm inclined to think they have the talent, but it'll be hard to beat out a rising Twins team, the potentially above-average Blue Jays, and all the competition the Angels face from within their own division.
Seattle Mariners
It has been 17 years since the Mariners last made the postseason. That's such a long time that their fourth-best prospect wasn't alive. Despite finishing with 85 wins or more six times over that stretch (including two 93-win seasons right after their historic 2001 campaign), despite the magazine covers, despite #6org, despite having one of the best pitchers of his generation, despite all of that, the Mariners have failed to make the postseason even once.
If the M's finally break through, it will be something of a surprise, but not a shock. Last year, with a pretty good offense, not much of a defense, a rotation decimated by injuries, and a passable bullpen, they amounted to basically an average team. After Jerry Dipoto spent another winter making a number of trades, Seattle looks like... basically an average team.
We'll focus on that rotation. Seventeen pitchers started at least one game for the Mariners last season. All but four of them got at least a fourth start; only six threw 60 or more innings. If they didn't hit the Disabled List, these pitchers were usually bad.
Christian Bergman had the kind of season one would expect as one of the Mariners' fill-in starters: A minor-league signing last offseason, Bergman was assigned to Triple-A Tacoma coming out of spring training. After moving Shae Simmons to the 60-day Disabled List and optioning Rob Whalen, the Mariners purchased Bergman's contract on May 7. Bergman made a 40-pitch relief appearance against Texas in his Seattle debut before joining the rotation for a month-and-a-half of getting hit hard. On June 21, he was sent back down. He returned in August only to be yo-yo'd between Seattle and Tacoma for a month. From his initial call-up in May through his being waived in September, Bergman made nine trips between Seattle and Tacoma. With a 5.00 ERA, he was the Mariners' seventh-most-used starter.
For the Mariners to succeed, they need their top starters to remain healthy and keep guys like Bergman from having to eat too many innings. A quick glance at the headlines tells me they're off to a superb start. Félix Hernández is getting better but still might not be ready for Opening Day next week after getting hit by a line drive. Erasmo Ramírez strained his right lat at the beginning of camp, and we don't know his status. Neither injury is too serious, but after so many pitchers got hurt a year ago, it's easy to worry.
This team cannot afford that one guy go down (again), and it's James Paxton. Paxton was already a solid pitcher, but in 2018, he became a legitimate ace after deciding to throw more sidearm and rely on more breaking balls. In two years, his strikeout rate jumped more than 10 percent, his walk rate dropped more than 3 percent, and his ERA dropped by almost a full run. He is a perfect example of a player turning into a star after tweaking his mechanics, and he is crucial to the Mariners' season.
Seattle's lineup has a couple of players making adjustments this spring, and hopefully their efforts will pay off. If they do, if the offense comes together again despite Nelson Cruz and Robinson Canó's ages, and if the pitching doesn't fall apart, there may finally be a postseason berth in store. Most likely, however, the Mariners come up short again.
Texas Rangers
I hope everyone remembers that it wasn't that long ago that this team ruled the American League. The Rangers were in the always enviable position of having a healthy supply of major-league talent, minor-league assets, and money. While they never won a title – which, considering how close they came, is obviously a tremendous disappointment – they repeatedly put themselves in the position to win one by making the playoffs and acquiring good players, and they were a lot of fun.
Now, they have plenty of money (just not any they'll spend on their own stadium), but fairly mediocre collections of major-leaguers and prospects. This is an organization coming off its heyday set up better long-term than a lot of others do in similar situations (see: Phillies, Philadelphia 2012), and the roster is technically good enough to remain in the Wild Card hunt for much of the year, but it's probably not good enough to actually make the playoffs.
The lineup looks pretty good at catcher and around most of the infield, but each of the five other other positions has some reason for concern.
Rougned Odor was one of the worst regulars in baseball in 2017, thanks to a total refusal to lay off of bad pitches, an inability to make consistent contact, and ineptitude in the field. If Odor's low BABIP recovers to something more in line with his history, he'll be an average hitter at best. He's walked a little more in spring training, but that was a tremendously low bar, and it is of course just spring training. Until he can stop the strikeouts – or fix his fielding – he'll be somewhere between a high-variance, BABIP-reliant hitter, and a liability.
Willie Calhoun has the hitting skills to make an impact (once the team is done manipulating his service time and recalls him), presenting a good combination of discipline, contact, and power. But he's a rangeless fielder and will embarrass himself in left. There's a reason FanGraphs' Eric Longenhagen evaluated him as a DH prospect in March. His likely placeholder is the unproven Drew Robinson, with platoon player Ryan Rua and Rule 5 Draft pick Carlos Tocci serving as backups. Neither promises to be good enough.
Delino DeShields had a solid season last year, but he has yet to prove he can sustain such success. He seemingly has figured out how to be a positive outfielder (unless he's just outrunning his mistakes) and hit well enough to play every day. However, if he can't sustain such a high batting average on balls in play, he probably doesn't have the defense to make up for it. He certainly won't be a passable leadoff hitter (not that he was one already).
Nomar Mazara still has the physical ability that made him such an exciting prospect, and he'll only turn 23 come April 26, but in two full major-league seasons, he has only shown flashes of the player scouts thought he would be. His wRC+ has yet to hit the league-average mark of 100; against lefties, it's 51. By no means should the Rangers lose patience with Mazara, but until he proves he can stick, you have to be skeptical of what he can contribute right now.
And then there's Shin-Soo Choo. A dumb, shortsighted signing for seven years and $130 million after his age-30 season, Choo gave the Rangers one great year in 2014 and has been a disappointment otherwise. Fortunately, he doesn't have to play the field anymore, but he doesn't hit well enough to justify paying him exclusively for his bat. His plate discipline keeps him an average hitter making star money in his mid-30s. At some point (probably soon), he won't even be that.
What really kept the Rangers below .500 last year, however, was pitching.
Of the 11 pitchers to start a game last year, four were worth more than a win by bWAR or even a tenth of a win by fWAR. The rotation has subsequently been cleaned out; only Cole Hamels and Martin Pérez return. Hamels is no longer an ace, having just posted the worst large-sample strikeout rate of his professional career, but he is a reliable pitcher who keeps the ball in the zone and in the ballpark. Pérez, meanwhile, is a back-of-the-rotation innings-eater with basically no stuff but enough competence to keep a game within reach and not miss any starts.
The new arrivals are more or less Pérez-like. Once a strikeout artist in the Rays' system, Matt Moore is the worst of them, coming off a 5.52-ERA season with the Giants. Maybe with the extra rest from using a six-man rotation, he'll be better, or maybe it will at least limit the damage he can do. Mike Minor was excellent in the Royals bullpen last year, but he has little upside as a starter. His track record in the rotation, where his fastball sits around 92 miles per hour, is one of relative adequacy. I would be surprised if he exceeds that. Doug Fister is the most interesting acquisition, having rediscovered a trace of his younger self last year. If he can keep it up, he's an excellent trade chip; if not, he has a high enough floor to still be of use.
After that – since someone is going go have to fill that sixth spot – you have much worse options. The team tried stretching out Matt Bush but abandoned that idea quickly. Bartolo Colόn and Jesse Chavez have each made it to the end of camp, and one will likely make the Opening Day roster. I highly doubt either has the ability last a whole season, which will mean calling upon other unappealing options, like non-roster invitees Austin Bibens-Dirkx, Chi Chi Gonzalez, and Edinson Vόlquez; or rookies like Ariel Jurado and Johander Méndez. This doesn't bode well.
The bullpen went through a lot of pitchers last year (26), but it seems like it could be better. Bush, Alex Claudio, and Keone Kela had the best seasons in 2017; if healthy now, Tony Barnette and Jake Diekman were good enough the year prior to think they can pitch effectively again. That's a decent group of five pitchers.
The rest of the bunch have warts but potential. José Leclerc has the arsenal to strike out anyone, but also such horrible command that he walked a fifth of the batters he faced last season.
Tim Lincecum is back, and should his tryout velocity be legit, he could be a solid reliever. Or he could take the kind of shellacking that ended his baseball career the first time. It's a total mystery at this point.
Similarly, we don't know how good Chris Martin is. After pitching horribly for the Rockies and Yankees, the 31-year-old Martin spent the past three seasons in Japan and dominated. Whether his success over there is replicable here is yet to be seen.
Nick Gardewine, who came up at the end of last season, showed why maybe it wasn't best for him to skip Triple-A, finishing his 12-game cup of coffee with a 5.63 ERA. Still, he has a solid minor-league track record, and with some time against older hitters, he could be ready for the bigs.
You can talk yourself into this team being a couple of breakout seasons from taking the Wild Card, but the smart money is on that not happening. Expect somewhere around (probably just under) 81 wins.
Now, they have plenty of money (just not any they'll spend on their own stadium), but fairly mediocre collections of major-leaguers and prospects. This is an organization coming off its heyday set up better long-term than a lot of others do in similar situations (see: Phillies, Philadelphia 2012), and the roster is technically good enough to remain in the Wild Card hunt for much of the year, but it's probably not good enough to actually make the playoffs.
The lineup looks pretty good at catcher and around most of the infield, but each of the five other other positions has some reason for concern.
Rougned Odor was one of the worst regulars in baseball in 2017, thanks to a total refusal to lay off of bad pitches, an inability to make consistent contact, and ineptitude in the field. If Odor's low BABIP recovers to something more in line with his history, he'll be an average hitter at best. He's walked a little more in spring training, but that was a tremendously low bar, and it is of course just spring training. Until he can stop the strikeouts – or fix his fielding – he'll be somewhere between a high-variance, BABIP-reliant hitter, and a liability.
Willie Calhoun has the hitting skills to make an impact (once the team is done manipulating his service time and recalls him), presenting a good combination of discipline, contact, and power. But he's a rangeless fielder and will embarrass himself in left. There's a reason FanGraphs' Eric Longenhagen evaluated him as a DH prospect in March. His likely placeholder is the unproven Drew Robinson, with platoon player Ryan Rua and Rule 5 Draft pick Carlos Tocci serving as backups. Neither promises to be good enough.
Delino DeShields had a solid season last year, but he has yet to prove he can sustain such success. He seemingly has figured out how to be a positive outfielder (unless he's just outrunning his mistakes) and hit well enough to play every day. However, if he can't sustain such a high batting average on balls in play, he probably doesn't have the defense to make up for it. He certainly won't be a passable leadoff hitter (not that he was one already).
Nomar Mazara still has the physical ability that made him such an exciting prospect, and he'll only turn 23 come April 26, but in two full major-league seasons, he has only shown flashes of the player scouts thought he would be. His wRC+ has yet to hit the league-average mark of 100; against lefties, it's 51. By no means should the Rangers lose patience with Mazara, but until he proves he can stick, you have to be skeptical of what he can contribute right now.
And then there's Shin-Soo Choo. A dumb, shortsighted signing for seven years and $130 million after his age-30 season, Choo gave the Rangers one great year in 2014 and has been a disappointment otherwise. Fortunately, he doesn't have to play the field anymore, but he doesn't hit well enough to justify paying him exclusively for his bat. His plate discipline keeps him an average hitter making star money in his mid-30s. At some point (probably soon), he won't even be that.
What really kept the Rangers below .500 last year, however, was pitching.
Of the 11 pitchers to start a game last year, four were worth more than a win by bWAR or even a tenth of a win by fWAR. The rotation has subsequently been cleaned out; only Cole Hamels and Martin Pérez return. Hamels is no longer an ace, having just posted the worst large-sample strikeout rate of his professional career, but he is a reliable pitcher who keeps the ball in the zone and in the ballpark. Pérez, meanwhile, is a back-of-the-rotation innings-eater with basically no stuff but enough competence to keep a game within reach and not miss any starts.
The new arrivals are more or less Pérez-like. Once a strikeout artist in the Rays' system, Matt Moore is the worst of them, coming off a 5.52-ERA season with the Giants. Maybe with the extra rest from using a six-man rotation, he'll be better, or maybe it will at least limit the damage he can do. Mike Minor was excellent in the Royals bullpen last year, but he has little upside as a starter. His track record in the rotation, where his fastball sits around 92 miles per hour, is one of relative adequacy. I would be surprised if he exceeds that. Doug Fister is the most interesting acquisition, having rediscovered a trace of his younger self last year. If he can keep it up, he's an excellent trade chip; if not, he has a high enough floor to still be of use.
After that – since someone is going go have to fill that sixth spot – you have much worse options. The team tried stretching out Matt Bush but abandoned that idea quickly. Bartolo Colόn and Jesse Chavez have each made it to the end of camp, and one will likely make the Opening Day roster. I highly doubt either has the ability last a whole season, which will mean calling upon other unappealing options, like non-roster invitees Austin Bibens-Dirkx, Chi Chi Gonzalez, and Edinson Vόlquez; or rookies like Ariel Jurado and Johander Méndez. This doesn't bode well.
The bullpen went through a lot of pitchers last year (26), but it seems like it could be better. Bush, Alex Claudio, and Keone Kela had the best seasons in 2017; if healthy now, Tony Barnette and Jake Diekman were good enough the year prior to think they can pitch effectively again. That's a decent group of five pitchers.
The rest of the bunch have warts but potential. José Leclerc has the arsenal to strike out anyone, but also such horrible command that he walked a fifth of the batters he faced last season.
Tim Lincecum is back, and should his tryout velocity be legit, he could be a solid reliever. Or he could take the kind of shellacking that ended his baseball career the first time. It's a total mystery at this point.
Similarly, we don't know how good Chris Martin is. After pitching horribly for the Rockies and Yankees, the 31-year-old Martin spent the past three seasons in Japan and dominated. Whether his success over there is replicable here is yet to be seen.
Nick Gardewine, who came up at the end of last season, showed why maybe it wasn't best for him to skip Triple-A, finishing his 12-game cup of coffee with a 5.63 ERA. Still, he has a solid minor-league track record, and with some time against older hitters, he could be ready for the bigs.
You can talk yourself into this team being a couple of breakout seasons from taking the Wild Card, but the smart money is on that not happening. Expect somewhere around (probably just under) 81 wins.
Oakland Athletics
Maybe I wouldn't think this if not for the name on the front of the jersey, but I think the A's have the potential to surprise people. They're a team with potentially killer flaws, but there's some legitimate upside that could make this team almost anything this year. (Not a division champion, of course.)
To begin with, they have some guys who can absolutely smack the crap out of the ball. Khris Davis, Matt Olson, and Matt Chapman (also a superb fielder) all rank among the game's best in "barrels" per plate appearance, and the lowest isolated slugging between the three was Chapman's .238. As a team, the A's were ferocious; just the Yankees, Astros, and Rangers hit more home runs.
The departures of Ryon Healy and Yonder Alonso (47 combined homers) will take some of the pop out of the Oakland lineup, but Healy was a terrible hitter otherwise, and Olson will fill Alonso's spot. Rookie Dustin Fowler and trade acquisition Stephen Piscotty should prove capable enough hitters while also providing much-needed defensive help to the outfield. Whether Jonathan Lucroy has anything left is something of a mystery, but surely he'll be better than the replacement-level group that occupied catcher last season.
There's some room for improvement, especially defensively and on the bench, but this could be a pretty good starting nine.
I'm less optimistic about the pitching.
While the A's have a trio of relief pitchers (Liam Hendriks, Yusmeiro Petit, Blake Treinen) who can pitch meaningful innings late in games, they lack anything in the way of bullpen depth. This will be a problem in any potential Wild Card race.
What about the starters? While it's hard to find many bad things to say about them, it's hard to find many good things to say about them either. Kendall Graveman and Sean Manaea are perfectly fine mid-tier starters being asked to head a rotation. Daniel Megden and Andrew Triggs have shown similar ability in smaller samples. If those four provide the bulk of the innings, the A's might have an underwhelming, below-average, and boring starting rotation, but it shouldn't be terrible.
However, these are pitchers, and we can never count on pitchers to remain healthy. Paul Blackburn, an all-command, all-grounder starter, was sidelined Thursday with a forearm strain and will miss Opening Day. The day before, Jharel Cotton, who has plenty of stuff but has yet to get it to work, underwent Tommy John surgery. Daniel Gossett is therefore the probable fifth starter, having a good minor league track record and one miserable major league season on his record.
A.J. Puk, the organization's top prospect, is expected to debut later this season, but he hasn't thrown a pitch above Double-A and therefore still needs seasoning. Brett Anderson and Trevor Cahill, signed in response to the Blackburn and Cotton injuries, may be called upon to eat innings, which would be encouraging in 2010 but is instead frightening in 2018.
If one of the four competent starters goes down, this could get really ugly.
The A's could have a passable enough pitching staff for their offense to lead them to .500 – or even the second Wild Card, without assuming too much extra luck or surprise contributions. At the same time, I can easily see injuries and bad pitching killing any hopes at a respectable season, the veteran pieces getting shipped off at the deadline, and Oakland limping into September with the best-case scenario being a top-five draft pick next June. They're an intriguing bunch.
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Next: Predictions for the division and Wild Card races, major awards, and the postseason.
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