Each Teams Biggest Offseason Needs: AL West
Los Angeles Angels: Pitching, Pitching, and more Pitching
Everyone knows how the Angels organization works. They always sign solid hitters, and never get any good pitching. Their best pitcher over the last decade was Shohei Ohtani, and he also won Silver Sluggers. The Angels love to spend money, but refuse to get any pitching. At the plate they’re not too bad. With a hopefully healthy Mike Trout, newly signed Jorge Soler, Luis Rengifo, Zach Neto and Taylor Ward, their offense has a lot of potential. They need to spend money on a good pitcher. They threw money at Tyler Anderson, which was okay, but they need a horse, a guy that you feel confident in every 5th day. Angels pitchers had a team ERA above 4.50. Not good. They need to go after Corbin Burnes, Jose Quintana, Blake Snell, or anyone who has more than a year or two of good baseball.
Seattle Mariners: Any Offensive Weapon
On the opposite side of the Angels, the Mariners pitching was incredible. They had the best starting rotation in baseball with Castillo, Miller, Gilbert, and Kirby all being very good. But the Mariners had the most glaring issue: scoring runs. The Mariners had the 2nd worst team batting average only in front of the White Sox. The Mariners offense was horrendous. Cal Raleigh led the team in OPS, and his was below .750. Julio Rodriguez got hot at the end of the year like he always does, but thats all they have. They got good production from Victor Robles, but we can’t expect that to stick. They need a top-of-the-market bat very bad. Expecting that guys like J.P Crawford, Luke Raley and Randy Arozarena have bounce back years, pairing Anthony Santander or Alex Bregman with J-Rod, Raleigh and those guys would help this team a lot.
The Athletics: Keeping the players happy?
The A’s are obviously a weird team. They have some extremely bright spots on their team, like Mason Miller, Brent Rooker, Lawrence Butler, even Shea Langeliers had a nice year. But past that, its pretty rough. They have no good bench depth at all, and I don’t think that they like having a guy like Abraham Toro playing everyday. With the franchise moving out of Oakland, they will be playing in West Sacremento, CA at Sutter Health Park. That alone is not going to be enjoyable for the players. The A’s need to just keep their players happy in any way possible during this period after Oakland, and before Las Vegas.
The Houston Astros: Re-sign Alex Bregman and get healthy
I think that the Astros are going to be good again, on both sides of the ball. You still have good offense with Altuve, Tucker, Alvarez, and Diaz holding down that lineup. Their pitching is good still with Valdez, Blanco and Brown in the rotation, and Pressley, Hader, Abreu and company in the ‘pen. They need to get healthy on the mound. Injuries to basically their whole rotation hurt them badly in 2024. Getting Javier, Garcia and Urquidy back will be a huge help for them. And on the offensive side, I believe that they need to keep Alex Bregman. He is a great hitter that loves hitting in Minute Maid, he uses the Crawford Boxes better than anyone. I think they need to keep the core that sent them to 7 straight ALCS appearances.
Texas Rangers: Bouce back and keep Kirby Yates
The Rangers fell hard coming off of their 2023 World Series Championship. Almost everyone from their championship team had a down year besides Corey Seager. Semien, Garcia and Heim had bad years, which made it really hard on the pitching staff. They weren’t as good on the mound either. Their best starter ERA was nearing 4.00 with Nathan Eovaldi at a 3.80. Injuries from Scherzer didn’t help, and everyone else just being okay made this team feel very boring. I believe that their need is to just have a bounce back. They will start the year with 2-time Cy Young winner Jacob Degrom being healthy, and Kumar Rocker will who should end up being very good for them. They also need to sign Kirby Yates back to a short term deal. Yates was absolutely nasty for them as a closer, posting a 1.17 ERA with 33 saves over 61.2 innings.
Tomorrow we move to the NL, starting with the NL East.
