Baseball Update: AL West

The Baseball Update is a look at the happenings around Major League Baseball.

The AL West had a interesting week. As I said last week, the Seattle Mariners are complete phonies. In their last ten games they have gone 3-7 and dropped to third place in the division. The Mariners gave up 48 runs in their last seven losses. The Mariners are 14th in the league in runs allowed. One of their biggest problems is that they allow too many base on balls.

While I don't think they are out of the race for the division, no one is running away with this division.

Recovering: The Anaheim Angeles (I refuse to call them the Los Angeles Angles. They play a block away from Disneyland in Anaheim.) are starting to fully recover from the death of Nick Adenhart. After the tragic loss, the Angles struggled while dealing with the death. But lately they have vastly improved including winning 7 out of ten games including a sweep of the Kansas City Royals. Their pitching staff has to improve their team ERA of 4.64, even though they were able to out pitch Zach Greinke. Their lineup has been caring this team in the past month.

In 1St: The Texas Rangers are in 1st place of the AL West and their lineup is carrying them there. Their past two wins have seen scores of 6-0 and 7-1. They are the sixth best hitting team in the majors and lead the league with 53 home runs. The real good news for this team, is their improved pitching staff. While they still have one of the worst ERA's in the majors, that average continues to rise. Now if we could only see the revival of Ana Benson.

Reversal?: Before the season, everyone speculated the Oakland A's would be carried by their lineup. And their young pitching staff would struggle early one. But the exact opposite has happened this year. The young pitching staff is caring the powerful lineup. The A's pitchers have the fifth best ERA in the majors and the fifth lowest runs allowed in the league. Dallas Braden, Trevor Cahill, and Brett Anderson had a lot of pressure on their shoulders at the beginning of the season and they have dealt with it just fine. Now if they could get their lineup to start producing, they could make a run at the division.

I think every team in the AL West has a chance to win the division. Right now, Texas leads but the A's are only five games behind and are in last place. This is probably the only the division so far in the season that looks like it will be a complete crap shoot.

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You won't like Scott Rolen when he is mad.