The Rangers did not have a very good off-season, as they lost out on signing prized free agent Prince Fielder and they lost starting pitcher C.J. Wilson to the rival L.A. Angels. The Rangers will have, pretty much, the same team as they did last season, but that is not a bad thing since they came within 1 out of winning the World Series.
The Angels were 10 games over .500 last season, mainly because of their solid pitching, but they still finished 10 games behind the Texas Rangers and they did not make the playoffs. However, this season the Halos have high hopes since they won the free agency sweepstakes signing slugger Albert Pujols.
Last season the A’s finished the season 14 games under .500 and they ranked dead last in the league in attendance. Do the A’s have any chance to win back their fans? Hard to say and while there are a lot of question marks on offense Oakland does have a legit pitching staff.
Although the Los Angeles Dodgers had an “almost” NL MVP winner and a Cy Young winner in 2011, that’s pretty much all they had. Amid the continued ownership turmoil, the team made very few acquisitions during the offseason to better their 82-79 third place finish.
The San Francisco Giants had a pretty good year last year, but came up eight games short of the division champion Arizona Diamondbacks, ultimately settling for a disappointing second place finish. So how will the Giants do in 2012?
The Atlanta Braves were in prime position to lock-up their second-straight wildcard playoff berth in the National League last season, but a complete collapse down the stretch paved the way for St. Louis’s amazing run to a World Series title.
The Philadelphia Phillies have ruled the roost in the NL East for the last five seasons, but this team was not put together just to win division titles.
The Colorado Rockies enter 2012 coming off a dismal 73-win season, and while they added to their somewhat already powerful offense, they failed to add any real assets to their questionable pitching staff that let them down after being pegged to win the division or wild card in 2011.
Coming off their most successful season since 2007, with a 94-68 record, good enough to steal the NL West from the 2010 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants who were eight games back, the Arizona Diamondbacks are poised to repeat as the NL West’s top team in 2012.
The New York Mets finished the 2011 regular season in fourth-place in the NL East with an overall record of 77-85, but the downward progression actually began after they made the playoffs in 2006 when they won 97 games.
The last time the Washington Nationals were .500 was their first year in the league after coming down from Montreal in 2005. That year’s team went 81-81 and last year’s ballclub went 80-81 with everything in-between the two seasons being completely forgettable.
The last time that Florida made it into the postseason was in 2003 when it went all the way to winning a World Series title.
The Milwaukee Brewers were in the headlines quite a bit this offseason, but for all the wrong reasons. First, their MVP left fielder Ryan Braun was hit with a 50-game suspension for failing a drug test and their All-Star first baseman Prince Fielder moved onto greener pastures in Detroit as a free agent.
Anyone who closely follows Major League Baseball fully understands the impact that first basemen Albert Pujols had on the St. Louis Cardinals, but with his departure via free agency to the Los Angeles Angels, we now have to try and estimate his impact on not being on this team.
The Cincinnati Reds followed-up their 2010 NL Central Division title with a disappointing 79-83 record and third-place finish in 2011.
The 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates got a fast start out of the gate last season and actually stayed in the Central Division race past the All-Star break, but the end result was a 72-90 record and another losing season.
