Monday Evening GM

Three cheers for the Bavasi regime, which has failed to put together any more prospects out-veterans in trades here at the non-waiver deadline. And that in a year with quite a number of trades actually pulled off. Anecdotally, it seems to me like it was a busier deadline than normal.

Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

Where does this leave us, intrepid readers (all three of you)? Let's havaluuk...

	W	L	GB	RS	RA
Oakland	55	50	--	472	475
Los Angeles	54	50	0.5	512	490
Texas	52	53	3	528	511
Seattle	51	53	3.5	494	489

With 57 or 58 games left to play, every team in this pathetic division is in the race. (Do I hear another huzzah?!)

Despite all of the rumored deadline deals, the only player moves made today that should alter the landscape of the AL West for the last two months happened in Arlington, where young gun Jon Daniels went out and got himself a star left fielder, a bench OF, a mediocre starting pitcher, and a bench DH, without giving up anything significant in return. Kudos.

I suppose the upgrade from John Rheinecker to Kip Wells is, ahhh, potentially a positive for the Strangers, while Carlos Lee should be able to improve slightly over what the departed Kevin Mench was providing. In all, Daniels strengthened the Texas squad a bit. Meanwhile, the A's and Angels talked big (Tejada, Zito, etc.), but did nothing. And the Mariners thankfully remained content with "Platoon," the open-air stage production of Oliver Stone's film, this time touring the country and starring Eduardo Perez and Ben Broussard.

If we do nothing sophisticated at all in terms of guessing how the AL West rosters will perform down the stretch, the result looks pretty positive for a rather surprising team:

	W	L	GB	RS	RA
Los Angeles	89	73	--	857	764
Oakland	85	77	4	748	733
Seattle	85	77	4	823	762
Texas	84	78	5	849	789

This forecast depends upon players continuing to perform exactly as they have for the first four months of the season, which is hardly realistic. Actually, I'm probably shortchanging Texas a touch on pitching here, so let's throw them an extra victory, and make it a three-way tie for last in the division. Neat.

But CAN we, reasonably-minded quasi-statheads though we are, expect each team's players to perform in keeping with the already passed four months of the season? Well, probably not. I'll note what seem to be each team's pair of biggest candidates for surprising/unexpected performances that could alter the standings:

1. Robb Quinlan/Angels first-base disaster.
Casey Kotchman, felled by mono. Darin Erstad, curse of the Cornhusker. Kendry Morales isn't ready. I love Howie Kendrick as a prospect, but his bat won't play at first. Not even for Anaheim, er, Los Angeles. Currently, Quinlan is the "starting" first baseman, and his RC/27 that factors into the above calculations is WAY over his head. Angels lose 20 runs of projected offense here, virtually guaranteed.

2. Mike Napoli/Angels catcher.
Another youngster who has produced way over his ability. Good for him turning tools into skills, but he's really a .245 hitter, and for all the HR we can expect him to swat, I think that counting on 7.1 RC/27 going forward is a bit optimistic. Take about 15 more runs away from the Angels.

3. Big Frank/Oakland DH
Look, the man can still rake. But if he runs at all, he's gonna pull something. Minus 10 runs for lack of serious depth at "guy standing up on his card."

4. Bobby Crosby/A's shortstop.
While I remain skeptical about the touting of young Mr. Crosby as an MVP candidate, he is nevertheless better than his 3.6 RC/27 suggests. He'll do better, adding about 11 runs to the Oakland tally.

5. Big Sexy/Seattle masher.
Richie has looked a little better recently, and I expect him to kick it up a notch (BAM!) to the tune of +10 runs for the hometown nine.

6. Ichiro!/Seattle minor deity.
Of course, if we're COUNTING on Big Sexy to step up his production, then we might want to hedge on Ichiro's unreal level of production. Take those ten runs back off the board.

7. Carlos Lee/shiny new Texas outfielder.
Everything's bigger in Texas, except that Carlos Lee will now have to face actual pitchers every day. His RC27 numbers will plummet, costing the Rangers some 10-15 runs from what they might have expected.

8. Ian Kinsler/Texas second baseman.
Young Mr. Kinsler is tres impressive thus far, but rookies can wilt down the stretch in the Texas heat, and having started so hot, he's likely to experience at least some difficulties in August and September. I'm thinking another 10-12 runs down the toilet.

You'll notice I'm not picking on any pitchers here. For just two months, it's pretty difficult to guess how individual pitchers will do. Sure, it's pretty safe to say that John Lackey will pitch better than Joel Pineiro, but otherwise...yeah. Let's leave the RA column alone for now.

The revised chart (including some RS adjustments not noted above):

	W	L	GB	RS	RA
Oakland	86	76	--	752	733
Los Angeles	85	77	1	857	764
Seattle	83	79	3	777	762
Texas	81	81	5	834	789

The conclusion: either way, we're still in the race...with the GIANT caveat that we can probably count on Hargrove costing the Mariners another game or three that we could otherwise win, which will put us right in last place. With the relative dearth of moves (and the Texas moves being not quite so important as it first appears), everything's likely to remain pretty close all season.

Well, there's one other caveat. Texas just got hurler Adam Eaton back from the DL...if he and newly acquired Pirate castoff (arrgh) Kip Wells make a difference in the Rangers' RA column, then Texas could leapfrog over other teams toward the top.

If any of this drivel is correct, then each AL West team controls its own destiny. To be able to say that about Seattle is...well, neat.