Opening Day has finally arrived, and teams all around the league are gearing up for another pennant chase in hopes of being crowned this year’s World Series champion. Of course, there’s still another seven months to go before someone raises the Commissioner’s Trophy. Until the playoffs begin, teams will be focused on a smaller goal: winning their division. We’ll be conducting a series of polls to gauge who MLBTR readers believe is the favorite in each division. That series has already covered the National League, with the Dodgers, Cubs, and Phillies each coming out on top in their respective divisions. Now, the series moved on to the American League with a look at the AL West. Teams are listed in order of their 2024 record.
Houston Astros (88-73)
The only club to make the playoffs from the AL West last year, the Astros enter the 2025 season on the heels of a postseason that snapped their nearly decade-long run of trips to the ALCS. After a winter where the team parted ways with longtime franchise stalwarts such as Alex Bregman, Kyle Tucker, Justin Verlander, and Ryan Pressly, the team is looking very different than it has in previous years. There’s some clear signs of weakness, most notably the fact that the club’s outfield depth is thin enough that their starters in the outfield corners are two infielders: longtime second baseman Jose Altuve has moved to left, while top third base prospect Cam Smith is patrolling right field with just five games of experience outside of A-ball.
Flawed as the club’s roster may be, there’s still plenty to like about the Astros in 2025. Christian Walker is an upgrade at first base and Isaac Paredes is an All-Star caliber hitter who should benefit greatly from the Crawford Boxes as he steps into the third base job vacated by Bregman. Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown have a chance to form a strong front-of-the-rotation duo, while few teams boast a pair of arms better than Josh Hader and Bryan Abreu at the back of their bullpen. Whether that will be enough to maintain a stranglehold over the AL West in 2025 even after this winter’s departures remains to be seen, however.
Seattle Mariners (85-77)
2025 ended in soul-crushing fashion for Mariners fans as they missed the playoffs by just one game for the second consecutive season. The club’s offseason was similarly disappointing as well; despite rumors of trades that would’ve sent players like Triston Casas, Nico Hoerner, and Alec Bohm to the Pacific Northwest making their way through the rumor mill this winter, the club was content to simply re-sign Jorge Polanco and bring in veteran infielder Donovan Solano to augment a lineup that was in the bottom ten for runs scored last year.
Fortunately, there’s still some reason for optimism headed into 2025. The club’s elite rotation remains in place, and a quintet of Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryan Woo, Bryce Miller, and Luis Castillo should still give them an excellent chance to win on any given day, particularly with a strong bullpen that features fireballers like Andres Munoz and Matt Brash on the back end. A big year from Julio Rodriguez would go a long way to correcting last season’s offensive woes, but even if Rodriguez starts out slowly again in 2025 he’ll have support from a full season of deadline addition Randy Arozarena, who posted strong numbers down the stretch after being acquired from the Rays last summer. Will that be enough to get the club their first division title since 2001?
Texas Rangers (78-84)
When looking at clubs that finished below .500 in 2024, there’s arguably no team with more helium entering the 2025 campaign than the Rangers. The 2023 champs didn’t have the most explosive offseason, but nonetheless enter the season with an overhauled bullpen highlighted by Chris Martin and Robert Garcia as well as a pair of solid additions to the lineup in Joc Pederson and Jake Burger. The upside a healthy season from Jacob deGrom could offer the rotation is impossible to overstate, and the middle infield tandem of Corey Seager and Marcus Semien once again figures to be among the best in the sport.
If there’s a flaw in the club’s present construction, it’s a heavy reliance on youth. The club’s vaunted Vanderbilt duo of Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker are supremely talented and were always expected to be a big part of the team in 2025, but leaning on both youngsters as members of the Opening Day rotation is a tall ask given the pair’s inconsistency and inexperience at the major league level and highlights the lack of reliability in the club’s rotation outside of Nathan Eovaldi. In the lineup, meanwhile, Wyatt Langford appears to be as good as bet as any sophomore player can be to have a big year, but both he and Evan Carter struggled to stay healthy in 2024. Will those youngsters be able to carry the Rangers back to the playoffs?
Athletics (69-93)
West Sacramento’s temporary baseball team showed signs of life for the first time in a while during their final months in Oakland, even ending the season with a solid 32-32 record after the All-Star break. After departing Oakland, the club aggressively attempted to improve this winter. They signed right-hander Luis Severino and traded for southpaw Jeffrey Springs to bolster the rotation while adding Gio Urshela to the lineup and Jose Leclerc to the bullpen. That group of additions join a solid core featuring Lawrence Butler, Brent Rooker, Mason Miller, and Shea Langeliers.
As solid as that collection of talent is, however, the A’s will need a lot more to go right in order to compete this year. Steps forward from homegrown arms like JP Sears and Joey Estes would go a long way, as would former and current top prospects in the lineup like Tyler Soderstrom, Max Muncy, and Jacob Wilson breaking out and playing up to their ceilings. It’s certainly not impossible to imagine most of that happening. And if it did, the team surprising and making it back to the postseason for the first time since they tore down their core from the late 2010s should be on the table.
Los Angeles Angels (63-99)
Anaheim’s first year post-Shohei Ohtani could hardly have gone worse. Franchise face Mike Trout played just 29 games last year, and very few things went right for the club as they narrowly avoided a 100-loss season. That didn’t stop them from making an effort to improve this offseason, however. The club added Jorge Soler to the lineup for a stable source of power, with Yoan Moncada, Travis d’Arnaud, and Tim Anderson filling out the bench. Meanwhile, Yusei Kikuchi, Kyle Hendricks, and Kenley Jansen were added to the pitching staff to deepen the rotation and bring a proper closer into the bullpen.
Kikuchi, Soler, and Jansen are all solid pieces, but the club will need more than those ancillary additions to bounce back from a dreadful 2024 campaign. Trout putting together his first fully healthy season in half a decade would go a long way, and the club’s decision to shift him to right field could help in that goal. Outside of that, the club will need its young position players like Nolan Schanuel, Zach Neto, and Logan O’Hoppe to step up and put together big seasons if it has any hope of catching up to the top dogs in the AL West.
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Just two seasons after the top three AL West clubs finished within a game of each other in 2023, that same trio appear set to jockey for the top spot in the division once again. After years of being the prohibitive favorite on paper, the Astros look more vulnerable than ever. Will their offseason additions be enough to keep them on top, or will the Mariners’ impressive rotation or the Rangers’ infusion of young talent be enough to finally overtake Houston? Or, perhaps, you think the Athletics or Angels will surprise with their respective collections of offseason additions and talented youngsters. Have your say in the poll below:
Adolis Garcia is moving well and crushing the ball. I like Texas.
Nah, he just kills the Red Sox
Kyren Paris will be rookie of the year and if the team can stay healthy they have the bats and relief pitching to either win the division or at least a wild card spot! They will finish 88-74.
Angel lineup
Ward
Rengifo
Trout
Soler
Paris
Neto
Moncada
Ohoppe
Schnaul
Do you know what Paris has done well? He’s controlling the strike zone.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s great, but other than that, his two extra base hits are noise.
Don’t get so excited so quickly. You can hope, but at this time, there isn’t enough there.
The division is wide open so we have as good a chance as anybody and KC proved U can go from last to first in one season! The guys we added are all proven winners!
And I thought I, a mariners fan, was delusional!
Your Mariner team has ONE playoff appearance as a wild card over the past 23 years and ZERO championships that pretty much says it all….
Let fans be fans. If an Ms fan thinks their pitching will make the difference, cool.
The Angels are 4-1. I hope reality doesn’t set in for awhile.
I have to say rangers because their starters are now great on paper and the offense can’t get any worse (Evan Carter could do better, Wyatt Langford breakout etc)
But who’s in their bullpen now without Yates and leclerc???
Starters are great on paper? No way Rocker and Leiter are not on an innings limit. Which will tax the bullpen down the stretch. DeGrom will go down for the year by June. By Sept Eovaldi will understand the meaning of the lyrics “one is the loneliest number”.
gray and bradford will be coming back. could see a promotion or two at some point. hopefully mahle figures it out coming off injury, and dunning finds something in the minors and becomes average-ish again. they have (and will have) options, what you think of them, well that’s up to you
call them Sacramento! Just because they’re a bunch of bums doesn’t mean we have to enable their homeless narrative!
I was wondering why the writer would say JP Sears is a homegrown talent? I guess getting a finished pitcher who was MLB ready with a handful of games under their belt who pitched exactly 1 game for the A’s AAA team makes him homegrown? Why do the A’s love Yankees oft injured pitchers so much? Severino is going to spend 2 of his 3 year contract on the IL. We all know that. He’ll be sitting next to Waldichuck and Medina in the trainers room by the All Star break. Hopefully the ghost of Sonny Gray stayed at the Coliseum.
The Montas trade worked out well.
Wouldn’t homegrown mean that he was drafted by the A’s?
Seattle drafted him then he was traded to NNY and finally traded to A’s.
Fangraphs has A’s 40 man roster breakdown with 13 homegrown players and JP Sears not on that list.
fangraphs.com/roster-resource/depth-charts/athleti…
West Sacramento
Let’s go A’s! Rooting for the Kelly green guys… but maybe the Rangers pull ahead.
Dodgers.
Rockies
My predictions:
1. Seattle Mariners (91-71)
2. Houston Astros (88-74)
3. Texas Rangers (82-80)
4. Sacramento Athletics (76-86)
5. Los Angeles Angels (70-92)
Hey, the Angels are in first place. 🙂
So with the Angels adding Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Travis D’Arnold, Jorge Soler, Kyle Hendricks, Kakuchi, and Kyren Paris looking like a rookie of the year candidate all those additions only equate to 7 more wins verses last season!
None of them
MLBTR needs to get on board with calling them the Sacramento Athletics. Not “The Athletics” -Sacramento is their home for at least the next three seasons.
You could say the same thing to MLB.
The Sacramento A’s of Sacramento!
Correction: The Sacramento Athletics of West Sacramento!
(Do us all a favor and continue to call them the Athletics)
If the Rangers starting pitching can get/stay healthy, they look like the favorites in the West, but you can never count the Astro’s out of it. Once again, Seattle has great starting pitching but did absolutely nothing to improve their Achilles heel ( offense). They will fall short of the playoffs yet again due to their lack of offensive talent.
“(Do us all a favor and continue to call them the Athletics)”
No, we’ll call them the Sacramento Athletics, whether businessmen like it or not.
Any relation to the guy who played on the TV show emergency? I used to love that show when I was a kid.
The West Sacramento A’s of Sacramento
Yes, we know, we know, Gulf of America…
Bigly! Like no one has ever seen before!
Very tremendous.
Gulf of America makes sense. It’s adjacent to North America and South America. Gulf of Mexico doesn’t make much sense.
Your approval regarding this matter is yuge, like no one has ever seen before.
Man… what a jerk you are.
Bigly.
Love the mis-print / prediction that mariners fans will have a soul crushing end to 2025. That’s how it’s gone for us the last few years (except 2022)
The two Texas teams look to be more complete than the rest of the division.
I’m going with the Astros until they don’t win it. I also think Cam Smith’s bat heats up after about 2 months of adjusting to MLB pitching and helps carry them.
Angels. Paris takes over CF. Wins MVP. When the Angels clinch the division, Ward, Paris, and Trout do their OF bump just as a rogue meteor barrels towards Earth and takes out the threesome. They get swept in the playoffs. The curse continues. Go Angels.
It’s very very early, but Adell and Paris are the only two Angel hitters with a positive WAR.
And this is a great example of why bullpen ERA is meaningless. The Angels pen is the reason they have won three games. Every time they have been needed, they have stepped up.
21st in bullpen ERA.
They are 1st in win probability added. Which is a much better bullpen stat.
The Angels bullpen is very good, which is why I don’t think they will finish in last place. A Bullpen’s value is greatly undervalued.
The old adage that to win, you need to invest in 2 of the 3: starting pitching, bullpen, and clutch hitting (/stars who produce). Angel fans know the Halos never invest in long term SP, so they’ve tried the other two realms. With little to no success of late. Bullpen is a must.
i certainly don’t know who will win the division , and neither does anyone else.
I am really big on the A’s. They may not win it, but they will be in the running until the end.
They looked really good in their series against the Mariners. Felt they really improved over the course of the offseason. While the Mariners offense isn’t good at all, I could tell the A’s pitching is very much improved from last year, and looked solid.
The Bears
Didn’t you mean “da bears”?
You are correct ma’am
lol after seeing that first series against the A’s, the Mariners looked pathetic outside of Gilbert, Woo, a couple relievers, and Polanco.
I’m really upset about what the media and fans are doing to Julio. We’re putting too much pressure on him. He is not the beginning and end of the Mariners offense. He is not a superstar. Is a regular, run of the mill, average outfielder. As soon as we start realizing that, the sooner the rest of our offense can start taking some responsibility for their failures. Julio isn’t even our best offensive player. It’s arguable who that is on the Mariners, but no one really stands out.
Every single baseball professional analyst totally disagrees with you. Are you smarter than the likes of Buster Olney?
runbailey;
Buster Olney? LOL
Look, Julio is a terrific defensive CF. He has the 5 toolls. He was having a very good season a few years ago, got selected to the All-Star game, and won some silly batting contest against a batting practice pitcher and the national baseball media anointed him as a superstar. The same media that 5 years ago told us that the Chicago White Sox were the next great team because they hit a lot of HR’s and their pitchers K’ed a lot of opposing batters. The fact that those guys didn’t know how to play fundamental baseball was lost on them.
Julio is surely not an “average” ML player. He clearly has above-average talent, but it appears he’s taken his media-generated celebrity too seriously. There’s a saying in pro sports: It’s hard to get to the top, but far more difficult to stay there because opponents go after those at the top. Sports are human beings competing…..not projected statistics being carried out.
The guy that runs the Mariners has a history of overpaying players that have a good season with multi-year contracts, then finding himself in a corner because he doesn’t have enough flexibility in the payroll budget to “fill holes”.
Julio is still only 24 years-old. Who knows about the future. But at this point he’s hardly an impact player as say Bryce Harper and Juan Soto were in their early 20’s; or a healthy Ronald Acuña Jr. (Am curious to see if Jackson Merrill builds on his first season.)
I’ve got a Garden Hoe smarter than Buster Olney.
Astros.
Seattle Space Marines
Gotta give it to the stros but it won’t be as comfortable as they’re used to it being.
The polls tell me 10% of voters are Angels fans.
The Rendon Effect
And ten percent are A’s fans.
Nobody wasn’t a choice so I didn’t vote.
HOUSTON
Picked the Rangers, probably not purely because it will make me feel better about what they just did to the Red Sox…
Seattle Mariners with 95 wins in honor of the 30th anniversary of the 1995 team.
Don’t remind me of 1995.
The Sacramento A’s are going to surprise some people.
Whoever avoids the most self-inflicted damage.
If the season ended tonight, the Angels would be in first place.
Just saying.
IMHO
This season totally depends on team health. If every teams stays 100% healthy and all players play to their projected metrics, the Seattle Mariners will win the division.
Tell us the last time “projected metrics” were correct about individual players or teams
As for “staying 100%healty” – LOL – have you even been
following MLB for a week?
Mariners own metrics are built to try and only qualify for a playoff spot. So yeah 85-86 wins. They aren’t building that team to attempt to actually win anything. They’re built to rely on standings luck around the league. I’m not trying to be negative. That’s very literally how they build that roster. They weren’t going to even pay the $ to project 90 wins.
I gotta say, it would be great if the athletics took the division.
Can you imagine major league baseball playoffs played in a AAA stadium? That would be hilarious.
I want a World Series in that West Sacramento pinball machine!
The Angels, of course!! LMAO!
Not the “Not Sacramento” A’s