Yankees and Angels have reshaped the baseball landscape

Rangers playing devils

Two years ago, baseball experts predicted Texas would be competitive in 2017. They arrived a year early, though, and became a surprise playoff team in 2016.

But instead of taking the next step forward, the team regressed this past season. They missed the playoffs and shipped off their best pitcher at the trade deadline.

They were always going to spend at least some of their Darvish-less payroll, but they might have been willing to be a bit more prudent with only one great team in the division. Not now. Now, they seem like the front-runners to trade for Greinke and his $127 million contract.

If that is their only move, it would be a terrible one. It’s okay for the Yankees or Nationals to trade for Greinke because they are two of the teams that seem like one good player away from the promised land.

But the Rangers had Darvish last year and still finished fourth in their division. Is 34-year old Greinke an upgrade? And if so, is he enough of one to lift the Rangers? Unlikely.

However, if this is just one part of a larger Rangers plan, then it makes sense. If so, it means they will draw more of baseball’s best to the AL West. That process seems in progress as the Rangers have already acquired starting pitcher Matt Moore from the Giants.

And this looks like the next step in shifting the power away from the East.

When the Astros won the World Series this year, they became not only the first AL West team to win a WS in fifteen years, but also the first to appear in the Fall Classic since 2011.

Now the Astros, Rangers and Angels want to make this a trend.

All moves both great and small

Seattle, though, might have a hard time holding up their end. The Mariners have made moves both big and small over the last four or five years, but still, keep missing the playoffs. Rookies never matured while King Felix got old, all of which negated the additions of free agents such as Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz.

Now, they’re getting old, too.

GM Jerry Dipoto, the mad trader, pinned a lot of hopes on landing Ohtani. One of the most significant questions in the AL West is what the Mariners will do now?

They added Dee Gordon and his 60 stolen bases, but that might still leave them behind the Angels, let alone the Astros. Unless they add another impact player, they might be lucky if their bloated payroll lands them fourth in the West.

That’s a division that seems a lot more difficult than the AL East…for once.