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:
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