It Seems As If Astros, Athletics Would Do Battle As AL West's Top Rotation
It’s clearly going to be a while before we see anything that resembles regular-season baseball.
Thanks for that, COVID-19. Nothing like a basic pandemic to shut down life as we know it.
There will at some point be baseball again. Until then, we’re going to break away from time to time to look at this sport that’s on hold. Today we’re going to look at ranking the American League West starting rotations.
Some, like the Astros, have aces. Some, like the A’s, have depth. Some, like the Rangers, have a solid 1-2-3 punch. Some, like the Angels, were so bad last year you’d think they could only get better. And some, like the Mariners, are King-less.
Again, the season isn’t starting tomorrow, next week or anytime soon. But this is how we see the West rotations when baseball gets back to being baseball.
1. Houston. The Astros’ rotation took a huge hit when Gerrit Cole took his 20-5 record and shuffled off to the Bronx. It took a lesser hit when Collin McHugh headed to Boston. Still, Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke are back, and nobody in the division has a 1-2 punch like that. But Verlander, who was 21-6 last year, is 36 and so is Greinke, who was 8-1 in 10 starts after showing up in a mid-2019 trade from Arizona.
The trouble for the Astros is that in a compressed season, there will be fewer off days, more doubleheaders and that means a smaller percentage of starts for those two and more for Wade Miley, a 14-game winner last year and Lance McCullers, who is coming back from Tommy John surgery. The fifth starter could be Brad Peacock, like it was last year, but it could be Jose Urquidy or Josh James, who split about 100 innings between them last year.
2. Oakland. It’s a close second. The A’s are at least six men deep, and because of those off days and doubleheaders we were talking about, that’s going to be important.
But six might be the absolute minimum needed for the A’s, with only Mike Fiers having made as many as 30 starts last year. Frankie Montas looked like an All-Star before a drug suspension cost him half a season. Sean Manaea missed five months of the season following shoulder surgery before having a monster 4-0 record and 1.21 ERA in five September starts.
Then there are the left-handed rookies, Jesus Luzardo and A.J. Puk. Both spent 2019 coming back from Tommy John surgery, and both are healthy now, although Puk was shut down after two Cactus League starts. Will they need to have their innings paced? If so, the A’s will be happy to still have Chris Bassitt, who made 25 starts last year and went 10-5.
3. Texas. Last year, things were a mess. Eight different pitchers made at least nine starts and four more started at least four times. So much will depend on a newcomer, 2017 Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber. He missed the last five months of 2019 after fracturing his arm, but averaged 19 wins and 210 innings the previous two seasons.
Mike Minor and Lance Lynn both threw 208 innings last year and combined for 30 wins, so they give Texas quality in the Nos. 2 and 3 spots.
Beyond that, the free agent signing of Kyle Gibson, who averaged a dozen wins a year over the last three years in Minnesota, will help. If a couple of young lefties, Joe Palumbo and Kolby Allard, both of whom had 2019 cameos with Texas, could step up, that’d make the Rangers more competitive, top to bottom.
4. Los Angeles/Anaheim. The good news is that a frontline starting pitching is returning in the person of Shohei Ohtani. The bad news is that Ohtani, who plays in the outfield and can hit in the middle of the lineup, wasn’t going to be ready by opening day. But now, maybe, he’ll be ready to go when baseball resumes.
Without Ohtani, Angels starters had a terrible 5.64 ERA, so the Angels had to make moves. And they did, bringing in Dylan Bundy from the Orioles and Julio Teheran from the Braves. That means that Andrew Heaney, and Matt Andriese, picked up in January deal with the Diamondbacks, are in position eventually to pitch at the end of the rotation.
But if Ohtani isn’t good to go right away, there will be issues.
5. Seattle. It won’t really seem like the Mariners are the Mariners, not with Felix Hernandez, the rock of the rotation for a decade and a half, now plying his trade in Atlanta. But it’s time for Seattle to move on without him.
Maybe Marco Gonzalez isn’t quite an ace, but he’ll do after winning 16 games for a terrible team in 2019. And Mike Leake, at 32, might still have some thing left as a mid-rotation guy. The question mark is what the Mariners can expect from Yusei Kikuchi, who was 73-46 during his time in Japan, is better than the 6-11 he showed last year.
Former A’s started Kendall Graveman is healthy again after missing two-thirds of 2018 and all of 2919 following Tommy John surgery. Taijuan Walker, once the next-big-thing in Seattle, is back after a missing all but four games of the 2018-19 seasons thanks to Tommy John surgery. A longshot for big things could be Justus Sheffield, the former Yankee prospect who now has the chance to win a berth in the Seatlle rotation.