The AL West is already a mess

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The AL West was expected to be up for grabs, and the first couple weeks of the 2017 MLB season have done nothing to change that expectation. The Astros have won four straight, and are now in first place at 8-4. The Angels were in first, but now they’ve lost five in a row and are 6-7 after dropping a series to the division-rival Rangers and getting swept by the Royals. The A’s, the only team that aren’t considered a contender in the West, sit at 5-7 after dropping a pair to Houston, while the Mariners climbed out of the cellar and temporarily forgot about their bullpen nightmares by sweeping the now-last-place Rangers.

There is no major declaration to make about how the standings will shake out in the AL West based on these early weeks, but it’s easy to believe that this kind of back and forth is a likely scenario throughout the year. The Astros can hit, but whether they’ll be able to pitch is a season-long question to ask. The Rangers won the West in 2016, but they also did so on the back of an absurd number of victories in one-run games, and repeating that feat won’t be simple: In fact, they’re already 0-4 in one-run games in 2017 after losing just 11 such games all of last year. The Angels have Mike Trout and a fairly balanced lineup, but the rotation, as usual, could be a problem. Then there are the Mariners, who have a whole lot of pieces, but no one yet knows if they’re the right ones.

This is all why we watch, though, isn’t it? The West is going to be a ton of fun, and it might be even more so if all of these teams stay just a little bit on the kind-of-bad side. A division can have anywhere from one to three postseason teams these days thanks to the two wild cards per league, and watching the West attempt to survive itself on its way to those spots will be far more entertaining and enthralling than what some of the other divisions have to offer us.