2011 wasn’t a good season for the Chicago White Sox. The team was expected to compete for the AL Central, but they finished a very disappointing 79-83. There was plenty of drama surrounding the team throughout the year as well.
No one had a better offseason than the Detroit Tigers. While the Tigers won 94 games and beat the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series, expectations are much higher this season.
Cleveland burst out of the gates last year to grab a big lead in the AL Central. The Indians actually led the division by seven games after starting 30-15.
It seems like the Kansas City Royals always have tons of young talent, but they haven’t been able to mature into that contender just yet.
Everything that could go wrong went wrong last year for the Minnesota Twins. No team was bit as hard as the Twins by the dreaded injury bug. The team that was a perennial favorite to be at the top of the AL Central standings could only muster up 63 wins.
Although the Los Angeles Dodgers had an “almost” NL MVP winner and a Cy Young winner in 2011, that’s pretty much all they had. Amid the continued ownership turmoil, the team made very few acquisitions during the offseason to better their 82-79 third place finish.
The Rangers did not have a very good off-season, as they lost out on signing prized free agent Prince Fielder and they lost starting pitcher C.J. Wilson to the rival L.A. Angels. The Rangers will have, pretty much, the same team as they did last season, but that is not a bad thing since they came within 1 out of winning the World Series.
The Angels were 10 games over .500 last season, mainly because of their solid pitching, but they still finished 10 games behind the Texas Rangers and they did not make the playoffs. However, this season the Halos have high hopes since they won the free agency sweepstakes signing slugger Albert Pujols.
Last season the A’s finished the season 14 games under .500 and they ranked dead last in the league in attendance. Do the A’s have any chance to win back their fans? Hard to say and while there are a lot of question marks on offense Oakland does have a legit pitching staff.
Although the Los Angeles Dodgers had an “almost” NL MVP winner and a Cy Young winner in 2011, that’s pretty much all they had. Amid the continued ownership turmoil, the team made very few acquisitions during the offseason to better their 82-79 third place finish.
The San Francisco Giants had a pretty good year last year, but came up eight games short of the division champion Arizona Diamondbacks, ultimately settling for a disappointing second place finish. So how will the Giants do in 2012?
The Atlanta Braves were in prime position to lock-up their second-straight wildcard playoff berth in the National League last season, but a complete collapse down the stretch paved the way for St. Louis’s amazing run to a World Series title.
The Philadelphia Phillies have ruled the roost in the NL East for the last five seasons, but this team was not put together just to win division titles.
The Colorado Rockies enter 2012 coming off a dismal 73-win season, and while they added to their somewhat already powerful offense, they failed to add any real assets to their questionable pitching staff that let them down after being pegged to win the division or wild card in 2011.
Coming off their most successful season since 2007, with a 94-68 record, good enough to steal the NL West from the 2010 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants who were eight games back, the Arizona Diamondbacks are poised to repeat as the NL West’s top team in 2012.
The New York Mets finished the 2011 regular season in fourth-place in the NL East with an overall record of 77-85, but the downward progression actually began after they made the playoffs in 2006 when they won 97 games.
