A Brief and Scary Thought About the AL West

Now that Yu Darvish has found a home in Texas and Albert Pujols is settling in Orange County, the next major name on the list to find a home is Prince Fielder. A couple weeks ago when I wrote that the Seattle Mariners would likely not be in on the Fielder sweepstakes, I was apparently misinformed (or perhaps did little to no research). If the Mariners sign Fielder the AL West will be scary. And also fucking entertaining.

I feel bad for the A's, though, they're looking almost as irrelevant as the Houston Astros...

Guess Yu?

So there seems to be lots of Yu Darvish News today. Looks like the bidding has closed and an announcement will be made today or tomorrow. After reading this, it reminds me of that game "Guess Who" I used to play as a kid. Here's a little snippet for you:

• The Marlins did not bid on Darvish, according to Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald (on Twitter).
• The Mets didn't place a bid, Howard Megdal of the Journal News reports.
• The Yankees' bid is modest, according to Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com (on Twitter). Indications are the winning bid is "sky high."
• Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports reports (on Twitter) that the Fighters plan to accept the posting bid no matter how large it is.
• The Yankees did post a bid, according to ESPN.com's Buster Olney (Twitter link). 
• The Rays did not bid, according to Marc Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times (on Twitter).
• The Angels did not bid on Darvish, according to MLB.com's Alden Gonzalez (on Twitter).
• Three MLB executives speculated that the Blue Jays and Rangers are candidates to win the bidding for Darvish, according to ESPN.com's Buster Olney (on Twitter).
• The Twins did not bid on Darvish, according to Joe Christensen of the Minneapolis Star Tribune (on Twitter).
• The Red Sox did not bid on Darvish, according to Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe (on Twitter). 

So yeah, you get the idea. I'm sure the answer is hidden in some cryptic cypher within this story...

What I've deduced from all this is that it seems the Blue Jays and Rangers are the two major players in winning his negotiating rights. I have a feeling that Texas is going to get him based on Los Angeles Angels signing Albert Pujols. They can't come away emptyhanded this off season. Also they've got a hall of fame pitcher as team president in Nolan Ryan. Along with the fact that they've recently named Greg Maddux as a special assistant to GM, I can see how they might be a little biased towards pitching. And rumour has it that the winning bid is gonna be quite large...

The Pujols-Wilson-Fielder Fallout

So in case you hadn't heard, Albert Pujols signed with the Los Angeles Angels. As of last night, it looked like he was headed back to the Cardinals, so I was a little bit surprised. Apparently it was a 10 year deal worth about $250 million dollars. My first reaction was, this is a great deal for Albert Pujols. He got paid big time and on top of that, it's an AL team. At some point he's going to be a liability on defense, so he can easily make the transition to DH instead of being a human pylon at 1st base halfway through his contract in the NL.

It was also announced that the Angels signed CJ Wilson today. So basically, this means that in order to stay competitive in the AL West(at least in the short term) the Texas Rangers HAVE to sign Prince Fielder. If he goes to another team, than Texas can kiss their World Series hopes good bye...