AL East

How do you respond if you win 85 games and finish tied for third in your division?

Well, if you’re the New York Yankees, you respond by spending half a billion dollars in hopes of making sure it doesn’t happen again.

On a superficial level, the New York Yankees spending nearly $500 million on Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann and Masahiro Tanaka this offseason makes sense because the team missed the playoffs last year and had significant questions about the future. 

The Tampa Bay Rays are preparing to begin their spring training for the 2014 season. The team is coming off another successful season, making the postseason for the fourth time in six seasons.

Unlike many recent years, the Rays do not have to begin spring training discussing the loss of any marquee players needing to be filled with an unproven prospect.

The New York Yankees have invested a great deal of money in Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka. And on Friday, Feb. 7, general manager Brian Cashman explained why.

It has been a long and winding road for Michael Pineda to make his first start with the New York Yankees, but now it's time for Pineda to take that next step in his career and become a full-time starter.

If all you're looking for is a typical 150-200-word blurb, then this should do the trick.

After Murphy’s Law wrecked their 2012 season, everything went the Boston Red Sox’s way in 2013. They won 97 games, the AL East title, the American League pennant and, of course, the World Series.

A little more than a year has passed since the Toronto Blue Jays shocked the baseball world and captured the hearts of Canadians nationwide, following two huge trades and the free-agency signing of outfielder Melky Cabrera.

The moves made by general manager Alex Anthopoulos made the Blue Jays fan base forget all about the departure of manager John Farrell to the Boston Red Sox.

Alex Rodriguez finally learned his fate when arbitrator Fredric Horowitz dropped his suspension from 211 games to 162 games, first reported by USA Today's Bob Nightengale. In the process, it has given the New York Yankees salary relief for the 2014 season by wiping A-Rod's money off of the books. 

You don't come across perfect free-agent fits that often. A lot of players fill needs, but not budgets. Some players fill needs and budgets, but not long-term plans. And so on. You know how it is.

I guess that makes today a special day, for today we have an excuse to talk about a rare perfect free-agent fit: A.J. Burnett and the Orioles.

The New York Yankees are known across baseball as having one of the lesser-ranked farm systems in the sport. Now we have an exact number to put on that belief.