AL West

After almost becoming the starting second baseman for Venezuela in the final match of the World Baseball Classic, Jose Lopez has now returned to Seattle, as the Venezuelans lost in the semi-finals to Korea 10-2 last Saturday.

And now that many Seattle Mariners are back from their respected teams, the Mariners can show that with their added players, they can improve on their .500 record, the mark currently sit at after a 5-1 win today against the San Francisco Giants.

It was an interesting game for the Mariners as former ace, Randy Johnson gave up two runs in three innings.

Austin Knowlin leads the dozen returning Columbia receivers (CREDIT: Columbia Athletics)

On June 4, 1974, the Cleveland Indians held "Ten Cent Beer Night."

The club intended to offer as much eight-ounce Stroh's beer as fans could drink—and for only 10 cents a pop.

Now some background from before the Indians played the Texas Rangers that night.

Six days earlier there was a bench-clearing brawl between the two teams at Arlington Stadium in Texas.

Time to go West, my friends. I don’t think we are going to find the best baseball out here this year. Lately, for some reason, the East Coast is dominating things in sports. In the NCAA’s, it was something like two or three teams from out west were one of the top four seeds, 16 overall. The only recent World Series winners from out west were the Angels and Diamondbacks, the latter's championship dating back to their Randy Johnson/Curt Schilling years.

I don’t see the trend changing this year.

While the majority of my fellow hardball junkies are busy overdosing on the latest, most obscure stat that quantifies the number of sunflower seeds consumed by Ross Gload per at-bat (adjusting for park factors), I’m staring at a map. 

Ever since 2001, the Seattle Mariners have relied on one player to consistently get on base and to score runs.

Ichiro Suzuki is now starting to show his age, 35 years old, on the baseball field. Sure, his team in the World Baseball Classic, Japan, is doing rather well, but Ichiro has not done well. Right now he is posting a .214 batting average for Team Japan, not quite his typical .340 batting average.

But, what was his stats in the 2006 World Baseball Classic? Back then, he had a typical .364 average.

It's been a long time since I've been able to truly raise my expectations for the Texas Rangers. In fact, it's been exactly 10 years. Maybe I'm just tired of writing about a rebuilding program, but frankly the Rangers were in such bad shape it made an excruciating rebuilding program necessary.

This spring has been different, though, for one simple reason. They're ready.

The 2008 sports scene in Seattle was something straight out of one of those bad horror movies like Hatchet, or the Saw Sequels.

The Seahawks missed the playoffs for the first time in recent memory, the Mariners were miserable, and we do not even have a basketball team to boo anymore because they currently reside in the 44th largest market in America, playing like my High School basketball team, who have not made the playoffs in 30 years.

Fans are always asking: why do Major League teams bring so many players to Spring Training?

To answer that question quickly—they do it in order to get a good look at how the young players are performing and more importantly how they play against other Major League talent.

But after a few weeks, the teams will begin shorting their rosters in order for their Major League starters to get more consistent and longer game appearances.

On Sunday, the Texas Rangers made their first round of optioning players to the minor league squad in preparation for Opening Day.

Note: All team projections were found using the FEINs projections. An explanation behind projected wins, losses, and other stats can be found here.

1. Los Angeles Angels