AL West

The greatest compliment you can pay a manager is that you can't imagine their team performing any better year after year. Unfortunately this can't be said of A's manager Bob Geren since his tenure began in 2007, and the trend has carried over into 2011.

Maicer Izturis is off to an impressive start. He's 27-for-75 (.360) with eight runs, seven doubles, two home runs, nine RBI and two stolen bases. He has a .407 on-base percentage and a .940 OPS. The switch-hitter is hitting .327 against right-handed pitching and .435 against southpaws.

Though the Texas Rangers entered 2011 fresh from their first ever World Series appearance, there are those that believe that it was some sort of mirage, and that we shouldn't expect them to be as successful this season.

Of course, while a massively talented squad, the Rangers did benefit from a weak AL West last season and a helping hand from the league when MLB took control of the franchise before handing over the reigns to the Greenberg/Nolan Ryan ownership group.

The Seattle Mariners offense came alive last night against Phil Coke and the Detroit Tigers, scoring 13 runs on 15 hits. Mariner fans were left wondering one thing.

Was it for real?

Through the team’s first 17 games, the Oakland Athletics lead the majors in ERA, and it’s not even close. The A’s team ERA currently sits at 2.44, while the major’s second lowest ERA (Angels) is 3.01.

While players, such as Seattle's Felix Hernandez, will tell you that they make the best of their situation and do what they can to help their team win, there's no doubting one thing.

They hate losing.

This is why they're in a competitive sport. They're driven to excel in their personal game and assist in the collective goal of winning a championship.

Throughout the decades, we've seen some of the greats athletes of our lifetime fail to ride a float in a parade through the downtown area of their home town.

The A's are off to a decent start to the 2011 season, going 9-8 in their first 17 games. They currently lead baseball in ERA and are fourth in pitching WAR because of the strong performances of the starting rotation, led by Brett Anderson and Trevor Cahill.

Through three starts (19 1/3 innings) in 2011, Seattle Mariners’ rookie Michael Pineda has certainly turned some heads. The 21-year-old boasts a 2.33 ERA, 1.03 WHIP and 16/7 K/BB ratio, which includes a start at Texas.

This begs the question: How good is Michael Pineda?

In professional baseball, knowing how to run the bases is something that is taken for granted.  It is assumed that anyone can figure out how to run around the diamond-shaped path on a baseball field's infield.  

So, when players make mistakes on the basepaths, they stand out more than things like errors, or wild pitches, or other mistakes because everyone watching knows that even they could do that.  Sometimes these base running blunders are laughable, but sometimes they can change the course of baseball history.

Until the Texas Rangers went on their run last season, defeating the New York Yankees and making it to the World Series, most people around baseball viewed the American League West as the weakest division in the American League.