Preview/Prediction

The Boston Red Sox weren't satisfied with their finish in 2010, and appear ready to climb back to the top of the AL East.

The New York Yankees are coming off a 95-win season in which they led the league in runs scored. They earned the wild card spot with a second-place finish in the AL East, but they have a good amount of questions coming into this year.

Chase Utley has become a household name over the past few years. Not just for those in Philadelphia, but for baseball fans everywhere.

Some say he is the best second baseman currently playing the game. Others take their assessment to a new level by predicting that he will be the best second baseman to ever set foot in Major League Baseball.

Spring Training is well underway, and after assessing what the Indians have to offer in terms of position players here, it's time now to take a look at the team's pitching. 

It might be that the 2010 rookie class will go down among the greatest to ever break into the big leagues.  On the other hand, the 2010 class may just signal a new era of relying on rookie players to make a major impact. 

One of the most interesting races in baseball should be the AL Central Division.  The Midwestern division isn't the sexiest in baseball, but it's highly underrated. 

ESPN will give more coverage to one Red Sox/Yankees series than they will to the combined seasons of the five teams in the division, but the fans of those teams know it's shaping up to be a great race in 2011.

The Cubs' 2010 season was so depressing that manager Lou Piniella retired six weeks early. No one pooped in the dugout this time around, but in all other ways the final chapter of Piniella's tenure mirrored that of Dusty Baker before him: Both men oversaw great teams their first season, equally great ones the second year, a mediocre squad for which much went wrong in their third year and a budget-saving fire sale in July of their final year after the team fell far from contention.

The American League West has become known as a division built around pitching. The West is home to the reigning American League Cy Young Winner, Felix Hernandez. All four teams' rotations currently rank in the top half of the American League.

The pitchers can only do so much however. The following 20 players were the top offensive contributors (key word, not necessarily the top producers) to their teams in 2010.

Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez are the highlighted names, but virtually every move Theo Epstein made this winter made good sense and improved the team. Boston now boasts a roster deeper and better-balanced than any other in the American league, and perhaps better than any other in baseball.

Before spring training started, some people had guarded optimism about this team heading into 2011. After trading away top stars Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt, they had a record above .500 and were playing pretty good baseball down the stretch. They had four rookies in their starting lineup and rotation and if these young players continued to develop, the Astros would be competitive this season.