Commercial Content, 21+

Two of Action Network’s baseball experts offer their predictions for the regular-season win totals of a pair of American League teams. (Win totals from FanDuel Sportsbook). 

Posner: Oakland’s fire sale was obviously a huge storyline this offseason. With the departure of Matt Olson, Matt Chapman and Sean Manaea, A’s fans are basking in that familiar feeling of rebuild burnout.

However, the Athletics have arguably a much better roster than they had from 2015-16 following the Josh Donaldson trade to the Toronto Blue Jays. Additionally, the return in both deals netted the A’s two major league-ready pieces in Christian Pache (Olson deal) and Kevin Smith (Chapman deal). The other element is that the A’s have more MLB-ready or close-to-MLB-ready talent ready to attempt to replace the loss of production with the departures of Olson and Chapman. 

While Chapman’s defense is elite, his offense is subpar for that position. Even in his best seasons, Chapman was never a top-5 offensive contributor. Therefore, replacing his offense will not be as much of a challenge as replacing Olson’s defense.

The A’s are in a much better position to be competitive this season than they have been in other seasons when they’ve lost huge names. Additionally, the AL West overall still has a lot of question marks. The only proven winner of the group is the Astros and they lost another huge piece this offseason in Carlos Correa. 

The AL West may end up being a division in which everyone beats up on everyone all the time and the A’s should be able to squeak out 70 wins.

Martin: Most models are projecting the Guardians right around 78 wins, and I feel confident they can get to that mark.  

I can see the arguments as to why this may look ugly. The Guardians still have a messy outfield situation and the bullpen isn’t quite as stacked as it has been in recent years. But I feel a lot of the usual strengths will work in their favor this season.

As we are used to seeing from Cleveland, the starting rotation holds plenty of upside and could surprise in the American League. We have seen this organization do well in optimizing results from pitchers over the last decade, and it would not surprise me to see it work out well yet again. 

Shane Bieber will be a rock leading the staff, but he’s not the only horse in the stable. Cal Quantrill has plenty of upside, and I like where Aaron Civale is at if he can figure out some ways to insulate one of the better cutters in baseball. 

Triston McKenzie rounds out the rotation and is a great candidate to have a massive breakthrough this season. If he can keep his command in check like we saw at the end of last year, he has the stuff to be very effective. 

A move at the deadline hurts us here, but there are some proven big league bats in this lineup — including the newly re-signed Jose Ramirez — and they should be able to hold their own.

In a less-than-loaded AL Central, I think the Guardians can post a respectable season and project them getting to 76 or more enough of the time to hold value at -122.