2021 AL East Preview
By: Steve Risser
Going into 2021, the AL is pretty clear cut that the Yankees are the clear favorite. The Blue Jays and Rays should be competing for Wild Card spot, and the Red Sox and Orioles are rebuilding.
1st Place New York Yankees- There are high expectations for the Yankees going into the 2021 season. If they’re able to stay healthy, they will not only be the clear favorite to win the AL East, but they’ll be the clear favorite to win the American League. Their lineup is loaded going into this season with DJ, Judge, Gleyber, Stanton and Sanchez. In the rotation, they have the favorite to win the AL CY Uoung this year in Gerrit Cole and if the rest of the rotation can stay heathy, it has a chance to be very good. With Britton being out for the while, the bullpen might not be as good this year, but they did add Justin Wilson and Darren O’Day. With those additions, they should still have one of the top bullpens in the game. Lastly, the one thing that will keep this team from winning the division is heath. Voit and Britton are already out, and we all know that Stanton and Judge have missed a ton of games the last 3 years. If Judge and Stanton stay heathy, there’s no question that his team should win the division.
2nd place Tampa Bay Rays- The defending American League Champs should take a step back this year, losing Charlie Morton and trading Blake Snell to the Padres. But with having one of the best mangers in baseball in Kevin Cash and with a rising star in Randy Aronzarena, I think this team will get a wild card spot. For me to be right about this, the Rays offense has to be solid. They’re going to have to get a great year out of Arozarena and really good years out of Austin Meadows and Brandon Lowe. Obviously, there will not be a lot of depth in this rotation with losing Snell and Morton. This a big reason why the Rays have a very good chance of not repeating in the AL East and have great chance to miss the postseason. As a result of not having a deep rotation, their bullpen is going to suffer and it’s not going to be as dominate as it was last year. Kevin Cash is going to use openers and from what we have seen that does not work long term.
3rd Place Toronto Blue Jays- There is a lot of hype going into the season for the Blue Jays. A big reason for that is how good their lineup is, but their lack of depth in the rotation and losing their closer for the season are the reasons why I think they miss the playoffs. We all know that the Jays line up is one of the best in the game with Springer, Guerrero Jr, Biggio, Bichette, Gurriel. But the issue is Ryu is arguably their only good starter and they just lost Kirby Yates for the season and it very hard to win a World Series without a good closer.
4th Place Boston Red Sox- Even though Alex Cora is back, there’s no question that this is a rebuilding year for the Sox. The offence is the strength of this team. It’s kind of weird to say that because they traded Mookie Betts 2 years ago, but they still have 3 really good hitters with JD, Bogarts, Devers. But the major problem is the rotation and bullpen are not good at all. In the rotation, they are planning to take it slow with Chris Sale who coming off Tommy John Surgery and Eduardo Rodriguez was not available to start on opening day. The bullpen is also a major question mark seeing that they don’t have a true closer.
5th Place Baltimore Orioles- The O’s are clearly the worst team in the AL East. They don’t have a good line up, rotation, or bullpen. The only positive is Trey Mancini is coming back and John Means and Anthony Santander have shown signs that they can be good. But this team is clearly in rebuild mode for the 4th year in row and it’s very hard to see them winning more then 70 games this season.
