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Despite a huge investment in Anthony Rendon and a smart trade for Dylan Bundy, the Angels couldn’t overcome the Astros or A’s in the AL West. I think most baseball fans want to see them build a winning team around Mike Trout, and I think most baseball fans suspect they’ll fail to do so. I know I do. What they need more than anything is a breakout two-way season from Shohei Ohtani during which the lineup makes sense on a day-in, day-out basis. I’m not saying everyone has to be in the same spot everyday, but they need to hang some successful bats on either side of Rendon and Trout if they’re going to have any chance of contending. The top two guys on this list could certainly help their cause. 

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2020 turned out okay for the Astros, all things considered. 

This week’s ball-doctoring story that mentioned Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander might have otherwise grabbed some eyeballs but wound up buried beneath the seesawing fate of America’s democracy. 

All in all, the trash-bang scandal of 2019 got lost in much bigger conversations, so the traveling circus that would’ve been Houston’s 2020 playing on the road in front of fans that hated them never got out of the garage. Despite season-ending injuries to Justin Verlander and Yordan Alvarez and mostly silent bats from Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve and Yuli Gurriel (curious), the Astros remained a force to be reckoned with when it mattered most, striking fear in the hearts of baseball fans everywhere when they pushed the Rays to game 7 of the ALCS. 

2021 will be even more challenging. Though Yordan Alvarez is running again after surgeries on both knees, Houston will likely be without free agent outfielders George Springer and Michael Brantley. The system offers some possible help on the mound, but the bulk of their position prospects are too young to contribute anytime soon. 

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Another early playoff exit has Minnesota fans melancholic, but few organizations are as well positioned for success over the next few seasons. Cleveland is in danger of taking a step back, Detroit and Kansas City are building, and Chicago is pushing to win now, but Minnesota remains atop this mountain heading into 2021. The system looks a little less stocked than it has the past few years but still contains plenty of prospects to anticipate. 

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In a baseball universe flickering with intentional losing, the Royals employ a bold strategy: trying. They haven’t seen much success of late, but that’s largely due to the natural contention cycling of a small market club. Also due in part to the death of young fireballer Yordano Ventura, whose innings could’ve gone a long way toward bridging from one cycle to the next. This group of prospects isn’t quite as promising as the Hosmer Moose crew that brought home a title, but it’s not overly optimistic to compare the two. Brighter times are coming to Kauffman Stadium. 

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Been a few big trades over the holidays, so it can’t hurt to take a quick jaunt around the league and update the lists for the teams involved. 

On Sunday Night, Tampa Bay doubled down on its “decision” in game six of the World Series to pull its best pitcher after surrendering one hit in 73 pitches, selling that pitcher for minor league parts to a Padres squad with whom Blake Snell’s style should fit nicely. Might be weird for him to play for a human manager after working for TI-84 graphing calculators these past few years, but he’ll adjust. 

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For this system, the script gets a bit flipped. First, no pitching stone should go unturned in Cleveland. Whereas we’re typically ignoring teenage arms in our quest to stock dynasty systems with power-speed bats, we want all the arms we can hoard in Cleveland. I’m trying to think of another system that operates similarly for our purposes. In Tampa Bay and Los Angeles, we want the arms, too, but we want all the bats just as badly. Plus, those clubs bounce their pitching prospects around between the rotation and bullpen and minors even after they’ve demonstrated they can retire major league bats in order. Cleveland might be the last place you can count on a young pitcher to get a shot at six innings every time out. Take Aaron Civale for example. A third round pick in 2016 and not an elite prospect by any means, Civale lasted six innings or more in 11 or 12 starts in 2020, falling short in only his final turn, a four-inning, eight-run blowup that devastated his season-long statline and dropped him down some draft boards. It’s beautiful to get the sparkling ratios that come alone with the quick analytic hook, but we need Wins in our game, and despite their typically anemic offense, Cleveland is one of the few places to find double digit winners throughout the rotation. 

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The White Sox invited some gray clouds when they fired Rick Renteria to bring in Hall of Famer Tony La Russa, who was treated by the media as Drunken Old School Baseball Man, for reasons almost entirely of La Russa’s own design.

But as a young Cubs fan during La Russa’s spirited (heh) reign in St. Louis, I think some of the dismissal is shortsighted. This guy put power bats in the two-hole back when it was called the two-hole because everyone thought the only logical baseball move was to put your best bunter slash worst hitter there. The second spot in the batting order was referred to as a hole when La Russa was taking criticism for using good hitters there. I know I’m being redundant, but it’s been weird to see the Twitterverse speculate the guy who oversaw the bash brothers would throw a hissy fit about bat flips. Maybe he won’t love it. Maybe he’ll say something stupid. Maybe he’ll debilitate an up-and-coming clubhouse. And maybe he hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt. But to characterize him as some groupthink fossil who’s never done a single smart thing in the game is the sort of internet sunshine of the spotless mind that gets my neurons firing. He inherits a system with immediate help at the top and not much to dream on beyond that. 

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Toronto signified their intent to contend by signing Hyun-Jin Ryu during the winter of 2019, and he repaid their confidence with an excellent season in 2020. The rest of their pitching decisions didn’t pan out quite so beautifully, but the offensive core of a yearly contender is growing together north of the border (well, assuming they can play north of the border sometime soon), and it’s just a matter of time before they amass enough pitching to scare the bullies that beat up the AL East year over year. 

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Yesterday, at my daughter’s suggestion, we drew our butts, my daughter and me, by which I mean we outlined our forms in chalk as we sat–kind of like making a hand turkey during Thanksgiving week at preschool. 

It’s raining today as I write this, so our butts will soon be gone. Washed away forever. 

Good thing I took some photos.

That alone makes our day drawing butts more productive than a whole week of MLB’s winter meetings, where Lowe was the high point. Very 2020.  

Let’s do the prospect thing. 

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Feels oddly fated that the Yankees land right behind the Red Sox in the sequence I’ve chosen: alphabetically, division by division. It’s more than Babe Ruth and Bucky Dent linking the legacies of these organizations. It’s the Razz Prospect Rundown now, too! 

Okay, enough hilarity. Baseball’s all business in the AL East. Everywhere, really. If I start writing in this thought space at all, I’ll lose my shizz over the hyper-capitalist, negotiating-table Designated Hizzer shizz that’s shizzing all over the off-season. 

Deep breaths. 

I spelled “hizzer” that way because I couldn’t say “Designated Hitter shizz that’s shizzing” when I read the sentence back to myself. 

Like, my tongue would refuse to make the sounds so matter how hard I focused. 

I was saying “designated hizzer shizz” when I tried to read the whole sentence. 

And I liked it.

Let’s do the prospect thing.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Things tend to get weird after you win a World Series these days. 

You might lose your manager due to a slow-burn scandal.

Might trade your franchise player in his prime. 

For prospects, of course. 

Might look kinda cryptically smart for doing so when a pandemic erases much of his final season under contract. 

Oh yeah, and your big-money ace has the bad elbow but might be back in July or so. It’s a weird moment in Boston, but 2021 isn’t without hope, especially in the form of the guy who tops this list. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?