In case you hadn't been paying attention, something has changed.  Dodgers are the new Yankees, Yankees are the new Red Sox.  Angels, Tigers, Red Sox, White Sox, Giants, Mets, and Cubs are the next money tier, and apparently Seattle decided to join them.  Everybody else is stuck trying to grow talent or buy second-tier gems, refinish them, polish them up, and hope a few are worthy of display.

And my O's are just buying truckloads of coal and hoping if they keep heaping it on top of itself it will compress something into a diamond.

Not sure why people get so Chicken Little over the O's. "THE SKY IS FALLING!!!"

I hope they make more moves, but they're at very least a third place club as it stands with potential for more. They're better than the Jays and better than the Yankees, despite the Tanaka signing.

The real travesty here is the posting rule change. It was supposed to help smaller market teams but all it did was save the Yankees $30-40M on the posting fee.

The Orioles are better than the Jays?

If you think the Orioles are better than the Yankees right now you're delusional.  If Pineda bounces back this year they could easily have 4 starting pitchers better than anybody on our staff.  And their 5th guy, Nova, actually had an ERA over half a run better than Tillman last year.  Yeah, our lineup is probably better.  Our defense is much better.  But they're pitching staff blows ours out of the water, and there's no way our modest lineup advantage covers that discrepancy.

Right now, I'd pick the O's to finish last in the division.  They're going to need big-time growth out of Machado, Flaherty, and whoever plays in LF and at DH if they want to do better than that.

Meh.   The Yanks infield is a mess.   Jeter/Tex are question marks due to age/injury.    Roberts and Johnson appear to be the starters at 2B/3B.    So, essentially, they need Gardner, Beltran, Ellsbury and McCann to have career years.    And hope that a couple of the IF play well with some contributions from Ichiro/Soriano.   The offense just doesn't project to be very good.

I think it's close. I'm worried about Kuroda and Sabathia and, while the Orioles rotation lacks big names, there is some upside there with Gausman.

FWIW, Clay Davenport's projection has the Orioles in last, 8 games behind the Yankees.

Sox were picked last in last season projections....take those with a grain of salt.

Posted by 05nomar05 on 1/28/2014 12:18:00 PM (view original):
Sox were picked last in last season projections....take those with a grain of salt.

I don't know of any stat based projections that had the Sox last going into 2013. Davenport had them winning 85 and finishing a game out of first place.

Posted by bad_luck on 1/27/2014 6:26:00 PM (view original):
FWIW, Clay Davenport's projection has the Orioles in last, 8 games behind the Yankees.

John Hemphill has the Yankees winning the East by one game over the Rays.  Red Sox are three behind.  Then Jays and lastly the O's.

Never heard of him. Link?

John Hemphill doesn't do links.

Um...ok

I'm surprised you haven't heard of him.  If you did, you'd understand why he doesn't publish his predictions online.

I'll take Vegas Insider over both those *****.

Team	Odds
Los Angeles Dodgers	11/2
Detroit Tigers	7/1
St Louis Cardinals	9/1
Washington Nationals	9/1
Boston Red Sox	12/1
Tampa Bay Rays	13/1
Atlanta Braves	15/1
Cincinnati Reds	15/1
Los Angeles Angels	15/1
Texas Rangers	17/1
San Francisco Giants	17/1
Oakland Athletics	17/1
New York Yankees	20/1
Pittsburgh Pirates	25/1
Seattle Mariners	30/1
Philadelphia Phillies	30/1
Toronto Blue Jays	35/1
Chicago White Sox	35/1
Baltimore Orioles	35/1
Kansas City Royals	35/1
Arizona Diamondbacks	40/1
Cleveland Indians	40/1
Chicago Cubs	60/1
Milwaukee Brewers	70/1
Colorado Rockies	70/1
San Diego Padres	70/1
New York Mets	80/1
Miami Marlins	80/1
Minnesota Twins	100/1
Houston Astros	200/1