MLB picks: Who will win AL West? Odds, best bet with Astros, Rangers and Mariners in tight race

The Houston Astros locked out the American League West for a while. Sure, they didn’t win the division in 2020, but it was only a 60-game season and for many other obvious reasons it could be considered an anomaly. They won the division in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Yes, every full season since 2016.

Last year, however, he reached the final day and won the title in a tiebreaker. The Rangers and Astros finished at 90-72, while the Mariners were just two games behind at 88-74.

Will the Astros reign top this season? They head into Memorial Day weekend 22-28 with 4.5 games on the road. In fact, they are closer to last place than first, as the A’s are 21-31 and the Angels are 20-30. At the top, the Mariners have the worst record among baseball’s six division leaders, with just three games above .500, while the Rangers are in deep slump right now, having lost 10 of their last 12 games.

Who’s going to win this thing? Our Mike Axisa looked at the division a few days ago, so for players looking at the futures market, which team is the best player here? Let’s take a much closer look at the three teams that can actually win.

Seattle Mariners, 27-24 (-115)

The starting rotation has generally been among the best in baseball and is likely sustainable. George Kirby and Luis Castillo are actually capable of doing better, while Logan Gilbert isn’t really doing anything that leads us to believe he’s about to be crushed by regression. Bryce Miller is good and Bryan Woo has been great in his three matches. The bullpen is also fully capable of operating at a high level year-round.

The offense is troubling, of course. Fresh off Thursday’s loss, the Mariners have scored two runs in a game eight times, one run eight times and zero runs now twice. That’s 18 out of 51 or 35% of the time they don’t even make it to three runs. They rank in the bottom third of the AL in runs, doubles, average, on-base percentage, hits and OPS. They also lead the league in strikeouts and rank poorly in stolen bases. They hit home runs, but you’d like to see offense generated in other ways. The best way to avoid drops is to have a diverse offense or the ability to score in many different ways. The Mariners seem to just wait for the bombs.

There is hope for improvement if Julio Rodríguez starts hitting hard, while players like JP Crawford, Ty France and Jorge Polanco have been better in the recent past with batting average and OBP.

There’s also a trade deadline, so we’ll see how aggressive Jerry Dipoto wants to be. The answer should be a lot, since the window with this initial rotation will not stay open forever.

Texas Rangers, 24-27 (+375)

The 2023 Texas Rangers led the AL in hits, runs, walks, average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and, obviously, OPS. They batted .452 as a team and hit 233 home runs. They had 10 players with double figures in home runs.

The 2024 Rangers are not a juggernaut on offense. They still have a lot of great hitters and look pretty scary, but their collective production just hasn’t been where one would expect. Corey Seager certainly wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t the killer he was last year. Josh Jung was injured after just four games. Rookie Wyatt Langford wasn’t hitting well and is now injured as well. Evan Carter was very disappointing.

As a team, the Rangers are struggling at the bottom. 400.

The rotation wasn’t that bad by any means, but injuries caught up with them. Cody Bradford was injured after three games of excellent work. Nathan Eovaldi was throwing the ball well and is on the injured list, joining Max Scherzer, Tyler Mahle and Jacob deGrom. Jon Gray has been incredible, but he was just placed on the injured list.

Basically, it’s a mess right now between injuries and poor performance. And yet, the Rangers are just three games under .500.

We know Rangers can get extremely hot and cold. Last August, they won 12 of 14 and then lost eight in a row. After winning three of four, they lost seven of eight before winning six in a row, but then losing four in a row. Then they got hot again. It was ridiculous. It’s an easy sell on the club for veteran, Hall of Fame manager Bruce Bochy to weather this storm by saying “we’ve done this before.” They have.

Houston Astros, 22-28 (+195)

Of course, the aforementioned 2023 Rangers didn’t win the division and these Astros have plenty of personnel from the division-winning clubs. They are used to winning the division practically every year, so they also have an easy buy-in into the club.

Jose Altuve is great while Kyle Tucker is having an MVP season. Yordan Alvarez is better than that and Alex Bregman will certainly heat up at some point, given his track record. 30 years is too early for your regression phase. It’s also possible that Jeremy Peña is having his offensive season. Basically, while the Astros rank well in most offensive categories, I think they’re more likely to get even better than anything else.

The bullpen is a little weak, but Ryan Pressly and Josh Hader can’t be worse than they were at the start of the season.

Many of the problems come down to rotation. What’s wrong with Framber Valdez? What went wrong with Cristian Javier in two of his last three matches? Is Justin Verlander understandably mediocre now at age 41? Will they get more from JP France and/or Hunter Brown this season? When will José Urquidy and Lance McCullers Jr. return, and whenever they do return, to what extent will they help?

It certainly seems like they have the personnel in rotation to eventually work things out, especially if Ronel Blanco is actually having a successful season.

The Astros dug themselves a deep hole by starting the season with a 12-24 record. Of course, they’ve gone 10-4 since then and are within striking distance now.

We have to give props to the A’s for climbing to .500 (17-17) after a 1-7 start. It was an incredible run of baseball for this group to go 16-10. Since hitting .500, however, they’ve gone 4-14. They’ve shown enough fight to believe they’ll easily surpass last season’s 50-win total, but they’re in far more bad stretches than good ones and won’t win this division.

Los Angeles Angels, 20-30 (+4000)

They’re not that far off, but the Angels aren’t winning this division by any means. We do not need to discuss the matter further, as the probabilities reflect reality.

The Pick: Astros +195

It looks like the Mariners and Rangers will regret going through some of their early-season woes while the Astros tried to bury themselves.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the Mariners or Rangers picked this division, but I’m all in on the Astros with the most money here.