This is the Vibe’s view of strength heading into game one. Just remember there’s 161 more games to be played with injuries and other factors playing into rankings. Follow us all season with updatd power rankings, and our usual bi-weekly MLB Corner!
Preseason power rankings:
1. Kansas City Royals. Front office feels like the team is as talented as last year.
2. St. Louis Cardinals. Winners will keep winning in the early part of the season.
3. Chicago Cubs. High expectations could hamper them if they don’t start strong.
4. Texas Rangers. They could sure use Derek Holland to pitch well just good enough until Darvish returns this summer.
5. Los Angeles Dodgers. Injury to Ethier doesn’t seem big but it is.
6. Houston Astros. Now you have to repeat what you did last year, will find that difficult to do.
7. Pittsburgh Pirates. Cubs getting love but these guys are sharp dark horse World Series pick.
8. New York Mets. Terry Collins is going to have to find a way to motivate these guys again.
9. San Francisco Giants. Rotation looked old and slow in spring, good thing those games don’t count.
10. New York Yankees. Injuries in the bullpen late in spring make a strength a big strength a question mark early.
11. Washington Nationals. Young arms join rotation; remember Dusty’s reputation with young arms and the Cubs of Wood/Prior?
12. Detroit Tigers. Lot of ifs in the rotation, need a young arm or two to step up and contribute.
13. Boston Red Sox. Panda on the bench eating $75 million worth of PBJ’s. Looking for one more strong offensive season from Pedrioa and Papi.
14. Toronto Blue Jays. The AL is tightly bunched with flawed teams, at least these guys have a lineup and defense to make up for lack of pitching.
15. Seattle Mariners. Solid team needs break out season from Taijuan Walker and Nathan Karns to be dependable to contend.
16. Los Angeles Angels. They are top heavy in talent, which will win them some games but those other games….
17. Cleveland Indians. The lineup has too many holes for the stellar rotation to cover up.
18. Arizona Diamondbacks. Big spenders this off season. Which means they will struggle to gel as a team long enough to not make playoffs.
19. Baltimore Orioles. Solid offensively, can Showalter cobble together enough outs to contend? Clearly I don’t believe so.
20. Minnesota Twins. A nice roster of talent despite being hampered with Joe Mauer’s contract. Wouldn’t surprise me if they contend for Wild Card throughout season.
21. Miami Marlins. They are going to go as far as their 3 young outfielders can take them. Mostly because Jose Fernandez will hit an innings cap before they can call themselves contenders.
22. Chicago White Sox. They just need too much to fall their way to contend outside of Chris Sale dominating every 5th day. And that’s allowing for the team to put the Adam LaRoche stuff behind them.
23. Tampa Bay Rays. Young pitching will be leaned on heavily. I just hope they can stay healthy from carrying all that weight.
24. Colorado Rockies. Jose Reyes thing aside, once again it comes down to pitching, and their lack of it.
25. San Diego Padres. Will be interesting to see how long they go before they trade Kemp & Ross and admit they need to go full blown rebuild mode.
26. Cincinnati Reds. They have young pitching prospects to support a lineup that on occasion could look great. Will be higher by end of year I think.
27. Atlanta Braves. It will be interesting to see how Hector Olivera’s bat translates to hotlanta’s summer.
28. Oakland A's. They are here because of Sonny Gray.
29. Milwaukee Brewers. I hope they get good value back in the impending Lucroy deal, because they need it.
30. Philadelphia Phillies. They gave MacKanin a 2 year extension to oversee a long term rebuild.
