AL West division preview: Projected lineups, rotations and one question for each team ahead of 2025 season

Is the Astros' reign over? Can the Rangers find the magic again? Should the Mariners have done... anything?

By R.J. Anderson

Mar 21, 2025 at 9:24 am ET • 9 min read

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With Opening Day 2025 just around the corner, we here at CBS Sports have spent the last few days previewing each of Major League Baseball's divisions. Today, our attention turns to the American League West.

While the Houston Astros have, for the most part, dominated the West over the last decade, it appears that the times are beginning to change. The Astros, diminished by age and offseason losses, appear more vulnerable than normal; the Seattle Mariners, a trendy pick to win the West last spring, have one of the best collections of young talent in the game; and the Texas Rangers, a year removed from winning the World Series, have their ace back to full health. That's without mentioning the Los Angeles Angels or the Athletics, both interesting squads in their own respects.

Just what does the year hold for the AL West? Let's find out together.

Seattle Mariners

Projected starting lineup

Projected rotation

Notable relievers

Closer: RHP Andrés Muñoz
Setup: RHP Gregory Santos, RHP Collin Snider
Middle: RHP Trent Thornton, LHP Tayler Saucedo

Biggest question: Can the offense rebound?

The Mariners had a disappointing season last year, owed in large part to an offense that ranked 21st in runs scored. Generally, an otherwise competitive team would react by making several personnel changes, be it through trades, free-agent signings, and/or internal promotions. Not these Mariners.

Rather, Seattle's hitter crop remains almost identical to the group that tanked last season. Of the Mariners' 14 top-used hitters in 2024, 11 are back for another run. The only actual outside addition the Mariners made to their projected Opening Day hitter group, meanwhile, was signing veteran platoon infielder Donovan Solano -- a fine role player, but hardly a difference maker.

Mariners hitter	2024 OPS+	Career OPS+ (w/ 2024)
Julio Rodríguez	116	130
Jorge Polanco	93	109
J.P. Crawford	86	101
Mitch Garver	85	116
Mitch Haniger	84	114

If we had to guess, the thinking here on Seattle's part is twofold. One, surely some of these players (like superstar outfielder Julio Rodríguez) are due for better seasons. It's hard to refute that thinking, especially given that most of the players here have superior track records. The other part is that, well, if some do fail to rebound, then the Mariners can turn to one of the sport's most impressive collections of young hitting talent as a means of filling in the gaps. (On that front, some names to know include infielder Cole Young, catcher/outfielder Harry Ford, and first baseman Tyler Locklear.) At minimum, the Mariners have an impressive amount of depth to pull from as needed.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily excuse the Mariners' offseason. It does, however, explain why prediction models still have them right in the thick of things in the West.

Houston Astros

Projected starting lineup

Projected rotation

Notable relievers

Closer: LHP Josh Hader
Setup: RHP Bryan Abreu, RHP Tayler Scott
Middle: LHP Bryan King, RHP Kaleb Ort

Biggest question: One more time?

As noted in the introduction, the Astros have dominated the West for much of the last decade. They've won each of the last four division crowns, as well as seven of the last eight overall. It's wholly possible that the Astros find a way to stave off decline again, as they did last season following a shaky start, but it no longer appears to be a fait accompli.

That's to be expected. It's hard to remain highly competitive for a decade at a time -- at some point, all the win-now trades and late first-round picks catch up to a team. Still, the Astros are coming off a winter that saw them lose a lot of notable talent. Alex Bregman and Justin Verlander departed through free agency, Kyle Tucker and Ryan Pressly through trade. Think what you will about Verlander and even Pressly -- both aging arms who showed decline last year -- but Bregman and Tucker delivered two of the six most productive campaigns on the roster last year.

Houston has attempted to counterbalance those losses by adding Christian Walker, Isaac Paredes, Hayden Wesneski, and Brendan Rodgers. Who knows, it might work out well enough for the Astros to remain atop the West; it's just worth acknowledging that almost all of those players carry risk, and that Houston's path to yet another division title will likely be more difficult than usual.

Texas Rangers

Projected starting lineup

Projected rotation

Notable relievers

Closer: RHP Chris Martin
Setup: RHP Jacob Webb, LHP Robert Garcia
Middle: RHP Shawn Armstrong, LHP Hoby Milner

Biggest question: What will they get from deGrom?

Believe it or not, we're closing in on the midway point of Jacob deGrom's five-year, $185 million pact with the Rangers he signed in December 2022. Unfortunately, the passage of time (or our perception of it anyway) has been skewed by his unavailability. Indeed, deGrom has logged just nine starts with Texas, and three of those came last September as he made his return from his second career Tommy John surgery.

It's only reasonable to wonder what deGrom has left in the tank entering his age-36 campaign.

Jacob deGrom

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Remember, deGrom hasn't thrown more than 100 innings in a season since 2019. He's coming off a three-year stretch that saw him tally 105 combined frames. To his credit, he has been excellent when he's been hearty and hale; he's notched a 2.82 ERA (143 ERA+) and a 12.38 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his most recent 20 starts, and his arsenal continues to grade very well when viewed through the lens of the pitch-quality models. Clearly the talent is still there, but health remains the great variable.

The Rangers have their share of X-factors -- ranging from how young outfielders Evan Carter and Wyatt Langford will fare in their second full seasons; to if the remade bullpen be an improvement over a unit that ranked 26th in MLB in ERA last year; and so on. None, so far as the Rangers' playoff chances go, loom larger than deGrom.

Los Angeles Angels

Projected starting lineup

Projected rotation

LHP Yusei Kikuchi
RHP José Soriano
LHP Tyler Anderson
RHP Kyle Hendricks
LHP Reid Detmers

Notable relievers

Closer: RHP Kenley Jansen
Setup: RHP Ben Joyce, LHP Brock Burke
Middle: LHP José Quijada

Biggest question: Can they keep Trout healthy?

You can tell the Angels drew inspiration from last year's Royals, as evidenced by an offseason that saw them make a number of mid-tier and downmarket veteran additions.

Outfielder Jorge Soler, catcher Travis d'Arnaud, and third baseman Yoán Moncada are now Angels, as are starters Yusei Kikuchi and Kyle Hendricks and closer Kenley Jansen. Realistically, it probably won't work out as well for these Angels as it did for those Royals, but we'll tip our caps toward any losing team who makes a sincere effort to improve over the winter.

Anyway, the most pressing question we have about the Angels is just what they can expect to get from Mike Trout, the former best player in the world. Trout's body has failed him time and again in recent years, limiting him to 67 games on average per season since 2021. He's still excelled when he's taken the field, however, posting a 160 OPS+ and tallying Wins Above Replacement at a pace that would prorate out to 7.3 per 162 games.

Predictably, Los Angeles is taking another swing at keeping Trout healthier by sliding him from his usual center field spot over to right field. The aim is to reduce the wear and tear on his body by asking him to cover less ground defensively. Will it work? There's no way of knowing for sure, but you can see the logic behind the move. Some of Trout's most damaging injuries (in terms of time lost) in recent years have been of the lower-body variety, including the surgery he required last season to repair a torn meniscus and a costly calf strain in 2021.

Maybe Trout playing right instead of center will make difference. It's worth a shot, at least, because getting Trout in the lineup more frequently -- not for 150 games, realistically, but maybe around 115 to 120 games -- would represent a major boost for the Angels' playoff odds.

The Athletics

Projected starting lineup

Projected rotation

Notable relievers
Closer: RHP Mason Miller
Setup: RHP José Leclerc
Middle: RHP Tyler Ferguson, LHP T.J. McFarland

Biggest question: How will the Sacramento ballpark play?

This season will be the first since 1967 that sees the Athletics call home a city that isn't Oakland. The Athletics (now the official stylization of the team's name) are in the first of a multi-year layover in West Sacramento before they relocate again, this time to a new ballpark in Las Vegas. For the next few seasons, that means the A's will share Sutter Health Park with the River Cats, the San Francisco Giants' Triple-A affiliate. (The River Cats will play when the A's are off or on the road.)

While the A's made a few notable additions this offseason (including pitchers Luis Severino, Jeffrey Springs, and José Leclerc), the change in scenery represented their biggest swap. It's only fair to wonder, then, how their outlook will be altered by their new surroundings. After all, ballparks don't just dictate how a team performs; they also inform how a team is constructed. These nomadic A's certainly didn't build most of their roster with a minor-league park in West Sacramento in mind.

The good news for the A's is that they're not moving from one side of the extreme ballpark spectrum to the other. They aren't moving into a launching pad after spending decades within the cavernous Oakland Coliseum. The bad news is that they are, nevertheless, moving into an even more pitcher-friendly environment, based on publicly available park factor data:

Ballpark	Runs	Home runs
Oakland Coliseum	94	81
Sutter Health Park	69	71

At the risk of stating the obvious: this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. The Coliseum numbers were based on how big-league players performed; the Sutter Health Park numbers, contrariwise, stem from how Triple-A players have played. In turn, it's possible that the gaps between the two fields are not as great as the table above makes it seem.

At the same time, this move may further suppress an A's offense that ranked 26th in runs scored last season despite also finishing eighth in home runs and 15th in wRC+ (a ballpark-adjusted measure housed at FanGraphs). It seems reasonable to think, if nothing else, that the A's will continue to score fewer runs than they would if they were based in a more neutral ballpark.

On the bright side, the A's pitching staff should fare better than they did last season, when they finished 24th in ERA.