Athletics – Braves
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The Atlanta Braves continue to develop and bring up young players to MLB and look to be a fixture in the National League for years to come.
Other than Suzuki going to the rival Nationals, almost the entire team from last year is coming back. They’ve replaced Suzuki with Brian McCann, and they made an upgrade at third base with Donaldson.
The biggest question mark for the Braves is their pitching — both starting and bullpen.
It looks like they are going to rely on some of their young guys taking the reigns this year. That’s always a scaring scenario, but if it works out the Braves should be back in the postseason.
I really don’t know what to think of the Athletics, and finding a fifth team for the AL wasn’t easy.
They lost Jeurys Familia and Jed Lowrie in free agency, but they replaced them with Joakim Soria and Jurickson Profar. They also resigned Michael Fiers and signed Marco Estrada to add depth to a suspect starting rotation.
The bullpen should be solid, and I’m not sure how, but the offense should be fine as well. It’s the same issue that everyone had last year about the Athletics, and that’s their starting pitching.
I have to give the edge to the NL in this one as well, making them the winner of this exercise. While the AL still reigns at the top of MLB, the NL is much deeper and is catching up.