Houston Astros — They win the division by 10+ games
Most people thought that the Houston Astros would run away with the AL West in 2021 but they didn’t as much as people thought because the Seattle Mariners and Oakland A’s both finished within 9 games of them.
The Astros re-signed Justin Verlander, signed reliever Hector Neris, and lost Zack Greinke and Carlos Correa so, in theory, they should be worse in 2022.
However, the A’s will be awful in 2021 and we’ll discuss more on the Mariners in a moment but the Astros will still run away with the West.
Los Angeles Angels — They are under .500 … again
The Los Angeles Angels have the two best players in the sport, but they still don’t have any starting pitchers outside of Shohei Ohtani. The starters they did add (Noah Syndergaard and Michael Lorenzen) are always injured too.
They will likely suffer injuries again and won’t have a good enough pitching staff to weather the injuries and the Angels will finish under .500 for the seventh straight season.