American League Division Odds Preview

Yankees, Astros Lead the Way

February 10, 2023 661 4 minutes readMLB Picks & Parlays

American League Division Odds Preview — Rob Carr/Getty Images/AFP

Year after year, regardless of who seems to leave, the Houston Astros are able to maintain their spot as baseball’s best team. Just a few months after beating the Philadelphia Phillies in the 2022 World Series, Houston is primed to dominate MLB once again despite losing Justin Verlander and a few other key pieces. The Astros, New York Yankees, and the Cleveland Guardians look like favorites in each of the AL’s divisions. Our AL Division odds preview will break everything down.

The Minnesota Twins to keep the pressure on Cleveland in the Central.

American League East

Even though they came back to earth after an unreal start to the 2022 season, the Yankees (+110) comfortably took home the AL East crown in 2022 and are in a great position to repeat in 2023. They did lose key contributors like Jameson Taillon and Matt Carpenter (and deadline pickup Andrew Benintendi) but, in keeping Judge and Anthony Rizzo, New York’s lineup should — once again — hits tons of home runs and score often. The starting rotation is great too which should make up for the bullpen losing some of its depth.

The Blue Jays (+225) and Rays (+300) aren’t too far behind New York. Toronto made some really nice offseason pickups — Daulton Varsho and Chris Bassitt will help — while Tampa Bay basically stayed pat, losing a few regulars and only adding the resurgent Zach Eflin. Both teams are good but likely didn’t do enough to really keep pace with the Yankees.

Rounding out the Baltimore Orioles (+1800). Boston was easily the worst team in the division last season and had a very active offseason. Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez and Nathan Eovaldi (and others) are gone and Boston seems to have replaced each of them with slightly worse players, except in the outfield where the Red Sox should be much better with Adam Duvall and Masataka Yoshida. Baltimore was one of baseball’s best stories in 2022, making a late (but unsuccessful) playoff push behind an exciting young core. More prospect help is on the way too so look for the Orioles to once again outplay their preseason expectations even if they won’t contend just yet.

American League Central

After a surprising division title, the Cleveland Guardians (+135) bring back basically all of their key contributors plus two solid lineup additions in Josh Bell and Mike Zunino. The weak AL Central is Cleveland’s division to lose considering how good the Guardians’ pitching staff is and how their lineup (at least on paper) is looking right now.

With that said, Cleveland is not a “dominant” team by any means so the perpetually disappointing Chicago White Sox (+165) and Minnesota Twins (+275) are decent bets in our AL division odds preview. The White Sox will miss José Abreu and could be without shutdown closer Liam Hendriks for an indefinite period of time as he undergoes treatment for Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. They did sign Andrew Benintendi but he isn’t the power bat that Abreu was for Chicago. Minnesota, meanwhile, was having a lackluster winter before Carlos Correa fell back to them in the unlikeliest of ways. Then, the Twins traded fan favorite infielder Luis Arraez to the Miami Marlins for likely rotation ace Pablo Lopez. Not a bad turn of events.

The Kansas City Royals (+3000) are major longshots but, in this division, it would be premature to completely discount them. Neither team did much to improve, with the Tigers trading away some useful bullpen arms and the Royals adding a few replacement-level starters (and bringing back Zack Greinke). The rebuilds are still in progress in Detroit and Kansas City.

American League West

The AL West race begins and ends with the Astros (-200), who are currently the biggest division favorite in MLB. Justin Verlander, Aledmys Díaz, Christian Vázquez and Trey Mancini but José Abreu is in and Michael Brantley and Rafael Montero are back. Houston’s roster is still loaded and, because it was good enough to win the World Series a year ago, our AL division odds preview is expecting it to be good enough to win the AL West for the sixth time in seven seasons.

The Seattle Mariners (+275) look to build on their 90-win 2022 campaign after seeing a decent amount of roster turnover. Seattle let a bunch of free agents go but did a great job of using the trade market to pick up useful guys in Kolten Wong and Teoscar Hernández, who can complement Julio Rodríguez and Ty at the top of the lineup. Pitching-wise, Seattle is pretty much the same as last season. However, having Luis Castillo for the entire year will be a huge upgrade.

For the second-straight offseason, the Texas Rangers (+750) broke out the checkbook to make big free agent splashes. This time, Texas completely revamped its rotation, bringing in multi-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom as well as Nathan Eovaldi and Andrew Heaney. Texas also brought back Martín Pérez to fill out what could be a great rotation, albeit one with major injury risks. There are still some lineup question marks that haven’t been addressed so while the Rangers are improved, a playoff run still seems unlikely.

The Oakland Athletics (+15000) who continue to send away basically any talented and controllable players they have as soon as they approach arbitration. It’s going to be another long season in the Bay Area.
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February 10, 2023

661 4 minutes read