American League West Becomes Ultra-Competitive

Don't look now, but the American League West standings have three teams within half a game of leading the division. On Friday night, the Texas Rangers lost, and that allowed the Los Angeles Angels to pull into a tie at the top of the standings.

The Seattle Mariners also won their game against the New York Yankees, pulling them to within half a game of the other two teams. Not far behind that are the Oakland Athletics, sitting just a game and a half out of the lead now.

According to the MLB standings, the American League West is now the most competitive division in all of baseball. The Mariners have won eight of their last 10 games, turning around a season that appeared to be lost just three weeks ago. With the Rangers struggling to pull away from the division, it has now become a full four team race to try and secure the title.

Last year the Rangers were the team to beat in the West, and they took their run all the way to the World Series. It was a pretty remarkable turnaround for the team, but maybe enough credit wasn't given to Cliff Lee. Now that he is pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies, the Rangers have had a really tough time getting their starting pitchers deep into games. Having Josh Hamilton go down with injury early in the season didn't help matters either, but now that he is back the offense is going to be hard to stop.

The surprise in the A.L. West has to be Seattle though, as this is a team that has been trying to rebuild for a number of seasons, and starting out 2011 without center fielder Franklin Gutierrez ready to go hurt them even more. Promoting Michael Pineda straight out of Spring Training was a wise move, because he has already elevated himself to one of the elite pitchers in the game. Even though it's still early, he is a strong candidate not just for the Rookie of the Year Award, but for the A.L. Cy Young Award as well.

Baseball is just over 50 games into the season, meaning more than 110 games left for most teams. It means that a lot could change over the course of the long summer, but right now the competition in the West has become some of the best in baseball. With all those teams within striking distance of first place, it could also remove a host of players from the trade block. Will Oakland or Seattle become buyers in the market? That's a question that might not get answered till late June.