Welcome to Westworld: Rangers’ spending could help lift division from worst to first

After the last week’s furious frenzy of free agency spending followed by the cold freeze of a lockout, there is a whole lot about baseball that remains uncertain. You know, minor things like whether the DH will become universal. When will the season start? Will there be a season at all? Meh. Details.

One thing, though, has become abundantly clear: Welcome to Westworld.

Dystopian science fiction? Unfortunately for the Yankees and Red Sox fans out there, it is not. It is simple reality.

It is the AL West’s time.

Just consider this: MLB teams committed $1.7 billion in free agency in November, which is a lot of money. In fact, Commissioner Rob Manfred, in his folksy letter to fans announcing the lockout (and by “folksy,” we mean something akin to a court summons), cited this in MLB’s defense. At least I think that’s what he was doing.

Anyway, the point is: AL West teams seized free agency. Of all that free agency money, 49.7% — $846 million — came from AL West teams. Impressive, by any stretch. Made even more impressive by the fact that only four of the five teams in the division participated. The A’s meanwhile were crying poor, asking their manager to take other jobs (he did) and shedding contracts. All while shopping for a site to build a $1 billion stadium in Las Vegas. Funny what you can do when you save up your revenue-sharing checks for a rainy day.

The Rangers, of course, were at the forefront of the spending spree, with $561 million committed to Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Jon Gray and Kole Calhoun. And the promise of spending more when baseball returns. The Rangers also lost 102 games in 2021 and finished 35 games out in the division. Spending half a billion was a step, but merely a first one.

They were hardly alone when it came to spending. The West is already loaded and continues to add.

Seattle, which entered 2021 with the second-ranked farm system in baseball and finished two games shy of making its first playoff appearance since 2001, added the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner (Robbie Ray) for $115 million. The LA Angels, who employ the two greatest players in the game, dropped $103 million on a quartet of pitchers to shore up the weakness that has kept Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani from being postseason forces.

Meanwhile, the Astros are still the Astros. Like it or not, they are the closest thing to a dynasty in the AL. They have been to three World Series in the last five years. Yes, they have probably lost Carlos Correa (though it’s unclear what his market is now). But Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker represent a still-formidable core. Then they promised $50 million to Justin Verlander.

All of this is to say, the AL West is not what it used to be, which is the weakest division in baseball. Over the first 15 years after the leagues split into three divisions apiece, one AL West team reached the World Series — the Angels in 2002. Over the last dozen, though, the West has ended up repping the league more times (five) than either the Central (four times) or the East (three).

The likelihood is that when baseball does sort through its labor issue, it is likely to emerge with an even bigger playoff field. That’s likely to bring even more West representation. The owners and players have been discussing 12- and 14-team postseason proposals.

It will create more opportunity for the Rangers to climb back to the playoffs for the first time since 2016. But it’s never going to be an easy road.

Whenever baseball returns, it’s going to be the West’s world.

Everybody else is just living in it.

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