It is interesting to see how teams build their offenses in the AL, and how much success they have.

With the Twins, you get a player who is a "baseball" player … down and dirty. The positives in these type of players are they don't put up flashy numbers and that means they don't cost a lot. But so far for the Twins it has meant little success in the postseason.

With the Red Sox, you get a player who works the count and who can play defense. If you look at Youkilis and Pedoria and Ellsbury, they play the game the same way. They are tough. Obviously with two titles in four years this has been successful.

With the Indians, you get a player who puts up monster offensive numbers but who strikes out a lot and who struggles with a glove on their hand. See all of the recent offensive prospects, and by the way, Matt LaPorta fits right in here. It is what Travis Hafner was when the Tribe got him from the Rangers. It is who Michael Aubrey is, who Andy Marte is, who Lonnie Chisenhall is. Now obviously this formula came within a game of the World Series last season. But it is also expensive to keep together. See Hafner contract.

The Yankees, Tigers, White Sox seem to have bought much of their offense.

The A's focus more on pitching and let the offense take care of itself.

The Angels are another team that is like the Red Sox.

What does this all mean? I don't think it is set in stone, but it seems to me the teams with the most success get offensive players who get on base, run the bases well, don't strike out a ton and play defense. See Angels, Red Sox and the White Sox team from a few years ago.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 11:54 am and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.