Here’s a clairvoyant view of what will happen for every single team in the ol’ American League this offseason. Or maybe what should or might happen.
Look, these are our rules. If you want some proper guesses go to MLB Trade Rumours, if you want speculative fantasy Jim Bowden now writes for The Athletic.
AL East
Baseball’s clutch of should-be high-rollers are going to be linked to every big free agent all summer and they’re going to fail to sign all of them. Sadly, it is no longer 2005.
Baltimore Orioles
Wrested from the clutches of the Angelos family’s psychodrama, the Orioles are able to go big ticket in their attempts to lure the winter’s biggest names.
The city’s most famous media darling, and filthbag, John Waters is hired and subjects Corbin Burnes to a Jumbotron mock-up of and actual iron horse scatting on the mound and Willy Adames is licked across the face by a Divine impersonator during a visit to Camden Yards.
Gunnar Henderson quits baseball in protest and Cal Ripken has a coronary as the Burnes video is accidentally re-transmitted during an honorific ceremony.
Boston Red Sox
John Henry walks into Fenway Park every morning to Shane O’Mac’s WWE theme, and the city’s sports talk stations work themselves into a febrile foment assuming this means Soto is on the way.
Tony Mazz punches a police horse like that Newcastle fan after Walker Buehler becomes the team’s marquee offseason add.
New York Yankees
Everyone thinks Hal Steinbrenner is all-in on Soto.
What he is all-in on is engaging an exorcist to rid the Stadium of the Poltergeist which enters Aaron Judge’s soul every Autumn.
Millions of dollars lighter the experiment is abandoned after a fretful Ouija session in which a spirit claiming to be Babe Ruth channels in to call the club’s facial hair policy ‘absolute whack’.
Pool Noodle October will be back in the Bronx in Autumn 2025. Book it.
Tampa Bay Rays
Turns out ‘stadium roof segments’ are not legal tender, and thus the Rays ‘mystery team’ pursuit of Juan Soto is short lived.
Sign Spencer Turnbull and obviously turn him into Sandy Koufax.
Toronto Blue Jays
More flight tracker bollocks.
AL Central
Whatever your expectations are, lower them.
Chicago White Sox
Obviously Chris Getz trades Garrett Crochet for pennies on the dollar, but it’ll be years before we know that their return of Merkus Bumbleflirt and Jedixson Nonce are a total bust.
The real fan revolt comes amidst a push from Jerry Reinsdorf to place the Campfire Milkshake on waivers as a cost saving measure. Direct action in the form of protest at Bulls games comes too late as the cholesterol busting treat lands in the Pacific North West in Jerry Dipoto’s 800th minor trade as Mariners GM.
Cleveland Guardians
Will this be the year that the are finally convinced that bunting is *not* a market inefficiency?
Sign Spencer Turnbull and obviously turn him into Sandy Koufax.
Detroit Tigers
AJ Hinch pairs with Sufjan Stevens for a catastrophic re-recording of ‘Detroit Lift Up Your Weary Head’ which receives a mortifying 0.2 rating on Pitchfork.
Tarik Skubal breaks his back wakeboarding and new signing Alex Bregman is – of course – absolutely awful.
Hope you enjoyed the run, fellas.
Kansas City Royals
The lion’s head is a fucking crown. They let children in to see this.
Truly, we are not in Kansas any more. (That film was about drugs and can you imagine seeing old Lion-Crown-Man on a quaalude?) Missouri? Misery.
Kyle Higashioka YOU are a Kansas City Royal.
Minnesota Twins
Nobody talks about the fact that the ‘twins’ in the famous old-school Twins alt logo look like a pair of gurning nits do they? A proper pair of proto Terrence and Phillips.
I could transition into a fart joke here about the Twins *stinking*, but I’m above it.
Byron Buxton goes blind looking at an eclipse; they sign Danny Jansen; who really honestly gives a shit?
AL West
What a bloody mess.
Houston Astros
Look, they accidentally extend Chris Tucker is what happens.
The pivot to try and sign Chinese baseball legend Ray Chang and bill it as a ‘Rush Hour’ promotion hits the buffers when Tucker highlights that the idea is profoundly racially insensitive.
LA Angels
A winter of mid passed off as a bid for relevance.
What more would you expect of a franchise owned by a man with that moustache.
Sacramento Athletics
Did you know that under their league obligated hats, 85% of MLB players have Feyd Rawtha levels of hair loss?
Anyway, the majority of those players are on the A’s somehow. Absolute slapheads.
Fitting for the baldest franchise in the sport innit?
Seattle Mariners
Remember the old Effectively Wild bit ‘What Would Jerry Dipoto do?’
Analysis tells us he’ll build a fundamentally unbalanced roster where no hitter has an OPS+ higher than 87 and every pitcher throws wiffle balls.
So probably that. The dickhead.
Texas Rangers
I quite often get an earworm of Jacob DeGrom’s name to the tune of ‘Breakin’ the Law’ by Judas Priest.
Anyway, the best route out of this corner is probably to trade him so that’s probably irrelevant in Arlington.
Also, your stadium looks like a cross between a sound stage and a branch of Wickes.
