Posted 12:15 PM by Sean
The Angels are first in ESPN's rankings of teams' off-season moves, a judgment that seems reasonable to me (completely unbiased party that I am). When you add the single most sought-after free agent, plus a marquee starting pitcher, you've had a pretty good off-season. Realistically, there are a number of other teams that have also taken pretty big steps forward in the last couple of months, but no one's done appreciably better than Anaheim. Nice to see.

Two items of note on the list: first, Oakland is fourth in the A.L. in terms of off-season moves (in ESPN's estimation), at 19th overall (Seattle is 8th, Texas is 13th). I think that may be accurate, although ESPN's assessment of the A's as "[T]hird best in the AL West heading into spring training" is probably too harsh.

Second, the list is quite skewed towards the AL. Nine of the top 13 slots are AL clubs, which again I think is accurate. It seems that quite a lot of the action this winter has been on the junior circuit, particularly in the AL East. There's going to be a lot of tough competition for the Angels in 2004.