State of the Franchises: AL West

Houston Astros: The most important thing I can note about the Astros is that it's 2015 and they have the second-best record in the American League. They're well ahead of schedule on the rebuild in both lineup depth and pitching adequacy, so they're basically a World Series contender right now. That's going to be enough for a lot of Astros fans. If we're looking for downsides, here's one: Was Jeff Luhnow too aggressive at the deadline? Brett Phillips, Jacob Nottingham, and Domingo Santana were some of the highlights of their deep reserves of minor league talent, and now they're gone. As always with prospects, we won't know for years, but the team's top-heavy and talent-heavy 2015 draft might have replenished the system before it was even depleted. Back to the present, Scott Kazmir and Carlos Gomez make the Astros one of the short-term winners of the deadline, and nobody should be surprised if they run away and hide in the West. Even if they lose these trades with years of hindsight, they look pretty tough right now and there's still a lot of talent in the minors. I'd take that deal.

Los Angeles Angels of The Red Team: Bill Stoneman picked up three spare-part outfielders to replace the ones who helped drag the Angels toward the bottom of the AL in offense, despite the presence of Mike Trout and a surprisingly dangerous Albert Pujols. Mike Scioscia has more options now than he did a couple weeks ago. It's just far from a sure thing that David Murphy, David DeJesus, and Shane Victorino are actually upgrades on the Matt Joyce/C.J. Cron Krappenfest Angels fans have been treated to for 100 games. They're just the outfielders who were available to bargain shoppers. Also, it's not Stoneman's fault that C.J. Wilson might miss the rest of the season, but since he didn't add any pitching it's now essential that Hector Santiago continues his stellar breakout year and Jered Weaver contributes. There are plenty of teams in the Wild Card race, and the Angels (and Twins, but we'll get to that) have to look vulnerable to any of the six teams clustered around .500. However, they still have Mike Trout and a pretty nice collection of young arms, so this isn't really a do-or-die year for them.

Oakland Athletics: They didn't look good going into 2015, they met only the lowest expectations, and now Billy Beane is talking about going the way of the Astros and Cubs. That's a pretty big bummer. I guess their deadline haul, scoring the aforementioned Nottingham along with Sean Manaea and Casey Meisner, is a silver lining. But if Beane is willing to take a step back, we need to do the same. The highwire act of simultaneously contending and rebuilding ended the moment Josh Donaldson was traded. Maybe even before that- was it the Samardzija trade that broke the cycle? No matter. Now they're just another low-payroll team with other teams gearing up for the Sonny Gray sweepstakes to begin. Sorry about that, A's fans. But you know what, you've had it pretty good for a while now. So I'm not that sorry.

Seattle Mariners: The M's are going nowhere fast, and didn't trade anybody good enough to bring back a notable return. Is this the new most boring team in baseball? With Felix, Cano, Kyle Seager and Nelson Cruz all locked up for at least another few years, the M's have been sending signals of contention for a while, but the rest of the major league roster begs to differ. At least being bad means they've had high draft picks and a deep minor league system, right? Um, nope, not so much. Last year's apparently legit run at the postseason masked all kinds of flaws and made people much smarter than me buy in, but a year later, those predictions look incredibly off base. I even said in my season preview I wasn't crazy about Seattle and there were infinite ways it could all go wrong, and I STILL picked them for a Wild Card. Now I don't remember what any of us were thinking. It's not my call, nor should it be, but GMs have been fired for less than what Jack Zduriencik's perpetrated here. The coming years aren't likely to be a whole lot better than this one.

Texas Rangers: Can a team trade away three high-end prospects in July, miss the playoffs, and still have the season be a success? That's what we're looking at with the Rangers. The Cole Hamels acquisition could help them sneak into a Wild Card game this year but the trade was really about 2016 and beyond, when the Rangers hope Yu Darvish will be back atop the rotation and Jurickson Profar will resume his long-delayed ascent to stardom. It's a fascinating trade for that reason alone: we can't even begin to evaluate it until Hamels's contract is up in three or four years. I have my doubts about the value he brings to this team. Even with Philadelphia paying down Hamels' salary, we have to wonder how much money will be available to augment a core of position players that is more salary and reputation than production these days. If you believe in the Rangers, it means you believe in guys like Josh Hamilton, Shin-Soo Choo, and Prince Fielder. It means you believe giving Darvish a 1-A in Hamels was the missing piece of the puzzle. I'm always happy to be surprised, but I don't believe in any of that. Even though the Hamels trade was great value in a vacuum, it might not end up as more than a waste of minor league talent.