The Angels have won the division the last two years, by six games in 2007 and a whopping 21 games in 2008. Well, case closed, right? There's no way the rest of the division can make up more than 20 games on the Angels, even with their loss of Teixeira. Well, it's not likely, but among the additions by the other teams in the division are the NL West's best hitter and a new general manager who was one of the best scouting directors in the game. Here are the answers to ten questions about the 2009 AL West, presented by Matthew and Thomas.

The AL Central promises to be one of the most balanced divisions in baseball in 2009. No team should win more than 90 or less than 70, and a bunch of 80 win teams would not be surprising. Heck, even Vegas agrees - they predict all the teams will fall into the 75-85 win range. Does that make the Central boring or exciting? Gwyn and I will try to give you a couple of reasons why it might be of interest. With that being said, we'll start our preview.

Start the friggin' parade down Yonge Street!  The Blue Jays rallied from a four-run deficit by scoring three times in both the eighth and ninth innings to give them a 7-5 win over Atlanta Thursday afternoon in the hotly contested "Larry Jones-Toronto" grudge match.

Brad Mills has a chance to nail down one of the final two spots in the rotation as the Jays battle the Braves this afternoon in Disney.

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In exchanging a few emails with my co-author regarding our task, both Alex and I realized that the NL East isn't all that interesting this year.  Sure, it features the defending World Champion Philadelphia Phillies and a revamped Mets bullpen, but aside from that, there just isn't much excitement going around.  Or maybe we're just lazy.  Whichever, here's a bunch of questions we've asked and answered ourselves. 

All eyes are currently on the big league camp where the races for the No. 4 and 5 positions in the starting rotation, as well as the battle for the back-up catcher's role, appear to be going down to the wire. On the other fields in Dunedin, though, the baby Jays are hard at work fighting for assignments to the four full-season clubs, which begin play in April.

Everyone at Batter's Box is shocked and depressed to learn of the untimely passing of John Brattain.

Japan will be looking for a three-peat at the next World Baseball Classic in 2013.  They defeated Korea 5-3 in 10 innings Monday night at Dodger Stadium thanks to a certain Seattle Mariner.

The National League Central may be a fairly boring division to watch in 2009. The Cubs appear poised to run away with the division. After winning almost 100 games last season, the Cubs made a number of changes to the 25-man roster for 2009 in hopes of strengthening the outfield and bullpen. The club also brought back free agent and Canadian starting pitcher Ryan Dempster after a career year in his free agent season. The Cardinals have a solid veteran club as well, but injuries have already taken their toll on the club, which could hurt its chance of competing with the Cubs. The Astros, Pirates and Brewers do not look like very strong clubs on paper, and they could all lose at least 80 games. The Cincinnati Reds, though, could be a sleeper team - with a plethora of young, impact talent on the 25-man roster. The rise of the Reds could easily be the biggest story of 2009... unless the sophomore jinx bites too many second-year players.

Curt Schilling has thrown his last pitch.  The 42 year-old announced his retirement on his 38pitches.com blog today after 20 seasons in the bigs.

Over the weekend, John Northey and I had a chance to sit down and talk about the NL West. After our ghostwriter had condensed the multi-day rambling into a manageable chunk and thrown out the words that don't exist, it sort of resembled English. So we translated it into several dead languages, back into English, and the result, which may or may not be an NL West Preview, is shown below.

Season previews have been a popular staple here on Batter's Box for the past several years, and given that it's March 20, some Bauxites are starting to ask, "Hey, where the *&^% are the team-by-team season previews?"

Well, we're doing things a little differently this year, but it all starts on Monday. And we come to you now with an invitation to help. Updated (again) 3/30.

Casey Janssen's quest for freedom from the injury bug has hit a snag.  If Philip Gerard was a pain and Richard Kimble was a shoulder, Gerard forced Kimble to get Janssen to leave Thursday night's game against the Yankees.  Jordan Bastian of bluejays.com says Janssen left due to shoulder tightness caused by muscle fatigue.

Pronounced EE-muss, I figured that's close enough to "enormous" prospect.  I did pull a side muscle reaching for that one, thanks for asking.