I do this every year. People get very worked up over it. Please just enjoy them.

AL East

I see four flawed contenders here, and a team with its engine stuck in reverse. The Red Sox strike me as the least flawed contender, a team with a potential 850-run offense and enough improvement in run prevention to sneak away with the division. I feel as if their defense is particularly underrated, but getting Hanley Ramirez out of left field and Pablo Sandoval entirely off the field helps, while on some nights they'll run out plus defenders at four or five spots.

The Blue Jays are similar to the Red Sox, an offense-driven club, but their offense is likely to regress, and their rotation is full of question marks, from durability to homer-prone histories to how much work Marcus Stroman can handle in his first full year back. Their best hitters range from age 30 (Josh Donaldson) to age 35 (Jose Bautista), and forecasting any improvement from those guys is foolhardy.

The Yankees and Rays feel like more volatile predictions to me; their performances are dependent on many core players who offer a wide range of outcomes. You could easily see a Yankees season in which Masahiro Tanaka and Michael Pineda get hurt, which means a lot of CC Sabathia and … I don't even know where that sentence leads. Or their main five starters could all stay healthy, they could play Aaron Hicks every day, and get an in-season boost from Gary Sanchez, and win 90 games. Similarly, the Rays could get another miraculous performance from Erasmo Ramirez, keep Matt Moore healthy, roll out 20 starts from Blake Snell, and see improvements from Steven Souza and Brad Miller and end up near 88 wins. Or they could have platoon issues, fail to hit for enough power, and burn out the bullpen through heavy use.

The Orioles weren't good in 2015 and I see no argument they are any better now, not with a Rule 5 guy who hit two home runs in 2015 potentially playing left field every day, with Yovani Gallardo, Mike Wright and probably Tyler Wilson replacing Wei-Yin Chen, Miguel Gonzalez and Kevin Gausman. They're a poor OBP team, and they doubled down on that when they imported Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez. This could all go pretty wrong.