The American League West has been one of the most competitive divisions in the game for years. It doesn’t look like it will be this year. The unexpected success of last year’s Rangers came on the back of what was likely an unsustainable performance from their starting pitchers. The Mariners, even after an off-season that saw them bring in two expensive free agents, still don’t look to have the goods to run with their competitors. The Athletics are being written off too early – this is still a good team – but there’s no way a club can lose pitchers like Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder and expect not to feel it. Here’s a look at the big issues being faced by each of the division’s teams this spring:

LOS ANGELES ANGELS OF ANAHEIM

I love the Angels. The team thumbs its nose at every current convention about how to build an offense, gleefully running out the slap-hitting likes of Darin Erstad and Chone Figgins while refusing as a matter of philosophy to take walks – and they score runs in bushels. The Angels ranked as the sixth best offense in the game last year after adjusting for park effects, despite Troy Glaus, Garret Anderson, and Tim Salmon all missing large parts of the season with injuries. They’ll probably rank among the league’s better offenses again this year.

The Angels’ rigorous emphasis on power, contact, and defense could make things interesting in camp for third base prospect Dallas McPherson. The power isn’t a problem – the man hit 43 home runs last year at three levels. The contact (and the defense) will be.

McPherson strikes out in more than a third of his at-bats, including 17 times in 40 major league at-bats last year. Strikeouts may not be as bad as people often feel them to be, but the Angels have been extremely successful with an offensive philosophy in which avoiding the strikeout is important; hitters who whiff as much as McPherson often don’t develop as well as their minor-league statistics would portend. (To be fair, often they develop better.)

With Cuban refugee Kendry Morales in camp and two fine utilitymen – Figgins and Robb Quinlan – who can handle third, McPherson will have to show manager Mike Scioscia that he’s Troy Glaus, not Russell Branyan, if he wants to earn a starting job.

OAKLAND ATHLETICS

I love the Athletics as well. General Manager Billy Beane really does run the team with the guts of a good card player. Trading Hudson and Mulder when he did and for the players he did was like a poker player betting his entire stack of chips with a card left to draw to an inside straight – if it works out, the team will be set for years, and if it doesn’t, the team will be busted out.

It takes some gall for a contender to rely on three pitchers – Joe Blanton, Dan Meyer, and Dan Haren – who are in their first years in a major league rotation, and another, Rich Harden, who has only a year and a half under his belt. It’s just as gutsy to rely on 36-year-old Keiichi Yabu, a soft-tossing Japanese swingman, as the main option should one of them fail.

The key for this season and the next several is how Blanton, Meyer, and Haren fare. I think it’s a foolish bet: Young pitchers often get hurt and are often just bad. It will be a fascinating experiment to watch, though, and a real test of how much credit for Oakland’s sterling record of pitching development should go to departed pitching coach Rick Peterson and how much to the system the team has in place. One thing is certain: If Yabu is starting a lot of games toward the end of March, A’s fans should worry.

TEXAS RANGERS

For the Rangers, as always, the issue is pitching. Coach Orel Hershiser got results last year by preaching from the Book of the Sinking Fastball, but any team that’s actually depending on Chan Ho Park and Pedro Astacio to show something in camp is probably in for a long season. Spring training statistics are always to be taken with several cartons of salt, but it will be worth perusing the K/BB rates of these two in the March box scores. Hershiser’s approach really only works if you’re capable of throwing a strike.

SEATTLE MARINERS

Coming off an embarrassment of a season, the Mariners rank among the teams with the most questions to resolve this spring. Is newly acquired first baseman Richie Sexson’s shoulder healthy? How about no. 2 starter Joel Piniero’s elbow? Can prospect Jeremy Reed handle center field, and if so, how is playing time to be divided between outfielders Randy Winn and Raul Ibanez and first baseman/DH Bucky Jacobsen, who electrified Mariners fans with his goofy name and power hitting in a 160-AB trial last year?

It’s certainly possible to imagine the stars all lining up in just the right way and the Mariners making a run at the division flag. But it seems pretty unlikely. This is an odd team whose pieces don’t quite fit together. If new manager Mark Hargrove can force things into place, he’ll deserve a lot of credit.