We come to you bearing excellent news: The baseball season is close -- closer than you think -- and we can prove it. Our season preview series, division-by-division every week, has already begun, and when we are done, the season will be here. That’s soon.

So far, we have looked at the American League East, the National League West, the American League Central and the National League East.

Today: We’re looking at the American League West. Our previews will look at four pressing questions for each club heading into the 2021 season. At the end, we'll make some actual predictions on the final standings -- predictions that are unassailable and so obviously ironclad that we're a little worried you won't even bother to watch the actual games once we read them. We are willing to assume such a risk.

Let's take a team-by-team look at the biggest questions in the AL West this season. (Teams are listed in alphabetical order up top here with my prediction below that.)

ANGELS

1) Any of the pitchers gonna stick?

As far as desperation rotation adds go, the Angels have certainly done worse than José Quintana and Alex Cobb. (A lot worse.) But still: The Angels will once again rise or fall with their rotation, and it sure seems like they haven’t done enough. There might not be a team in baseball that could have used Trevor Bauer more, but either way, the Angels look to be in the same boat they’re always in heading into the season: Enticing, fascinating, but still, somehow, short on rotation arms. Again.

2) How much patience do they have left for Ohtani?

Shohei Ohtani, a few years into this now, remains one of those players you stop what you’re doing anytime he’s doing anything. But the thing is, that thing he’s doing is rarely pitching anymore. The Angels obviously would love him to pitch (and he’s looked good on the mound this spring), but they are hardly a team with enough pitching luxuries to keep waiting around for him to figure out how to hit and pitch, and they certainly can’t be moving their whole rotation around for his moonshot. I want him to hit and pitch. You want him to hit and pitch. But this has to be the last chance, right? If he doesn’t make it work this year, he’s about to become a full-time DH. Which isn’t as much fun ... but might be for the best.

3) What happens with Albert Pujols?

The 10-year deal, at last, ends this year. Pujols has been a little better for the Angels on the whole than he’s been given credit for, but even his best years were nothing like his Cardinals years, and the last few have been unmitigated disasters. The Angels may finally have his replacement, at least for now, at first base with Jared Walsh, but one still wonders how much Albert Pujols (Albert Pujols!) will be cool with a bench role. Either way: Everyone would like to see an all-time great go out on a high note ... if he is in fact “going out” at all.

4) Mike Trout is 30 this year. Now what?

Ah, yes! Mike Trout! Baseball’s greatest player had a “down” year for him in 2020, which is to say he was merely one of the best players in baseball rather than the obvious top player in baseball. He has plenty of help around him in the lineup, but that has never been the problem. The real question is how much time the Angels have left. Friends, on Aug. 7, Mike Trout will turn 30 years old. 30! He’s still amazing, but you can, if you squint hard, actually see him age a little bit, particularly on defense. He’s still probably the best player in baseball. But he’ll be in his 30s very soon. And the Angels still don’t have him a playoff win. The clock ticks louder, and faster, every year.

ASTROS

1) How does the rotation handle Framber’s loss?

The Astros were starting to look like a sleeper -- as much as a team this polarizing can be a “sleeper” about anything -- until Framber Valdez's fractured finger blew up a large part of the upside this rotation had. They still have Zack Greinke and Lance McCullers Jr., but you’re counting a lot on Jose Urquidy all of a sudden. Jake Odorizzi’s waiting game paid off for him, but the Astros’ rotation looks a lot less feisty without Framber in it.

2) Is Altuve over?

There are things you just never expect to see in this world, and “Jose Altuve hitting .219” is pretty high up there. It’s impossible to talk about Altuve’s 2020 disappointment without of course reflecting on the context of what happened with him before the year; he went from being the player everybody loved to ... the opposite of that. If anyone could write off the pandemic as a lost year, you’d think it would be him, and there is evidence he was better than he looked in 2020. But he’ll be 31 this year. His best is already in his past. But it’s not ALL over, is it?

3) Is Yordan Alvarez what we thought?

Speaking of lost years, Alvarez had a nightmare 2020, playing in only two games before missing the year with knee surgery. This was maybe the best pure hitter -- not player, hitter -- down the stretch in 2019, yet another asset to add to the Astros’ bountiful plenty. But everything looks a lot different for Yordan and the Astros both heading into 2021. He certainly can’t play the field, but can he stay healthy for a full season at the plate? He’s not a luxury item anymore: The Astros need him.

4) Was that the end?

The Astros have led baseball in many categories over the last few years, but foremost among them has been “drama.” They’ve been a lot! But it sure does feel like that story is ending, and a new story, for better or worse, is beginning. This is a new Astros era, with some of the same old characters, but a new manager, new front office and, increasingly, new spending habits. The Astros can still compete this year, and they might just win this division. But it is clear: These are not the old Astros. Whether that’s a good thing or bad thing depends on your perspective.

ATHLETICS

1) Did they fix the bullpen issues?

For most of the winter, really ever since Liam Hendriks signed with the White Sox, the A’s bullpen looked thin and risky, with potentially some young players asked to do way too much. Then, in the span of just about two weeks, they attacked the problem with gusto, bringing in Sergio Romo, Adam Kolarek, Nik Turley and, especially, Trevor Rosenthal, who was one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball last year and is a more than reasonable Hendriks replacement. The A’s don’t have a ton of margin for error, and the last thing they want is a bullpen imploding on them. What looked iffy now looks like a strength.

2) Will the hitters turn it around?

Matt Chapman had a .276 OBP; Matt Olson hit .195; Stephen Piscotty and Khris Davis had the lowest slugging percentages of their careers. You look at all that, and you wonder how in the world this team won the division last year. If they (with the exception of Davis, who is in Texas now) can’t turn that around -- particularly Olson, who was supposed to be a star last year -- they won’t be winning the division this year. The good news is that only Piscotty has hit 30. This is supposed to be everybody’s primes. With the number of bats that left this lineup, the ones left need to step forward.

3) Do Puk or Luzardo break out?

The A’s always have their best success when their young pitchers step forward, and they’ve got two terrific candidates this year in Jesús Luzardo, who has ace-level stuff, and A.J. Puk, who may have an even higher ceiling but is overcoming shoulder surgery and is also already 25. The A’s have the core of a solid rotation, and maybe that will be enough in this division. But in case it’s not, it would be extremely helpful for Puk or Luzardo to win some Cy Young votes.

4) Is there enough urgency here?

On paper, this team basically looks like last year’s, but just a little bit worse. That’s not the worst thing in the world: They did win the division last year and make the American League Division Series. And it’s not like the rest of the AL West is particularly daunting. But they’re certainly cutting it thinner than they did last year, and they’re counting on everything going right just to be able to hang with last year’s pace. They can still win the division (mostly) rolling it back out there. But that gives more leeway to the rest of this division than perhaps is wise.

MARINERS

1) When do we see Jarred Kelenic?

Few players in baseball have had -- through no fault of their own -- their eventual MLB debuts more fraught and fussed over. The Mariners won’t have to worry about the Kelenic-on-Opening-Day questions for a while now that he has a strained knee, but every Mariners fan is desperate to see him. He’s the future of what this franchise is doing, and until Mariners fans see him on the field, a large part of that future will remain theoretical.

2) How’s the six-man rotation going to work over a full year?
Teams always say they’re going to use a six-man rotation -- this was a big thing with the Angels not long ago -- and it never happens for an obvious reason: It is hard enough to keep five pitchers healthy, let alone six. But the Mariners ran it out for part of the shortened 2020 season, and they’re going to give it another shot this year. The Mariners have the right sort of rotation for it, with no huge stars but potentially some inning eaters, and the strategy has some logic considering how hard innings are going to come by this year. (Those teams with a bunch of young pitchers are going to have quite an issue with innings jumps.) But that doesn’t change the fact that one or two (or more!) of these pitchers are going to get hurt, and then it will become a five-man rotation, because that’s how this always works. (Probably.)

3) How will Kyle Seager say goodbye?
You may have heard that this is likely Seager’s last year as a Mariner! Seager is one of the best Mariners players ever who has had the misfortune of playing for a team during the worst playoff drought in all of North American professional sports, but this is the last year of his contract (assuming the club does not pick up his $15 million option for 2022), and he’s a 33-year-old on a team building for the future. Will he be a Trade Deadline acquisition? Will he get one last goodbye in front of the fans who have (mostly) been on his side his whole career? Does he curse his brother’s good fortune with teammates every day, or just most days?

4) Can they overcome their offseason turmoil?
The Mariners, perhaps more than any other team in the division, have plenty of reason to be excited about the future. An excellent farm system, some exciting young talent, a charismatic potential star in Kyle Lewis, a wonderful fanbase that’s desperate for something fun and successful to embrace. And then came The Infamous Kevin Mather interview. If you’re a Mariners fan (and if you’re a Mariners player, really), there’s reason to be frustrated and discouraged. But there is reason to be optimistic: The Mariners have something good going, with a lot of exciting young players on the team or set to arrive. They just need not to screw it up.

RANGERS

1) Are they going to trade Joey Gallo?
A couple of years ago, it looked like the Rangers might have themselves a superstar in Gallo. But then injuries hit, and he never did slow down on the strikeouts, and while he’s hardly bad now, he’s starting to age out of the “budding All-Star phase.” He’s still extremely valuable, though, particularly for a team looking for power (which is to say, just about all of them), and he’s 27 and becoming a free agent after the 2022 season. The Rangers look pretty far away from contention. If Gallo gets off to a hot start, and the Rangers put him on the market ... that’s not a bad way to kick off a rebuild, no?

2) How much can they get from that rotation?
The Rangers have had good fortune the last couple of years by just stacking up veteran pitchers and seeing what happens: Remember that year when Mike Minor and Lance Lynn were two of the best pitchers in baseball? It’s tough to imagine this year’s reclamation project, Mike Foltynewicz, pulling off anything like that, and there’s not a lot of help coming in the farm system.

3) How will the new park play?
With all the postseason games at Globe Life Field last year, it is easy to forget that fans in Arlington have yet to get to watch their team play at their new stadium yet. The place is apparently gorgeous -- I haven’t seen it yet either -- and it sure does seem like a park, as my colleague Mike Petriello put it, “that’s built for robbing home runs.” In an age of expanded vaccines and a reopening economy, many baseball fans will just be delighted to enjoy sitting in the stands at all again. That is the primary thing the Rangers have to sell in their new stadium this season, and they announced their plans on Wednesday on how they plan to bring back fans in 2021.

4) What is the plan here?
It wasn’t long ago that the Rangers were considered the most well-run organization in baseball. It’s not like they’ve gotten dumber since then: There are still many smart people involved with the Rangers. But the rest of baseball has caught up. The Rangers now look like a team without a lot of talent on the Major League roster and not a particularly top-ranked farm system. They haven’t really done a full rebuild. But maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s past time?

One man’s prediction (based on current rosters):

A’s: 87-75
Astros: 84-78
Angels: 81-81
Mariners: 75-87
Rangers: 66-96

(Next week: National League Central.)