I had to work late last night, so I didn't get a chance to finish my look at the first half of the baseball season. So, here we go with the American League.

AL West: The defending champion Angels are the disappointment of the first half. They have certainly missed the presence of defending Cy Young Award winner Bartolo Colon, who only made 7 starts. However, since the rest of the division is pretty bad as well - the A's and Rangers are tied for first, only 2 games over .500 - the Angels are only 2 games out of the lead, with the Mariners bringing up the rear only a half game behind LA/Anaheim/California/whatever. I give the A's the best shot to take the division. They continue to produce good young pitchers like Dan Haren, Huston Street and Rich Harden (who is currently on the DL). Also, another Moneyball star, Nick Swisher, has 21 home runs for the A's.

AL Central: I don't think anyone would have thought at the beginning of the year that the Detroit Tigers would be sitting with a 2 game lead on the defending champion White Sox and the best record in baseball. Great pitching has carried the Tigers - they are the only AL team with an ERA under 4.00. You can't count the White Sox out, of course. The Twins have been playing well, of late, but they are still 11 games behind the Tigers. Cleveland is the big disappointment of this division. They nearly overtook the Red Sox for the wild card last year and had a chance to win the division, but they are now 7 games under .500 and 18.5 games back. The less said about the Royals, the better, although they have been playing a bit better lately.

AL East: The Red Sox would seem to have some schedule advantages; they have 44 games at Fenway in the 2nd half (32 on the road) and they get to play the Royals nine times. I would have liked to have seen them open up more than a three game lead on the Yankees while they have had all those injuries. Toronto is good enough to hang around down to the end of the season, but I don't see them overtaking the two big guys quite yet. As Curt Schilling said, Tampa Bay is going to be a dangerous team once they get some consistent pitching. The Orioles continue to be terrible - I can easily see them finishing behind the Rays by the end of the year.

That's it. Enjoy the second half of the season!