American League East Preview

The AL East has baseball's two biggest headline-grabbing teams. What's going to happen this year in the annual Northeastern slugfest?

1) Yankees: It's hard to pick the Yankees anywhere except first. They won 101 games last year, and their biggest question mark was starting pitching. What does Brian Cashman (with Steiny's checkbook) go out and do? Claim he's not in it for Randy Johnson, then sign Big Unit. Along the way, he nabbed Carl Pavano --- a pedestrian 58-57 for his career, but an 18 game winner last year --- and Jaret Wright, who has necessary postseason experience. Their lineup barely changed, and features some of the most complete hitters in the game. There's always the argument of whether A-Rod and Jeter will completely blow up at each other this season, but Joe Torre --- whose tenure in the Bronx is winding down itself --- is a master at managing situations such as that. The Yankees will make the playoffs, almost without a doubt. The question for this team isn't the AL East. They were built to win the World Series --- can they? If you're scoring at home, the last one was in 2000.