For the Angels, that could be asking too much. Their starters have a dubious health history, and adding Matt Harvey as a free agent most likely won’t alter that trend. Andrew Heaney has had elbow inflammation in spring training, and Tyler Skaggs dealt with forearm fatigue. Shohei Ohtani will hit this season, but his recovery from Tommy John surgery will keep him off the mound.

The team that truly taunted the pitching gods, though, is the Texas Rangers. All four of their new starters — Lance Lynn, Shelby Miller, Drew Smyly and Edinson Volquez — have had Tommy John surgery in the last three and a half years.

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“It helps, because we can lean on each other: ‘Hey, do you feel this, what do you do between starts?’” said Smyly, who spent the last two seasons with Seattle and the Chicago Cubs, yet never threw a pitch for either team. “But at the same time, I think all of us are over talking about it. We just want to put it behind us and go play again.”

The Rangers, likewise, are eager to bury their recent past; their 95 losses last season matched their most since 1985. Their hopes for improvement rest on young hitters like Joey Gallo, Ronald Guzman, Nomar Mazara and Rougned Odor, who strike out too much but could break into stardom as the team prepares to move to a new Arlington ballpark — with a retractable roof — next season.

The Seattle Mariners made a noble effort to end baseball’s longest playoff drought (since 2001), but they should now replace the Rangers in the division cellar. They allowed 34 more runs than they scored last season but still finished 16 games over .500. Recognizing the anomaly, General Manager Jerry Dipoto spent the winter dumping Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz, Edwin Diaz, James Paxton, Jean Segura, Mike Zunino and others.

Some veterans, like Jay Bruce and Edwin Encarnacion, came back as part of salary swaps. But Dipoto, baseball’s most active general manager, could trade them this summer in an effort to build a more stable foundation.