No Suprise

    Despite winning each of their last eight games, the Los Angeles Angels are still 10 games out of first place in the American League West division. Many people are surprised by the Angels' struggles, some blame their poor starting pitching, some blame their struggles on the under-performance of the big bats like Pujols and Hamilton, and some blame Angels management.

The Angels have won eight games
in a row and now stand at
 23-27 on the season

    What if I were to tell you that I don't believe that any of those things were the reasons for the Angels' disappointing 23-27 record this year? It's very simple: I think the reason for their struggles lies in the situation itself. For one thing, the bright lights of the City of Angels have seemed to be too much for both the Angels and the Dodgers, who were both involved in spending frenzies to load up with superstars for this season. Yet, at this point in the season, both are well out of first place in their own divisions. So, it is plausible, that some superstars aren't cut out for this superstar city.

    However, I believe the more accurate reason for this, is the evidence given in recent history, not just in Major League Baseball, but in the NBA and the NFL too. Recent history has shown us that building a team of superstars, while they may look like a sure thing on paper, a championship is far from guaranteed. I have a number of examples to help prove my point, but since failure is defined differently in every situation, let me explain these examples before you decide if you agree with me:

NBA: (2003-2004 Los Angeles Lakers & 2010-2011 Miami Heat)
    In basketball, the only way that contending teams acknowledge success is by winning a championship. Anything short of that is considered a failure, regardless of how good a team's regular season might have been. In both of these examples, the team of stars succeeded in the regular season, made it to the NBA Finals, but fell short. Results that are considered a failure by today's NBA standards. The 2003-2004 Lakers, a team full of superstars and future hall-of-famers Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, finished 56-26, which was the second best record in the Western Conference and cruised through the playoffs, only to meet the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals, where they eventually lost to Detroit in 5 games. The fact that many expected the Lakers to win it all before the season, and the fact that Detroit was the underdog in that series, would lead many Laker fans to classify 2003 as a lost year.

Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks defeated LeBron
James and the Miami Heat in 6 games in
 the 2011 NBA Finals

    As good as the 2003-2004 Lakers were, the expectations placed before the 2010-2011 Miami Heat were much higher. After a very extravagant and dramatic introduction into a new era of Heat basketball, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh guaranteed many titles in the years to come. Naturally, Heat fans expected that to begin right away, so they were not surprised when Miami dominated the league during both the regular season and playoffs to reach the NBA Finals in their first season together. However, the Dallas Mavericks were a Heat fan's worst nightmare, as they beat Miami in six games, and immediately rocketed the Heat into surprising talks of possibly dismantling the team if they didn't win the following year. When you make as bold a statement as the Heat did, if you don't immediately back it up, you have failed, no matter how close you came.

NFL: (2007 New England Patriots)

Plaxico Burress and the New York Giants handed the
New England Patriots their first loss of the
2007 season in Super Bowl XLII

    Much like the NBA, teams in the NFL define success with, and only with, the hoisting of the Lombardi Trophy as Super Bowl champions. This was the case with the 2007 Patriots. With the blistering offensive trio of Tom Brady, Randy Moss and Wes Welker, the Patriots found themselves with a perfect 16-0 record heading into the playoffs. New England was looking to become only the second team in NFL history to finish the season undefeated (1972 Miami Dolphins-17-0), but the only way to do that was to win the Super Bowl , and the Patriots expected nothing less. However, Eli Manning and the 10-6 New York Giants, who barely snuck into the playoffs as a Wild Card, did. The Giants shocked the world and defeated the Patriots 17-14 in the Super Bowl to ruin New England's bid for a perfect season.

MLB: (2012 Los Angeles Angels, 2012 Miami Marlins & 2013 Toronto Blue Jays)
    Now, let's get back to baseball, seeing as that is what this is all about. A baseball season is far longer than any other sport season with far more games. Therefore, the measures of success for any team in a baseball season is much different than that of teams in the NBA or NFL. It is not necessarily World Series or bust. However, when you sign superstars like Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson, as the Angels did prior to last season, that was the expectation. So when the Angels missed the playoffs altogether, despite an 89-73 record, there was a certain level of disappointment.

    Despite struggling to stay relevant in their division since the departure of Miguel Cabrera following the 2007 season, the Marlins made a splash following the 2011 season by changing their name and image almost completely, as well as signing of several All-Stars, including Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle and Jose Reyes. These signings gave Marlins fans hope for a return to relevance, but to the surprise of many, the Marlins, for lack of a better word, "flopped" , finishing dead last in the NL East at 69-93. Granted, not many pegged Miami as World Series bound, but they did expect better than that.

    Much like this year's Angels team, this year's Toronto Blue Jays team was expected to compete for a World Series come October. However, the Blue Jays are struggling just the same as the Angels. Personally, I'm not sure why this Blue Jays team had such high expectations in the first place, seeing as, for the most part, this team was transplanted from Miami-the very same team that went 69-93 one year before, only now they're north of the border and donning a bird on their cap instead of a fish.

    There are more examples I could discuss, such as the 2012 Boston Red Sox and the 2013 Los Angeles Lakers, but I won't get into that. As you can see, a team of all-stars doesn't necessarily guarantee a championship. Is that always the case? No. In fact, the Miami Heat went on to win the NBA Finals the very next season, but as I said, I'm not completely surprised by the Angels' struggles. As I said earlier, the Angels are currently riding an 8-game win streak, so they very well could go on to win the World Series in the next couple of seasons, but that remains to be seen.