It's all relative. There may not be any really good teams in the AL this year. Texas looked great for awhile but they have really fallen back, 33-25 going into tonight.
The biggest thing to me is that they are no free passes in the AL East anymore. We used to be able to fatten up our win total by pounding on the Rays (pre-2008), the Orioles and the Jays, and that's 18 games times 3. Now there are no easy games against those teams.