It's time to get acquainted

Tim Lincecum thought about the seismic shifts of baseball's offseason, the ones that saw Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder migrate to the American League.

"I think it's great," San Francisco's two-time Cy Young Award winner joked. "I won't have to pitch to them anymore."

Just 107 days after the surprising St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series, baseball returned Sunday when pitchers and catchers for the Seattle Mariners held their first workout in Peoria, Ariz.

Pitchers and catchers for most teams report over the next seven days, including the Rays, who report next Monday.

There's been a whole lot of change since the Texas Rangers' David Murphy flied out to Allen Craig for the final out of the seven-game Series thriller.

Tony La Russa is gone. Bobby Valentine is back.

And no switch was bigger than Pujols' decision to split St. Louis for a $240 million, 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Angels. Add Fielder's move from Milwaukee for a $214 million, nine-year deal with Detroit, and the lives of AL pitchers just got 75 homers and 219 RBIs tougher.

"You have offenses that are going to let you know if your pitching is not up to par," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. "There's certainly been a sway to some extraordinarily deep lineups in the American League."

The 14 AL teams have spent $776.8 million on major league contracts for players who became free agents after the World Series, and the NL's 16 clubs have committed $597.3 million. That NL lineup looks a lot less fearsome heading into the All-Star game at Kansas City's Kaufmann Stadium on July 10.

Seattle is first to open because the Mariners start the season in Tokyo with a two-game series against Oakland on March 28-29.

The cost-conscious Athletics, who dealt All-Stars Gio Gonzalez and Andrew Bailey and starter Trevor Cahill, opted not to use the extra week.

Other teams start reporting Feb. 18 ahead of the stateside opener, which features the Cardinals at the renamed and now rainbow-colored Miami Marlins on April 4 in the first official game at $515 million Marlins Park. The Fish were among the offseason's big spenders, reeling in All-Stars Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell for a combined $191 million while failing to hook Pujols.

While the Marlins and Angels stocked up, with Los Angeles spending a combined $317.5 million on Pujols and left-hander C.J. Wilson, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox acted like small-market savers. Perhaps it was the lack of star starting pitchers on the free-agent market. Or maybe it was the new labor contract, announced in November, that adds incentives in coming years for reigning in the urge to splurge.

No such issues for the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets, big-market teams tumbling from turmoil. Put in bankruptcy by owner Frank McCourt last summer, the Dodgers are to be sold by April 30 for what figures to be the biggest price in baseball history. While waiting, the Dodgers didn't lure any splashy stars to Hollywood's bright lights.

Coming off three straight losing seasons, the Mets have cut the dimensions of Citi Field along with their payroll, from $120 million at the start of last season to about $95 million. This while the Wilpon-Katz family that owns the team prepares for a March trial where the trustee for victims of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme will seek to recover $386 million for investors. On the field, New York has downgraded from Gucci-level free agents to Gap-priced players such as Frank Francisco and Jon Rauch.

In an increasingly stronger NL East, Washington upgraded by adding Gonzalez and Edwin Jackson, and Philadelphia added closer Jonathan Papelbon.

As spring training approached, there still were plenty of big names available of the market, including Roy Oswalt, Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui, Vladimir Guerrero, Magglio Ordonez and Raul Ibanez.

As teams head to spring training across Florida and Arizona, they'll find new managers in charge of Boston (Valentine), the Chicago Cubs (Dale Sveum), the Chicago White Sox (Robin Ventura), the Marlins (Ozzie Guillen) and the Cardinals (Mike Matheny).

And nearly a quarter of the clubs have switched GMs.

La Russa, the first manager to retire immediately after leading his team to a World Series title, won't be in uniform for spring training for the first time since 1962 — when he was attending Jefferson High School. While he's had discussions with Commissioner Bud Selig, he said filling Joe Torre's old job as executive vice president of baseball operations wouldn't make sense for him.

"I'm going to show up at spring training, just because I want to stay current," La Russa said. "So I'm not totally away, but it is different. I plan to go to the ballpark and stay current and watch teams, and especially get familiar with Arizona again. I'm sure I'm going to be busy enough."