Teams just aren’t spending money like in previous times.

With several franchises hampered with lucrative long-term deals that create little financial flexibility, general managers are looking to get a little more creative these days about how they allocate payroll.

A lot of teams just don’t have the ability nor resources to spend lavishly, so every signing becomes critical in the pursuit of a World Series ring.

As the San Francisco Giants showed us in 2010, it doesn’t take a red-carpet list of athletes to take home the title, so let’s take a look at some under-the-radar squads that could be noticeably better by the end of the 2011 campaign.

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