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 106 days after the surprising St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series, baseball returned this weekend when pitchers and catchers for the Seattle Mariners reported to spring training in Peoria, Ariz.

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 RBI 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.

“We have to make decisions a little bit earlier because we have to have a club together when we go there, and then you come back and readjust and then have a week of spring training for everyone to get their bearings back,” Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik said. “It’s almost like going away to football camp in high school.”

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 Saturday 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.

Miami was 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.

“I want our team to be important,” Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria said.

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.

Another uncertainty heading into spring training was the status of NL MVP Ryan Braun.

Facing a possible 50-game suspension for a positive drug test, the Brewers’ left fielder was awaiting a decision from arbitrator Shyam Das on his appeal, and the absence of Fielder and Braun might be too much for Milwaukee to overcome.

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).

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 in high school.

“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.”

Having twice fallen a strike shy of its first World Series title in the still-hard-to-comprehend Game 6, Texas starts the quest for its third straight AL pennant after adding Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish ($56 million over six years plus a $51,703,411 fee) and with new questions about 2010 MVP Josh Hamilton, who is eligible for free agency after the season and admitted he had a recent relapse with alcohol.

The wounds of October are still fresh.

“There are times I still think about it and it burns,” Michael Young said.