The Astros are making life easier for AL West teams - MLB

The New York Times’ Benjamin Hoffman looks at how the Astros moving to the AL West has made life easier for the A’s and Rangers and harder for the AL East teams who may be trying to nab a wild card spot. After noting how Texas and Oakland have fattened up on Houston, he says:

Unfortunately for the Yankees, and the other four teams in the A.L. East, their division has no weak link. The Toronto Blue Jays are in last place, but they had an 11-game winning streak until the Rays beat them Monday.

I hate the unbalanced schedule in the wild card era. Teams are competing for the same playoff spots against varied competition and that’s just unfair.

That said: it has been thus since they went back to the unbalanced schedule many, many years ago. And while there are no weak links in the AL East now, there were many years when the Rays were doormats and the Orioles and Blue Jays used the big spending of the Yankees and Red Sox as excuses for not competing. So yes, it stinks that the setup is this way, but it something that goes around and comes around.

Roger Clemens will be an analyst for ESPN when the defending World Series champion Houston Astros host the Chicago White Sox on opening day.

Clemens made four appearances on last year’s KayRod Cast with Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez. He will be stepping in on March 30 for David Cone, who will be doing the New York Yankees opener against the San Francisco Giants on YES Network.

“Roger has been sort of a friend of ours for the last year, so to speak, he’s in. He’s been engaged, knowledgeable and really present,” said ESPN Vice President of Production Phil Orlins. “You know, whatever past may be, he’s still tremendously engaged and he really brought that every time he was with us.”

Clemens was a seven-time Cy Young winner but his career after baseball has been tainted by allegations of performance-enhancing drug use. He is a Houston native and pitched for the Astros for three seasons.

Orlins said that with the rules changes and pitch clock, it is important to have a pitcher in the booth with Karl Ravech and Eduardo Perez.

“We don’t feel like we have to have the dynamic of Eduardo with a pitcher, but we certainly think that works. Throw in the added factor of rule changes and it is better to have a batter-pitcher perspective,” Orlins said.

Orlins did not say if this would open the door for future opportunities for Clemens as an ESPN analyst.