Entering Saturday’s action, every AL East team has a negative run differential

By Apr 26, 2014, 12:15 PM EDT
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On Saturday morning, ESPN’s Buster Olney passed along the interesting fact that all five teams in the American League East has a negative run differential. The first-place Yankees are tied for the worst differential at -10 with the Red Sox, while the second-place Orioles are at -1, the third-place Blue Jays are at -6, and the last-place Rays are at -2.

It’s still early so run differential doesn’t mean a whole lot. But over a larger sample of games, run differential correlates strongly to winning baseball games. By this simple arithmetic function, we can conclude with a large grain of salt that the five AL East teams have played no better than average baseball to begin the season.

The only other division with three teams in the red in run differential is the AL West. The Rangers (-2), Mariners (-6), and the Astros (-51) have played subpar baseball. It’s… a bit of an understatement for the Astros.

Roger Clemens will be an analyst for ESPN on opening day

Associated PressMar 23, 2023, 12:09 AM EDT
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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.