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Gammons: Astros Expect Clemens Back

By Tim Dierkes [March 1, 2006 at 12:43am CST]

Peter Gammons's inside info on Roger Clemens in this morning's blog has received surprisingly little press. His stance:

"...Unless owner Drayton McLane kills this (yeah, right), the Astros expect Clemens to sign on May 1, work out with Koby's minor-league team, and make his first start June 2 against the Reds."

Our source pretty much had this pegged back in December. That means my 144 inning projection in my Fantasy Guide should hold up well; he's still probably a top 25 starter in just two-thirds of a season.

What I don't get is why Clemens needs to milk $15MM (or whatever) out of the Astros for the '06 season. We all thought it was somewhat noble of him to "settle" for $5MM for his 2004 comeback. If he'd asked for twice that maybe Houston doesn't go get Beltran and doesn't end up in the NLCS.

But Roger pretty much ruined his goodwill when he decided to compensate for his 2004 gift by demanding an $18MM salary in 2005. If the Astros had acquired a decent hitter at the trading deadline, they would've at least put up more of a fight in the World Series. If Clemens keeps his demands unnecessarily high and Bagwell forces his way into the lineup, the Astros have absolutely no hope of acquiring reinforcements through trade.

And now to go off on a tangent. I'm all for guys like Gammons and Stark producing more content that's presumably published more quickly. But is anyone reading these things? They should be called BINOs - Blogs In Name Only. Their subscriber wall is killing the spread of traffic that is supposed to be the hallmark of blogs. It doesn't really matter given this problem, outlined by Aaron Gleeman:

"...As far as I can tell none of the dozen or so blogs ESPN.com hosts actually link to other blogs. For instance, Olney's blog is made up primarily of links to outside stories and his brief comments on them, but in nearly a year I can't remember a single link that wasn't to a mainstream newspaper."

That comment helped garner Gleeman a one-time link from Jayson Stark's blog, but it's not becoming a regular occurence. I do like the conversational style seen in ESPN's recent blogs, though Gammons and Stark kind of write informally in their columns anyway. But all griping aside, I still think ESPN's subscription price is well worth forty bucks a year. No, they didn't pay me to say that.

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