Today the moves that all baseball fans expected for some time now was made offical. In the 2013 season, the Houston Astros will move to the American League West, the first team to change leagues since the '98 Brewers. We all have our own opinions on how this, plus the extra wild card team will play out, but here are a bunch of links if you missed any of the action:
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Mike Axisa over at RiverAveBlues.com had a great piece on a realignment plan. Of course this would never play out, but Mike has fun with a simple idea that MLB had. It surely goes to show how difficult and odd decision this current one seems to be.
- Why the Houston Astros' switch to the AL is a big deal. FOX's Jon Morosi takes a look at why this is good for the MLB and mainly the American League West teams. It will of course take some time for us to evaluate how this move will play out in the long run, but in the short term, as the Astros' continue to fail, every AL team is happy to have them.
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Houston Astros and 9PM Start Times in 2013 is an interesting look from Matthew at Lookout Landing on how a Central Time Zone team will be playing many of its road games in an inconvenient time. Many of us know that the schedule will look very different in 2013.
- With this new added Wild Card to the playoffs, many think baseball will become boring. A few had to make light of the situation. Some food for thought: Since 1995, there have been 6 instances in which one of the two leagues had a Wild Card winner that DID NOT finish more than 5 games ahead of the team that would be the second Wild Card team. To break that down, since the current Wild Card system in 1995, only 6 out of 16 years have had excitement of less than a 5 game lead down the stretch. To go one more step, in 1995, the last team in would of had less than 80 wins.