The Biggest Baseball Story No One's Talking About
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by Ea34
Amid all the talk of steroids, A-Rod, Barry Bonds, and the whereabouts of Bud Selig when Bonds breaks Hank Aaron 's career home run mark, one story in Major League Baseball has managed to fly under the radar. While he hasn't been an out-and-out disaster, Roger Clemens has been an average-to-below-average starter for the New York Yankees - which is an out-and-out disaster when he's being paid $4.5 million each month!
Thursday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, Roger Clemens was lit up by the Chicago White Sox for nine hits and eight runs in less than two innings. In Clemens' defense, only three of the runs were earned, but following Robinson Cano 's one-out error, Clemens recorded one more out and then proceeded to give four consecutive hits before being pulled from the game in favor of Mike Myers to a chorus of boos.
Entering Thursday's start, Clemens had lost five of his ten 2007 starts, had an ERA of 3.92 and an opponents' batting average of .248- hardly terrible, but hardly vintage Clemens, and certainly not $28 million/year. To put Clemens' stats in perspective, his ERA in each of the past two seasons in Houston was 1.87 (2005) and 2.30 (2006), while opponents hit just .198 against the Rocket in 2005, and just .216 against him last season.
He may be one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history, but time seems to have finally caught up with Roger Clemens. It may be heresy, but it's about time someone acknowledged it.
