The twilight zone

Clemens' feats in late stage of his career are remarkable

When Roger Clemens took the ball Monday afternoon against Boston in search of career victory No. 300, what may have been as impressive as his prolificacy is this truism: two months shy of his 41st birthday and after 584 career games, Clemens is still an ace. If the playoffs had started May 26 -- and goodness knows the Yankees have looked nothing like a playoff team for the past three weeks -- Clemens would have been New York's Game 1 starter. With the Yanks in a 3-11 slide, they had the ball in the hands of the very pitcher they would have chosen for such a spot.

Clemens is getting to 300 with the stuff and mound presence of a young stud. He has placed himself in the argument for greatest pitcher of all time -- and no judicious editing, folks; the argument is not for one game, not for "prime stretch," not for just the postseason, but for the entire body of work -- because he is suffering very little diminution of ability at the last stage of his career.

The six-time Cy Young Award winner labored against his former club Monday. Still, he whiffed nine batters in 5 2/3 innings against a team that has struck out less often than all but four other AL squads. The Red Sox took 71 swings at Clemens' pitches and missed nearly a third of them (22) -- and that was on an off day for the right-hander.

How well has Clemens been able to maintain his stuff? He has struck out 76 batters in 70 1/3 innings this season, a phenomenal rate of 9.73 strikeouts per nine innings. That's better than his career strikeout rate of 8.67. Think about that. Clemens, at age 40, is blowing away hitters at a higher rate than he has previously in his career.

How unusual is that? Of the previous 20 pitchers to win 300 games, only five struck out batters at a better rate in the year they won No. 300 than their career average -- and none by as wide a margin as Clemens is doing. Here is how the Rocket's rate of strikeouts per nine innings compares to those of some other 300-game winners:

Pitcher	Career K/9	K/9 year of 300th win	Diff.
1. Roger Clemens	8.67	9.73	+12.2%
2. Cy Young	3.43	3.83	+11.7%
3. Eddie Plank	4.50	4.93	+9.6%
4. Phil Niekro	5.57	6.10	+9.5%
5. Nolan Ryan	9.55	10.24	+7.2%
6. Early Wynn	4.60	4.72	+2.6%
7. Steve Carlton	7.13	6.41	-10.1%
8. Warren Spahn	4.43	3.94	-11.1%

In 1963, the year Early Wynn won his 300th game, he made only five starts. It was also the right-hander's final season in the big leagues. Cy Young (34) and Eddie Plank (35) were much younger than Clemens when they hit the 300 mark. Phil Niekro's primary pitch was the knuckleball, which is far less taxing than throwing a 95-mph fastball. Nolan Ryan seems the only close fit of this group in terms of maintaining premier strikeout stuff at an advanced age. (He was 43 the year he won 300.)

Indeed, Clemens is striking out batters at a better rate this season than he did in all but three of his previous 19 seasons. Here are his career-best rates of strikeouts per nine innings:

Year	Age	K/9
1. 1998	35	10.39
2. 1997	34	9.96
3. 1988	25	9.92
4. 2003	40	9.73
5. 2002	39	9.60
6. 1996	33	9.53

Note that five of Clemens' six most efficient strikeout seasons have occurred after he turned 33, an age at which Sandy Koufax was three years into retirement. Also note that when former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette allowed Clemens to leave Boston after the 1996 season because the hurler, Duquette said, was in "the twilight" of his career, Clemens had just come off a season in which he struck out more batters per nine innings than in every season of his career to that point, except 1988.

"Forget his won-loss record," current Red Sox GM Theo Epstein said, referring to Clemens' 10-13 mark in 1996. "His strikeout rate was still right up there and always has been. That tells you what kind of stuff he has."

Clemens struck out 20 batters in the last game he won for Boston. He had a 28-inning scoreless streak in August of '96, the longest in the majors that year. He also led the league in strikeouts. Does that sound like a pitcher losing his stuff?

Duquette, in an e-mail response to a query about Clemens, called the future Hall of Famer "a determined, durable, terrifically talented pitcher who has long been one of the best at what he does."

In addressing Clemens' departure, Duquette wrote, "During the last part of Roger's tenure with the Sox, I got the feeling that the intense pressure of being the most high-profile player for so many years in the boiling cauldron that is baseball in Boston was weighing heavily on Roger and he wanted to move along."

Not so, said Clemens, who stated that he would have preferred to remain in Boston but that Duquette made his decision to leave easy.

"It's no different than one corporation asking you to work for them, saying we want you, and the other corporation lets you go," Clemens said. "It's pretty easy. If [the Red Sox] had gotten anywhere close in the ballpark it would have been an easy decision [to stay]."

Perhaps what damns Duquette's "twilight" evaluation the most -- and seems wholly at odds with Clemens' work ethic throughout his career -- is Duquette's insinuation that Clemens was not in proper shape.

"For a number of reasons -- such as his health and conditioning, poor run support and minimal support from the bullpen -- his record and performance had slipped in his last few years with the Red Sox," Duquette wrote.

He added that Clemens "completely re-dedicated himself to his career, got himself in great shape and had two terrific years for the Blue Jays."

The numbers clearly do not suggest that Clemens let himself go physically. In fact, he averaged a whopping 125 pitches per start in '96, a career high. And if somehow you did think Clemens wasn't in proper condition while posting the second-best strikeout rate of his career and throwing his career high in pitches per start, wouldn't you keep him to find out what he could do by "getting into shape?"

When told of Duquette's comments, Clemens rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I dogged it. I mailed it in ... Like [agents Randy and Alan] Hendricks said, he's just trying to save face. The manager [Kevin Kennedy] knew it at the time. [Duquette] wanted his team and he wanted some other guys he brought in for Mo [Vaughn] and everybody. It was an easy decision. It wasn't a hard decision at all for me."

As it happened, what Duquette called "the twilight" of Clemens' career has catapulted the Rocket from a great pitcher to one of the best ever. Look at it another way: When Clemens left Boston he was 34 years old and had a career record of 192-111. By way of comparison, right now Mike Mussina is 34 years old and has a career record of 189-105.

Now look at Clemens in "twilight." He is 107-43. How good is that? Consider that Pedro Martinez is 108-34 in that same period, which happens to begin with Martinez's Cy Young Award breakout season of 1997, when Pedro was 25 years old. That means by won-lost record, Clemens at the end of his career has been virtually as reliable and as big a winner as Martinez has been in the youthful prime of his career. Amazing.

Here's one more comparison just for the fun of it. Take every pitcher in history with 100 career decisions since the distance between home plate and the pitchers' mound was set at 60 feet, six inches a century ago. Now take Twilight Clemens -- that is, Clemens only since he left Boston. Now rank all of them according to career winning percentage. Here's what you get:

Pitcher	W-L	PCT
1. Spud Chandler	109-43	.717
2. Twilight Clemens	107-43	.713
3. Pedro Martinez	156-65	.706
4. Whitey Ford	236-106	.690
5. Don Gullett	109-50	.686

Remarkable. It was fitting on a raw, wet Monday afternoon at Yankee Stadium that at the precise moment Clemens stepped out of the dugout to take the mound in the first inning the sun began to shine briefly for its only appearance of the day, like some divine spotlight. It was fitting, too, that as Clemens fired 133 pitches trying to win No. 300, Martinez and Randy Johnson were on the disabled list and Greg Maddux was resting comfortably a day after he had removed himself from a start after having thrown only 84 pitches. There's nobody quite like Clemens. And it has been the last stage of the Rocket that has set him apart.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci covers baseball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Click here to send a question to his Mailbag.

 

Related information

Stories

John Donovan: Clemens is fueled by passion Red Sox deny Clemens' bid for 300 Power Rankings: Yankees tumbled to No. 7 Previous Tom Verducci Columns

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video