So what does George Steinbrenner have against Jerry Reinsdorf?
Since when is it the New York Yankees’ top priority to keep the White Sox from winning the wild-card playoff spot?
Aren’t the Yankees playing in Boston this weekend? How do you explain Joe Torre saving Roger Clemens’ return for Monday night in Chicago?
Either the Yankees have given up on catching the Red Sox, or there’s a chance Clemens might be mortal after all.
Torre, the Yankees’ manager until further notice — check back daily — said he wanted to keep his other veteran pitchers on schedule. That’s why Mike Mussina was to start Saturday in Boston, and Andy Pettitte is set for Sunday.
Nothing against Mussina and Pettitte, but they won’t be first-ballot Hall of Famers. Clemens could have been one in a couple of years if he had just stayed retired — the first time he retired, that is.
It’s telling that the Yankees didn’t want Clemens to follow his Monday night start in Triple A by working against the Red Sox at Fenway Park, where his career began in 1984 — when Boston’s manager was, gulp, Ralph Houk.
There could be only two benefits to the Yankees holding Clemens out of the series against Boston, which went into Saturday leading New York by 12 1/2 games. The first is they spared Clemens from the massive headache he certainly would have had after enduring the hype and angst of pitching in New England. The second and most relevant is Clemens got a couple of extra days to get his 44-year-old right arm ready.
According to some who saw him in his three spring-training-in-May outings, he can use a little help. He worked only 15 1/3 innings after signing with the Yankees on May 6 and comes in facing hitters who have been looking at big-league pitchers for two months.
Clemens was in shape. He never lets himself get out of shape. But even for the greatest pitcher of his generation, inarguably, and one of the five best in history, it takes a while to get that wing heated up.
While Clemens worked six scoreless innings Monday, he did not have the fastball that allowed him to become the first pitcher to strike out 20 in a game. He didn’t even have the one that helped him go 7-6 with a 2.30 ERA a year ago, when he failed to have a 10-strikeout game for the first time in his career.
According to scouts, Clemens hasn’t gotten his fastball above the low 90s. That would have made him an attractive target for David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez and the Red Sox, who have scored the third-most runs in the major leagues. The Yankees obviously like his chances better against the White Sox, who were 29th in the majors in scoring.
When Clemens turned down an offer from Boston so he could sign with the Yankees — declining even to give the Astros a chance to make a last-minute bid — New York was aghast that the Pinstripes were one game below .500 and 5 1/2 games back.
The plan was to chase down the Red Sox with a rotation featuring Mussina, Pettitte, Clemens, Chien-Ming Wang and rookie Phil Hughes. But in the meantime, Boston ran off a 20-8 record in May, and the Yankees’ rotation sprung more holes, with Hughes leaving a no-hit bid in Texas with a hamstring injury. Both the deficit and the list of rookie pitchers in New York has continued to grow.
For the Yankees to recover from a 23-29 start to finish with 95 victories, they would need to go 72-38 the rest of the year. That’s .655 baseball.
In other words, it’s not going to happen.
If Clemens finds he does have a lot left, you wonder if he will regret allowing himself to be money-whipped by the Yankees. Including the 40 percent luxury tax the team pays to MLB, he will cost Steinbrenner more than $1 million a start.
Boston wanted Clemens but wasn’t desperate to have him. That’s why the Red Sox offered him merely a prorated salary of $18 million, which computes to $3 million a month. The Yankees blew away that proposal, signing him for about $28 million prorated, a cool $4.67 million per month.
If any pitcher ever could be worth what Clemens will be paid, it would be him, Sandy Koufax, Walter Johnson or maybe Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown. But it’s hard to see how any of those guys could rescue these Yankees over the four months left in the season, especially if they were working in a five-man rotation.
If Clemens pulls this off, it will be his greatest achievement. If he doesn’t, well, at least he will be happy on payday.
the great equalizer in NL Central. Phil Rogers, Page 2
