The Yankees spent alot of money, and made some real concessions, to coax Roger Clemens out of retirement. Two months into the deal, it doesn’t look like it’s paying off:
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., June 13 — Roger Clemens is two games below .500 and the Yankees are one below that level of mediocrity after a 6-4 loss Friday night to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who have the worst record in the major leagues.
It was the least effective outing of the season for Clemens (2-4), who is earning a prorated $28 million for a partial season. But Clemens said that he had more good moments than bad ones, and that his only big regret came in the second inning, when Josh Wilson, who was hitting ninth in the batting order, hit a two-out, two-run triple.
“Cut and dry, that’s the game,” Clemens said. “I could care less about my record. I still have very high expectations.”
That hit put the Devil Rays up, 3-0. Wilson hit a two-seam fastball down the middle and low, Clemens said.
For Wilson, hitting his first big-league triple off a future Hall of Famer like Clemens, was “pretty cool.”
Manager Joe Torre, who praised the overall effort of his team, had a slightly different impression of Clemens’s performance. “He just wasn’t good tonight,” Torre said. “He couldn’t get in a good rhythm.”
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Clemens was making his seventh start and eighth appearance since rejoining the team last month. He pitched eight innings in each of his previous two outings, giving up a run each time to earn a victory and a no-decision.
But Friday’s start was his worst. He had not allowed as many runs or walks in any of his previous starts. He also threw fewer pitches than in his other starts.
Only once has he worked fewer innings, June 21 at Colorado, when he went four and a third innings in a 4-3 defeat.
It’s true, of course, that it’s hard for even a great pitcher to win without run support. And the Yankees haven’t been good about giving Clemens, or anyone on the pitching staff, run support. But it’s also true that Roger Clemens is not the pitcher he was five years ago, and the idea that he was going to turn the team around was wishful thinking.
