Bombing in the BRONX

Sporting News, The, Sept 20, 1999 by Bob Hille

With Roger Clemens in the rotation, the Yankees seemed destined to win another title. But his descent has put the title run in doubt and fueled several theories on what's wrong with the Rocket.

Pick a start, any start, by Roger Clemens and it begins the same way: Warmup tosses complete, he squares himself to home plate, ready to throw his first ninetysomething fastball; his shoulders heave as he takes a final cleansing breath.

But you should know this: Whether it's last month against the Mariners, last Sunday against the Red Sox or the last regular-season meeting this week before a potential playoff matchup against the Indians, Clemens hears every groan from the crowd. He senses every time a Yankees infielder grows impatient and uneasy over yet another 2-0 count.

And, yes, he hears the questions.

How can a five-time Cy Young Award winner, 41-13 in the past two seasons with the Blue Jays, still be struggling to keep his ERA under 5.00? How can Clemens be so good and so bad?

Manager Joe Torre expects Clemens to be among his top three starters in the postseason. And why not? After all, Torre is correct after an 8-0 victory over Seattle in saying, "That was the Roger Clemens who won all those Cy Young Awards." He's just as fight, though, after a 5-3 loss to woeful Anaheim in saying, "I don't know what the answer is, other than keeping patting him on the rear end and sending him out there."

Therein lies the quandary. On one hand is a late-moving, mid-90s fastball, delivered with precision on both corners for eight innings August 27 against the Mariners. On the other is a flat, low-90s fastball, pitched from behind in the count and batted around Edison Field last week in a 4 2/3-inning outing after which Clemens could say only, "I knew from the first batter it was going to be a real battle."

The Yankees don't know who they'll get every fifth day. Is it the Hall of Fame-bound Clemens who this year set an A.L. record with his 18th consecutive victory? Or the Clemens who is reaching baseball middle age, good enough to win, but not good enough to intimidate or dominate as he once did?

The Yankees are obsessed with Clemens' start-to-start progress. Truth be told, their scrutiny is more intense than that; it's inning to inning, pitch to pitch.

There are three theories, alone or in combination, on why Clemens has looked so ordinary at times this season:

Injury. Some wonder if Clemens has ever fully recovered from the hamstring injury that kept him on the disabled list for most of May. After last week's loss to the Angels, Clemens compared his stuff to his two-inning start April 27 in Texas, his last before his stay on the D.L.

Clemens is dependent on his legs for velocity and life on his fastball. If he's still feeling occasional stiffness, no matter how minor, then that might explain why his fastball has flattened at times and he has lacked command of his other pitches. That might help explain why Clemens' ERA is hovering nearly two full runs above his career ERA (2.95) entering the season.

One scout offers The Record of Hackensack, N.J., a curious but telling memory of Clemens in July against the Mets when, during warmup tosses, catcher Jorge Posada accidentally threw the ball over Clemens' head. For most pitchers, the reflex would be to jump or at least reach for the ball. Clemens did neither. Says the scout: "That's when I thought, `Maybe there's still something wrong.'"

Rocket science. It's possible that Clemens has been thinking too much and too hard on the mound. Torre stops short of criticizing Clemens but says, "He has a pitch for every situation. He wants to make the ball do this, do that ... sometimes he calls on himself to do too much."

In other words, Clemens should spend less time honing his splitter and cutter, expend less mental energy on getting inside a hitter's head, and simply bust his best pitch, the fastball.

When he does that, Clemens still can be overpowering. Example: Against the Mariners, he blew away Ken Griffey Jr. with pure, bad-tempered, up-and-in heat. That tells you how hard he was throwing--even if only on that day.

Age. At 37, Clemens is still marvelously conditioned. But time never loses. He is getting older, and that's manifesting itself in his ratio of great games to simply acceptable ones.

As a concession, Clemens says he plans to "back off" in the weight room, where his between-starts lifting regimen-particularly with his legs--is legendary.

Torre, in fact, admits that Clemens' odometer is a factor. "when you do get to a certain age, it's going to be, `How often can you do this?' I think the 95, 96 (mph fastball) is more of a thing that's going to happen once in a while, as opposed to being every five days."

Last Sunday, the Yankees saw both sides of Clemens in a 4-1 loss to Boston. He limited the Red Sox to two hits in the first seven innings but was chased in the eighth after three consecutive singles began a decisive three-run inning. Yankees fans were left again to squirm, if not because of Clemens' inconsistency then certainly because the loss pulled the Red Sox to within 3 1/2 games of New York.