Reports that the Houston Astros are looking to have Roger Clemens pitch for them in September absolutely baffle me. Have the Astros really fallen that much that they’re willing to let a 50-year old man who has been out of baseball for five seasons pitch for them simply to attract a few late ticket sales?
Roger Clemens reportedly was hitting 87-88 miles per hour during his brief tenure with the independent Sugar Land Skeeters; while that’s a very impressive total for a 50-year-old man, that’s not going to fool many major league hitters, if any.
The Astros are a whopping 10.5 games back of the next-worst team in the major leagues; they’re 41-92 and on pace to post one of the worst seasons by any team in the history of the sport. They’re 39.5 games back of the Cincinnati Reds, and they’re mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, so there is absolutely no reason to bring back Clemens to pitch a few pointless starts in a season the Astros desperately just want to end.
The franchise endured a truly horrendous season – they traded away Carlos Lee, Wandy Rodriguez, Brett Myers, Brandon Lyon, and J.A. Happ a year after letting go of Hunter Pence.
They have to know Clemens has zero interest in the Astros franchise; this is a man who has spent his entire big league career looking out for himself and himself only, and it’s pretty evident that Clemens wants to appear in a major league game simply so that he can delay his Hall of Fame date by five years and hope that sportswriters have softened their stance on him for using steroids.
Actually allowing Clemens to pitch for them would be worse than the ridiculously awful winning percentage the Astros have put up this year – it would show the fans this is an organization more devoted to bringing in sideshows and circus acts than actually winning baseball games.
