Boston Red Sox: Ranking top 10 players from the 1980s
By Drew Athans
Roger Clemens
First on the list is perhaps the greatest pitcher in Red Sox history, Roger Clemens. Yes, he’s incredibly polarizing and Red Sox fans seem to love him or hate him, but there’s no denying that he spent the prime years of his career in Boston and he remains the Red Sox franchise leader in wins and strikeouts, numbers he racked up during his twelve seasons with the team from 1984-1996.
In keeping with the spirit of this article, we’ll only focus on what Clemens did during the 1980s, but even then he was one of the best and most dominant pitchers in all of baseball. I’ve made known my love for Clemens in previous articles; he was my favorite pitcher of the 1980s, one of my favorite Red Sox players of all time, and I think he belongs in Cooperstown despite the PED allegations that had swirled around him over the last decade.
A quick rundown of his numbers in the 1980s (from 1984-1990) show a 116-51 W-L record, an ERA of 3.01, 1424 K, 425 BB, 1513.0 IP, and a WHIP of 1.147 in 205 starts. Those are monster numbers! To go along with those stats, Clemens won the American League MVP award in 1986 and the American League Cy Young award in 1986 and 1987.
He also probably should have won that award in 1990 when he went 21-6 with an anemic 1.93 ERA and 209 strikeouts. He lost to Oakland’s Bob Welch who won 27 games that year, although Clemens’ ERA was a full run lower and he had almost 100 more strikeouts. Still, his 1986 season was superlative (24-4, 2.48 ERA, 238 K) and he led the Red Sox to the brink of a World Series victory.
Regardless of how you feel about the way Clemens left Boston, his time with the New York Yankees, or any of his off-field issues, remember that while the Red Sox haven’t retired his number (21), they also haven’t allowed anyone else to wear it since he left in 1996.
There’s no denying that Roger Clemens was the best Red Sox pitcher of the 1980s and he deserves to be at the top of this list.