What if Red Sox never let Roger Clemens leave in free agency?
Retaining Roger Clemens when he hit free agency would have created a ripple effect altering the direction of the franchise – for better and for worse.
Roger Clemens spent the first 13 seasons of his major league career wearing a Boston Red Sox uniform. Over that span, he piled up a handful of All-Star appearances, three Cy Young awards, an MVP, and tied the franchise record with 192 wins. Those accolades are enough to fill an impressive lifetime resume but for Clemens, it was only the first act of his career.
The Rocket was the most coveted pitcher on the market when he hit free agency after the 1996 season. He was coming off a solid year in which he posted a 3.63 ERA and led the league in strikeouts but Clemens wasn’t quite as dominant as he had been at his peak and posted sub-par seasons with an ERA north of 4.00 in two of the previous three years.
Dan Duquette’s infamous quote about Clemens being in the “twilight” of his career may have been taken out of context but it did seem as if the star pitcher was fading at the time. That doesn’t mean the Red Sox were ready to push him out of town though. They did offer Clemens a lucrative contract in an effort to keep him in Boston, it just wasn’t enough.
The Toronto Blue Jays lured Clemens north of the border with a four-year deal worth up to $40 million (including incentives and an option on the fourth year). The contract made Clemens the richest pitcher in baseball history at the time.
Some bad blood developed between the organization and their ace at the end of Clemens’ tenure with the team. Clemens felt disrespected by Duquette implying his career was nearing the end of the line. Red Sox fans turned on the “Texas Con Man” when he left and it took years to mend those wounds.
Clemens has since been welcomed back to Fenway Park and he was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame but how would history have unfolded if he never left to begin with?
Post-Boston career
Clemens immediately silenced his doubters with consecutive Cy Young campaigns with the Blue Jays. He went 41-13 with a 2.33 ERA and 10.2 K/9 in two seasons in Toronto.
His dominance on the mound wasn’t enough to lift the Jays to the postseason so they traded him prior to the 1999 season to the reigning champion New York Yankees. The rich got richer and adding Clemens to the top of their rotation helped the Yankees capture two more championships in his first two years in the Bronx.
Clemens would go on to earn two more Cy Young awards, giving him a major league-record seven, over the remainder of his career split between the Yankees and his hometown Houston Astros.
His numbers were already worthy of the Hall of Fame when he left Boston but by the end of his career, Clemens had arguably piled up enough accolades to be considered the best pitcher in MLB history. Unfortunately, his entrance into Cooperstown remains blocked by a legacy tainted by performance enhancing drugs.
While it was never technically proven, there’s enough damning evidence to convince the court of opinion that Clemens was a PED user. It’s fairly easy to pinpoint when he started using, considering the drastic turnaround from fading star in his final years in Boston to the best in baseball once he arrived in Toronto.
Was it a burning desire to prove the Red Sox wrong that pushed him to start cheating? Perhaps he wouldn’t have been tempted to turn to the dark side if his relationship with the Red Sox hadn’t been spoiled. If Duquette had stayed on his good side and locked up his ace with an extension, Clemens may have finished out the final few years of his career in Boston.
He wouldn’t have lasted until he was 44 years old and almost certainly wouldn’t have piled up four more Cy Young awards without a boost from PEDs. However, he probably would have had a few solid years left in the tank, enough to keep the Red Sox in contention while adding to a legacy that surely would have put him in the Hall of Fame by now.
Red Sox find a new ace
Boston fell to 78 wins and a fourth-place finish in the AL East in their first season without Clemens. Their pitching staff produced a collective 4.70 ERA, putting them in the bottom-third of the majors.
Keeping Clemens wouldn’t have been enough for the Red Sox to keep pace with the powerhouse Orioles and Yankees in the ’97 division race. Toronto had Clemens in peak form that year and still finished in last place. The disappointing results did convince the Red Sox that they needed a new ace to anchor their rotation though.
Prior to the 1998 season, Boston acquired reigning NL Cy Young-winner Pedro Martinez from the Montreal Expos. Pedro’s arrival immediately lifted the Red Sox back to the postseason. He captured two more Cy Young awards with arguably the greatest two-year span by any pitcher in the modern era from 1999-2000. Martinez became a legend in his seven seasons in Boston, culminating in his final year with the franchise in 2004 when he helped vanquish an 86-year title drought.
Pedro helped bring one championship to Boston but would there have been more titles to celebrate if he were paired with Clemens? Imagine those two co-aces in the same rotation. Even if Clemens wasn’t quite the same without PEDs, he would have been a formidable No. 2 behind vintage Pedro.
Could the Red Sox have overcome the Yankees in the 1999 ALCS if they had Clemens on their side instead of wearing pinstripes? Probably not considering the only game Boston won in that series was when Pedro beat Clemens in Game 3, a match-up that saw The Rocket knocked out after only two innings.
Clemens pitched a gem against the Atlanta Braves in the World Series that year and was even better in his one start against the New York Mets in the following year’s Fall Classic. You could make a case that the Yankees would have one or two fewer rings to rub in our faces if they didn’t have Clemens, although they won both those World Series fairly decisively. The Bronx Bombers didn’t even really need Clemens to be a dynasty.
Consequences
Re-signing Clemens could have had negative consequences for the Red Sox. Let’s avoid the obvious fear of an expensive pitcher declining rapidly if he weren’t illegally enhancing his performance. We’ll never know how Clemens would have aged without PEDs.
Instead, let’s explore another angle of the fallout of keeping Clemens. If Boston shelled out enough to satisfy Clemens, would they have still made the trade for Pedro?
The Red Sox inked Martinez to a 6-year, $75 million extension after he arrived from Montreal. It was the largest contract ever given to a pitcher at the time, with an average annual value easily topping the approximately $8.5 million Clemens was making.
Boston was eighth in the majors with a payroll of about $51 million in Pedro’s first year with the franchise. Having Clemens on the payroll at the same time would have pushed them up to around $60 million, right behind the Yankees for the third-highest in baseball. While that doesn’t seem like a steep total by today’s standards, it would have been the highest payroll in franchise history at the time. Boston hadn’t been among three highest payrolls in the majors since 1991 and they wouldn’t venture into top-three territory again until 2001.
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If Clemens stayed in Boston then the Red Sox wouldn’t have felt as pressured to find a new top of the rotation starter and it’s unlikely they would have been able to afford both. We could have been robbed of seeing Pedro at his best.
Boston doesn’t win the 2004 World Series without Pedro. Clemens probably would have been retired by that point without PEDs extending his career. If he somehow was still hanging on into his 40s without steroids to fuel him, Clemens still may very well have bolted for Houston that year.
If Clemens was gone and Pedro never came, do the Red Sox consider their chances of contention strong enough to pull off the Curt Schilling trade? They definitely aren’t reversing the curse without Schilling and his bloody sock, further extending the franchise’s title drought. Schilling also played a key role in the 2007 title so if the Red Sox never acquired him from Arizona then that’s a second title potentially lost.
Revised legacy
Clemens is already the franchise’s all-time leader in strikeouts and pitching WAR while sharing the lead for wins and shutouts. He would have padded those counting stats with a few more years in Boston but there isn’t much more he could have done to cement his legacy.
Assuming he stayed clean, Clemens would have strolled into Cooperstown years ago. His reputation wouldn’t have been tarnished by steroid allegations and he would have been remembered as one of the most beloved icons in Boston sports history.
Then again, maybe Clemens ends up cheating anyway despite never feeling scorned by Boston. Many of those accolades he piled up later in his career would have been in a Red Sox uniform but those accomplishments would have been tainted.
At least Red Sox fans can cling to the notion that he was clean during his Boston years. That plays a significant part in why most fans have been able to forgive him for leaving. Would we be as forgiving if he soiled the reputation of this franchise by bearing the Red Sox emblem while he became the poster child for PEDs?
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Either way, the legacy of Clemens in Boston would have been drastically altered if he stayed. As great as it would have been to see The Rocket finish his career with the Red Sox, the franchise seems to be better off with how the story panned out.