ESPN listed the best player for each team who isn’t already enshrined in the Hall of Fame and Roger Clemens was picked to represent the Boston Red Sox.
There are over a dozen players wearing the Boston Red Sox insignia on their Hall of Fame plaques but there is one glaring omission from the storied history of the franchise. Roger Clemens is among the best pitchers to ever step on a major league mound yet he’s still waiting to have his ticket stamped to Cooperstown.
ESPN’s Jay Jaffe recently selected the best player from each team who hasn’t been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The list is made up of players from the most recent ballot who didn’t make the cut, active players, retired players who aren’t eligible yet, and those who may be considered by the Era Committees. The Red Sox have candidates who fall in each of those categories but if we had to choose only one option among them, Clemens is the clear choice.
The Rocket earned seven Cy Young awards in his career, the most in major league history. He made 11 All-Star appearances and won seven ERA titles. Clemens captured the pitcher’s version of the Triple Crown twice and won an MVP.
The list of accolades is unmatched by any pitcher in MLB history but Clemens continues to fall short on the ballot each year due to his controversial connection to the PED scandal that tainted his legacy. While he never failed a drug test during his career, Clemens paired with Barry Bonds to serve as the poster children for the PED era and his much-publicized legal battles in the aftermath of his career were an embarrassment to baseball.
However, as Jaffe points out, his infractions pre-date the era when MLB enforced testing for performance enhancing drugs. Yes, Clemens gained a chemically-enhanced edge but so did many of the batters he was facing while MLB turned a blind eye to rampant PED use.
We can clearly pinpoint when Clemens began using. He went from fading star in his final years with the Red Sox to capturing consecutive Cy Young awards with two of the best seasons of his career as soon as he joined the Toronto Blue Jays at the age of 34. Red flag, anyone?
Illegally using PEDs gave his career a second act but Clemens is worthy of the Hall of Fame based on what he accomplished in Boston. In 13 seasons with the Red Sox, Clemens won a franchise record 192 games while posting a 3.06 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, and he tallied 2590 strikeouts. His first three Cy Young awards came during that span as well as the MVP he earned in 1986 when he led the Red Sox to the pennant. Clemens was already great long before PEDs entered the picture.
These factors may explain why some voters are starting to change their tune when it comes to Clemens and some of the other alleged PED-offenders on the ballot. Clemens was hovering below the 40 percent mark as recently as 2015 but he’s steadily appeared on more ballots over the years. He peaked this year by appearing on 63.8 percent of ballots, per Ryan Thibadaux’s Hall of Fame tracker.
He’s still well short of the 75 percent required to gain entry into the Hall of Fame but this progress gives Clemens a decent chance at getting in with two more years of eligibility remaining. One day soon we might be looking for a new name to put on the list of best Red Sox players who aren’t enshrined in Cooperstown.