Psst... Roger Clemens Is Done.. Pass It On

Does FTT have it in us to piss on the Yankees on the day when they finally get back over the .500 mark, and cut the more and more vulnerable looking Red Sox lead to 9 games? Especially when they've got a 4-game series at home next against the very beatable Blue Jays? You bet your ass we do...

Lost in the hoopla (we're assuming there was hoopla) over scaling Mount .500 with a win over Edwin Jackson -- and good grief, has a promising prospect ever turned into more of a punching bag than this guy? -- is Friday's pounding of Roger Clemens, now 2-4 with a 4.20 ERA.

This is what someone named Josh Wilson, a .218 hitter on his third team, said on Friday after tripling against Clemens and ending his night:

"You can't say enough about that guy -- how good he is and what he's done in his career. This is something special, getting to face this guy. It could be the only time I get to face him. And to actually get a hit off him is pretty cool."

When they start talking about you as if you are already wearing your third or fourth retirement watch... and you only have 9 strikeouts in your last 21.1 innings... well, maybe it's time to accept that Saint Roger is not going to really earn that $22 million so much as collect it. The 7.56 ERA outside of Yankee Stadium is especially jarring.

That's not to say that he can't be effective -- two of his three starts this month, he's gone 8 and pitched very well at home, against the Twins and Angels. But it's worth watching that he's already thrown 45 innings this ear, and that his last few years in the AL, the ERA was 3.51, 4.35 and 3.91 -- and that was when he was still racking up nearly a strikeout an inning. More balls in play equals more chances to get hits, especially with the not-exactly-Golden defense the Bombers put up behind him.

Clemens is, at this point, the perfect pitcher for the Yankees -- overpriced, overrated, and .500. And I'm not expecting things to get much easier on him as the pitch count increases.