I've been too busy to focus all that much on sports, but baseball remains my passion and the Yankees my team so the signing of Roger Clemons is great news indeed.
No, he won't dominate like he did last year in the National League. His ERA will hover around 4, and there will be days his 45 year old body won't have an awful lot in the tank, but the man knows HOW to pitch and can get by on guile and guts when talent isn't enough.
The interesting part about it will be his place in the rotation. Since none of the other pitchers are close to him in style, this means an opposing team won't get the hang of a Clemens-like delivery or ball movement by facing him next after another right hander.
Clemens, Pettitte, Mussina, Wang, and whomever remains a warm enough body to be the 5th starter isn't too shabby. I hope they hand the ball to rookie phenom Phil Hughes when he returns from his hamstring injury, especially now that Clemens is back. Hughes won't be 21 until the end of June, and is a Clemens in the making, with as good a range of stuff as Roger ever had, but needs the kind of tutelage an old warhorse can provide. This allows them to send Igawa to Triple-A to learn how to pitch to American batters, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him return after the All Star Break as a completely new and much improved pitcher.
It's win-win, so lets play ball.
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