Would Roger Clemens be a Hall of Famer based off of his Red Sox career alone?

Sunday 7/20/25

Recently I came across a discussion as to whether Roger Clemens deserved induction into the Hall of Fame based solely on his career with the Boston Red Sox.

I think that's a very easy "yes." He would have had less than 200 wins--192 to be exact--and career win total, until recent years, meant something. It was hard to get in with less than 200 wins, and I expect that to be much less the case--unfortunately--going forward.

But Clemens was the owner of an MVP award, three Cy Youngs, and two twenty strikeout games over the course of his Red Sox career from 1984-1996, and remember, people didn't strike out back then like they do now. It's also important to note that Clemens should have had five Cy Young awards in that time period--the additional two coming in 1990 and 1992--and there's next to no doubt that'd be the case if were given for the reasons it is today.

Bob Welch won in 1990 because he had 27 wins--this was gaudy and impressed the hell out of baseball fans who'd wondered if someone could actually reach 30 wins again--but he wasn't even the best pitcher on his own team. He got a ton of run support. Dennis Eckersley won the award--and the MVP--in 1992, and that wasn't even Eckersley's best year. Meanwhile, Clemens was close to his apex in those two seasons, and arguably had his finest campaign in 1990.

As for Clemens' MVP in 1986 and why he won it when Dwight Gooden didn't get the NL MVP in 1985: You can argue that Dwight Gooden had the best pitching season in history that season. Certainly the best season of the modern era. Clemens wasn't as good in 1986 as Gooden in 1985. But Clemens was arguably more valuable to the Red Sox. He came out of the gate winning all of those games in a row--that was a legendary run--and that established the tone for the team for the whole season. He was the classic stopper--the Sox could only lose so many games in a row because they had Clemens.

You knew early on that season that the Sox could go the distance and take the pennant, and that was largely because of Clemens. Total tone-setter. The Red Sox won the division, you felt they would all along, and the Mets didn't make the playoffs in 1985. Gooden got better as that season wore on. Clemens was great throughout 1986, but it was what he did in the first half especially that made him so important to the Sox. He was the most valuable player in baseball that season.

It bothers me that we're not smart enough to assess things like who the most valuable player is anymore. We just look at WAR and give it to the guy with the most. You have to think in order to determine who is the player that is most valuable to his team. There's context, the team's situation. Most valuable isn't necessarily the same as best; it often isn't. But then we have to know the meaning of the word "valuable" and, gulp, think critically.

Modern analytics burnish Clemens' late Red Sox tenure. 1992 was the last year that most people think of Clemens as being elite during his Boston run. He was 18-11 and led the league with a 2.41 ERA. That was his age twenty-nine season.

He was bad the next year. 11-14 with a 4.46 ERA. It's one of those "Where the hell did that come from?" years that you sometimes see with a great player. Ted Williams had one such season in 1959. Granted, he was forty. If Williams hadn't been that bad, I think there's a good chance he wouldn't have come back in 1960. No way was a man like that going to let himself bow out with such a poor showing. Too much pride.

Wade Boggs had his "What gives here?" season in 1992 when he hit .259, which was unthinkable with Wade Boggs. You figured maybe he was done. Boggs went to the Yankees the next year. At the time, the perception was that he wasn't that good anymore because he wasn't hitting .368 like he used to. But Yankee Boggs was an excellent player.

But back to Clemens. Somehow, in 1993, he still had 2.6 WAR, which is no great shakes, but it isn't abysmal. Obviously WAR wasn't a statistic at the time. People looked at wins, ERA, strikeouts, innings pitched, shutouts, and that was close to the order of importance, except ERA pulled rank.

Wins were big, though. They still are with me, because 1. Winning is why you play and 2. I don't believe that a pitcher has as little control over whether he wins or loses as most baseball people do. Funny how the best ever pitchers always seemed to find a way to win, by and large, no matter if they were on dreadful teams. Wins are situational. A pitcher understands a situation and context and his approach changes. But this is nuanced, and people don't do nuance.

Orel Hershiser's 1988 season was rightfully celebrated. The next year, he was a .500 pitcher record-wise, but he still had a sterling ERA. Wasn't like he got shunned by Cy Young voters. My point is, ERA was seen as more important than wins back when wins were huge.

Clemens was 9-7 during the strike-shortened 1994 season, with a 2.85 ERA (good for second in the league) and a WAR of 6. His ERA+ was 176.

That's...elite. What else can you say? I recall at the time that you thought Clemens wasn't Clemens anymore. Ah, for the days of 1988. You didn't think of him as this star pitcher still.

In 1995, Clemens only made twenty-three starts and had a paltry WAR of 1.9. His ERA was 4.18. This is a dud year.

Now you kind of thought Clemens sucked. In his final Red Sox season of 1996, he threw his second twenty-strikeout game. But again, this didn't feel the same. The first one was like the start of something, and now this one was akin to a final lap around the stadium, a "for old time's sake" type of moment. Had a nostalgia aspect to it.

Clemens went 10-13 with a 3.63 ERA in 1996, and you thought, hmmm, all good things come to an end. A 3.63 ERA wasn't like that 1.93 ERA in 1990. You didn't really adjust for era.

But: That 3.63 ERA was good for seventh in the league. This was a boom period for offense. Or, rather, we were entering into one. The stat that really jumps out at you, though, is Clemens' 7.7 WAR that year, which was second in the league for pitchers and fifth overall for everyone.

Dan Duquette infamously said that Clemens was in the twilight of his career, and that wasn't some crazy statement. It tracked. Based upon the mores and perceptions of the time. But if you went into the numbers, and went into the numbers in the ways we do now, Clemens actually would have been in line for a big contract as one of the top pitchers--still--in the game.

Clemens went to Toronto, and the irony was that he became so dramatically dominant that people were bound to think he'd begun cheating. He had an all-time great pitching season in 1997. The opposite of a "What happened to this guy?" type of campaign that we saw from Ted Williams in 1959, Wade Boggs in 1992, and Clemens himself in 1993.

Had he walked away from baseball with his last year having come with the Red Sox in 1996, Clemens would certainly--in my view--be a Hall of Famer. The reality was that he had most of his Cy Young awards in front of him still. The success raised enough suspicion that the man who could very well be the best pitcher the game of baseball has ever seen--there are only a few guys in that conversation; Walter Johnson (the correct answer), Lefty Grove, Cy Young--then had little to no shot because that success was viewed as tainted, whereas his Red Sox success wasn't.