I'm much less confident in the Astros, of course. But who knows what will happen? Maybe Ortiz and Hampton find Mutombo's fountain of youth (or maybe Clemens hooks them up with his stash). Maybe Pence explodes into stardom. Maybe everyone has a great season. We'll see, I suppose.
Anyways, I got a copy of "Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups" a while back, and I've been thinking about how the Astros' section might look now, six years after it was published. There are some obvious changes to be made, as Berkman and Oswalt have put themselves on HoF career paths and the Astros finally won a pennant (was it really almost four years ago?). But one of the sections for each team is on its players' best single seasons. For instance, the Cardinals' single-season second baseman is Rogers Hornsby in 1922, when he hit for a .402 average and led the NL in just about every offensive category.
The Astros' single-season starting pitcher is Mike Scott in 1986. That makes sense, even today. Scott was ridiculously good in 1986: he struck out 306 batters and led the league in ERA, K's, shutouts, and innings pitched (an underrated category, I think). What's more, he led the league in the K/BB, ERA+, hits per nine, K's per nine, and WHIP. He won the Cy Young that year, and he absolutely deserved it. It was the high point of Mike Scott's career and (arguably) the Astros franchise until either 1998 or 2005, depending on how you weight postseason glory.
In the years since RNBBBBL was published, however, Roger Clemens put in two spectacular seasons in 2004 and 2005, winning the CY in '04. In both years, Clemens summoned something (yeah, I know; I made that joke a few paragraphs up) to lead the Astros' pitching staff to their first postseason victories ever. Is Scott's '86 season still the best the Astros have ever seen?
Well, first we have to figure out which was the better season for Clemens. His age 42 and 43 seasons were among the best of his career - not the best, but certainly up there. In both seasons he pitched over 200 innings of sub-3.00 ERA baseball. He gave up fewer than 200 hits and walked fewer than 80, posting WHIPs of less than 1.2. He was one of the most dominate pitchers in the National League in those seasons, and he was unquestionably the Astros' ace.
But while Clemens won the Cy Young in 2004, 2005 is pretty obviously his better season. He posted roughly the same number of innings (three fewer in '05, though he added a complete game). In that time, he gave up significantly fewer hits, about thirty fewer earned runs, and walked almost twenty fewer. He led the league in hits/9IP, as well as in ERA. While his strikeout numbers decreased in 2005, Clemens was simply better that year than in 2004, and he probably should have won a 7th CY (fuck Carpenter). And if you want to get technical, he was worth about three WARP more that year, too. Clemens had his best season since he was in Toronto in 1998.
For convenience, here's a simple chart of some important categories:
Scott has clear advantages in innings pitched, WHIP, strikouts (by, like, a lot), K/9, H/9, K/BB, and BB/9. He displayed great control, great deception, and was all-around fantastic. Clemens' only advantages are in ERA, ERA+, and raw walks.
But I think we need to view these numbers in context. Scott gave up so few hits in the mid-1980s in the Astrodome. Clemens did it in the era of omnipresent sluggers in Minute Maid Park. Keeping that ERA so low is comparitively easy when the outfield extends roughly into South Park and Mike Schmidt led the National League in homers with a mere 31. In 2005, Andruw Jones (remember when he was great?) had 51. 31 home runs would have been good for 14th on the list, tied with Aramis Ramirez. Morgan Ensberg (who, by the way, easily takes over the Astros' single-season third baseman spot from Caminiti's 1992 season) had 36 home runs in 2005. Berkman, playing in only 132 games, had 24. Carlos Lee - still in Milwaukee - had 32, and the Pride of New Caney posted the first of four consecutive 40 home run seasons. Simply put, there was a lot more offensive production in 2005 than in 1986, and there's a reason why Clemens' ERA meant a lot more in ERA+ than you might expect. I don't really think a case can be made that Scott's '86 season was better.
The one area Clemens was truly weaker was in the postseason. Scott was absolutely transcendent in the NLCS. It's long been said by Astros fans (shit, I just told a Mets fan friend of mine it a few days ago) that, if only the boys in orange had gotten the ball to Scott in a Game 7, the Astros would have surely won (and they had every opportunity to do it, too. Nolan Ryan's performance in Game 5 was spectacular, and it's amazing that the Astros couldn't score more than one run in 12 innings that game). Scott was so good that the Mets accused him of cheating (except for Keith Hernandez, who just recognized Scott's split-finger fastball for what it was). Scott was so good that he gave up only one run and eight hits in 18 innings. He struck out 19 and walked only 1 in two complete games. Scott would've won a Game 7 handily and may have even delivered the Astros their first championship. This was - unquestionably - the best postseason pitching performance the Astros ever fielded (Johnson's 1998 NLDS performance was very similar, though not quite as good), and only the Jackal's efforts in 2004 could rival it for best performance by any player.
Clemens in 2005 was just nowhere near as good. Okay, we all remember him coming out of the bullpen in Game 5 of the NLDS against the Braves, and he was brilliant in those three innings, but it's just nowhere close. Maybe I'm just biased - Scott's performance was before I was born, so I only know it by a few clips and accounts, while Clemens coming out of Game 1 of the World Series, spent and injured and old, is one of the more profound memories I have of that series (along with Bagwell grounding out and me realizing he was very, very old and that this was probably his last game as an Astro) - but Clemens was just not that good in the 2005 postseason. Scott was unbelievable; Clemens was mediocre.
Maybe that means something. Maybe that outweighs everything Clemens did in the regular season, but I don't think so. I think Clemens' superior regular season pitching kept the Astros in the Wild Card race while Bagwell and Berkman were injured. He was the ace of one of the finest rotations ever put on the field, and I think that means more, especially when he did during one of the most offense-heavy eras in baseball history. WARP3 has Clemens' 2005 as worth one full win above Scott's 1986, even with the worse WHIP and fewer IP.
Clemens' season was the best single season by an Astros pitcher ever. Not by much, and with worse results in the clutch, but definitely the best. It's sad that Clemens' off-the-field escapades have come out in the years since, and that he's become such a distraction. He was set up to be remembered as something of a spaz and an asshole, but it was likely that he was going to be remembered as one of the greatest Astros ever, even after his bullshit in 2007. Now all of that is doubtful. Even if he gets into the Hall of Fame (and I think he deserves it and probably will, after a while), no team is going to retire his jersey or remember him particularly fondly - Drayton won't risk the PR hit, the Red Sox have hated him for two decades, and the Yankees are too uptight. He may very well have been the second-greatest pitcher of all time, but he won't be loved. He is, in so many ways, a quintessential Astro - spectacular but so obviously flawed.
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