Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Easy Schedule For Clemens So Far


Of the 5 current Yankee starters, here are their OPS against, courtesy of the Baseball Prospectus Pitchers' Quality of Batters Faced report:

Igawa - .755
Mussina - .755
Pettitte - .752
Wang - .751
Clemens - .750

Note that the AL has 84 pitchers who have thrown at least 50 innings. Of these, the two highest OPS against are .776 (Tomo Ohka) followed by .773 (Roy Halladay). The two lowest OPS against are .732 (Erik Bedard) and .733 (Jeremy Guthrie). The median for pitchers who have thrown 50+ innings is .755.

In his ten starts this season, Clemens has faced the following teams (OPS rank in parens):

KC (24)
Tor (11)
TB (8)
LAA (14)
Min (19)
Bal (21)
SF (28)
Col (10)
NYM (13)
Pit (29)

Clemens has avoided the Tigers (first in team OPS), Indians (fifth) and Red Sox (fourth). His 3.72 ERA looks decent now, but with five series left against these top hitting teams, you should expect Clemens' ERA to rise from this point forward.