Getting Sportsy

The other night I was watching the Astros (Rangers game had already ended) finish up another win. It was a game that Roger Clemens had started. As a new reliever came in, the analyst noted that Clemens had just completed his 20th quality start out of 22 attempts this year. My head jerked and my jaw hit the floor. What? 20 out of 22. For those of you who don't share my baseball geekiness, a quality start is where pitcher goes 6+ innings and gives up 3 runs or less. Then they mentioned that one of the two that didn't qualify, The Rocket had given up zero runs in only 5 innings before leaving with a slight injury. Holy Crap! And I found that in his other start that didn't qualify he gave up 4 runs in 6 innings and still got the win. That is not fair.

The more I thought about this I wondered how this was possible because Clemens now pitches in a hitter's park. The same kind of park (short fence in one of the corners, expansive center field, steamy climate) at which the hometown Rangers reside. A.K.A. the reason no pitchers will pitch here. I looked in to the stats a little more and found that Clemens wasn't an anomaly. Two other Astro pitchers have over 17 quality starts and the team leads the league in that category by a wide margin. Why can't we get pitchers, again? All this to say, I still love Roger Clemens (who just turned 43 yesterday) and I still hate Tom Hicks .