Propellerheads? Sticky stuff? Roger Clemens weighs in on issues facing baseball today
Asked about MLB’s decision to crack down on the use of foreign substances by pitchers, Roger Clemens had a simple answer for what worked for him.
“If you have really good rosin and sunscreen, it gives you enough tackification to throw the ball,” Clemens said.
Having enough tack to grip and control the baseball isn’t a bad thing, either, considering the velocity pitchers are throwing with these days.
“If you ask nine out of 10 hitters, they’d want a pitcher to have some kind of control over a baseball they’re throwing 98 mph especially in April and May on the East Coast,” Clemens said. “If you pick up a glass of ice water, that’s what the ball feels like in your hand. The umpires will let you blow into your hands a little bit to get some moisture and heat and to control that baseball.
“But I watched after they threw that rule into play. The guys that were using a lot of tackification to spin the ball for the spin rate — it took them a good five or six starts to get back to normal.”
In answering the question, Clemens also lamented what he called “propellerheads” and the emphasis on spin rate in today’s game. Clemens believes there is more to pitching than just going off certain analytics.
“I won 200 games with good stuff,” he said. “I won [354 in my career] by grinding through, getting out of bases loaded and a pitching coach or a manager going, ‘How do you feel?’ They want to know about your heart and grit.”
Clemens understands the money being invested in pitchers in today’s game and the importance of protecting them. But this is also a pitcher who threw more than 200 innings in 15 of his 24 seasons, including six seasons with at least 250 innings pitched.
In 2019, only one MLB pitcher threw more than 220 innings (Houston’s Justin Verlander) and nine pitchers had multiple complete games. Clemens had multiple complete games in 14 of his 24 seasons, including at least 10 complete games in five seasons.
“My pops passed away when I was young, so that stuff I got from my mother and my grandmother,” Clemens said. “You have to know your individual a little bit when you’re doing that.”
