Randy Moss Mask

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Poor, Poor Roger. Yeah, Right

Ok, Fitz already did a nice post about why Chris Carpenter deserves the Cy Young over Roger Clemens, so I'm not going to rehash that. But I did want to point something out to all the fans and sportswriters who keep bemoaning Roger's lack of run support. To do this, I'm going to expand the Cy Young field to the four names I hear most often: Carpenter, Clemens, Pedro Martinez, and the D-Train, Dontrelle Willis.

So, first, let's look at team payroll (all salary information courtesy of ESPN.com, so take that for what it's worth):
Mets - $104,770,139
Cardinals - $92,919,842
Astros - $76,779,022
Marlins - $60,375,961

Not too surprisingly the typically low-budget Marlins are at the bottom, the big-city Mets at the top, although St. Louis payroll is higher than I expected. That's the cost of Larry Walker I guess.

Now here are the base salaries of each pitcher, along with what percentage of their team's payroll the take up:
Dontrelle Willis - $378,500 - 0.63%
Chris Carpenter - $2,000,000 - 2.15%
Pedro Martinez - $10,875,000 - 10.38%
Roger Clemens - $18,000,022 - 23.44%
I think you see where I'm going with this.

Now to be fair, Jeff Bagwell makes $18 million and he has a grand total of 15 RBIs this season so that hurts. But Mike Piazza is getting $16 million for 55 RBIs and poor defense behind the plate, and Scott Rolen and Larry Walker are making over $23 million for 70 RBIs and subjecting us to Hector Luna in right field, so the Astros aren't the only team with high-priced injury problems. But they are the only one with their best pitcher (who still only goes every 5th game) taking up almost 1/4 of their payroll.

So the next time someone says "Well Roger would have 18 wins if his team could score some runs", point out the Astros offered Roger $7 million for this season. He wanted $22 million. Neither side budged, and the arbitrator gives Roger his $18 million. Maybe if he takes less they pick up some bats, and score some runs. I mean does Roger really need the money?