Fuzzy Math for Clemens?
February 10, 2008 by Jodie Lynn Boduch
Filed under Baseball, Sports Rumors
The Roger Clemens Show has one plot twist after another.
Just this week we had The Rocket’s 5-hour congressional hearing; gauze-wielding, syringe-saving Brian McNamee’s testimony; and McNamee’s claim that Debbie Clemens had an intimate encounter with an HGH injection. And now we have Penn professors joining the all-star cast.
Last month, Clemens’ agent Randy Hendricks issued an 18,000-word statistical report claiming the pitcher’s late-career standout stats were due to “adjustments.”
The professors say, “Nice try, but . . . um, no. We don’t think so.”
Their rationale reminds us of all those statistics classes we’re trying to forget. (Hey, we need to free up brain cells for important things like sports gossip, cartoons, and GameBoy). Let’s just say the profs attribute it to something like fuzzy math and a general sense of “somethin’ just ain’t right”:
Our reading is that the available data on Clemens’ career strongly hint that some unusual factors may have been at play in producing his excellent late-career statistics.
They don’t take a stab at what those “unusual factors” might be, but give it long enough and some biochemists will make a special guest appearance on The Roger Clemens Show, too.
