Roger Clemens

Due to his mediocre outing at Double-A Trenton yesterday, it's sounding more and more like Roger Clemens won't be making his next start in the major leagues. It sounds like he's going to go to Scranton to have one more minor league start, and then pitch for the Yanks against Boston next weekend (Perhaps "The Office" will come out of summer vacation to do an episode about this).

A few people have asked me what should the bid for Clemens should be once he's activated. The answer is "whatever it takes."

This isn't an unqualified endorsement of how great Clemens is going to be. It's not inevitable that he's going to put up a 2.00/1.000 the rest of the way, win 12 games and lead your team to victory. More importantly, he is most likely to best player who will come into the free agent pool all year. Even if he isn't, you'll have him for two whole months longer than the best free agent (Adam Dunn? Todd Helton?) traded in from the N.L. in late July.

Perhaps most important, how many pitchers will come up from the minors or over from the N.L. who will be worth bidding on? Phil Hughes is already taken. Andrew Miller may or may not be back until September. That leaves pitchers like Matt Garza, Adam Miller and Kevin Slowey as your best bets: if they even get called up.

Another way to look at this is that if you're desperate enough for pitching now to even entertain making a bid on Clemens, you're going to be absolutely frantic by late July. By that time, any live arm who shows up in your free agent pool will be bid on aggressively. Cory Lidle went for $32 in my league last year. Joe Saunders, a little later on, went for $26. These weren't bad bids. But I don't think either bidder realistically thought that either pitcher was going to put up Roger Clemens's line.

If you want him, break the bank. Bid at least $85. But bid it all if you really want him.

If you don't, someone else will.