Clemens:
Total batters faced in career: 17653
Total innings pitched: 4278.2
Total hit batters: 141
That works out to hitting every 125th batter he faces or once every 30 1/3 innings.

Martinez:
Total batters faced in career: 8286
Total innings pitched: 2079
Total hit batters: 99
Which works out to hitting every 83rd batter he faces or once every 21 innings.

Pedro has hit as many or MORE batters than Roger every season for the past 7 years, including leading Roger 44-27 in the last 4 years alone. At his current pace, when Pedro pitches to HIS 17653rd batter, he will have hit 210 of them. But yet Roger is considered the classless headhunter. Why?

-Mikey

I think the key adjective you placed in your argument is "classless." Clemens has, over the years, proven to be a very selfish individual; whereas, Pedro has not.

I offer you two points of interest to back up my claim:

1) Red Sox are down two games to none to the A's in the 1990 playoffs. Clemens, rather than shut his big mouth, decides to make an example of the homeplate umpire and gets thrown out of the game. The Sox don't rally around his tirade and lose the series the next day.

2) The Red Sox are struggling to survive a game 5 in Cleveland in the 1999 ALDS. Pedro, who is suffering from a sore shoulder and arm, volunteers to go into the game and save the Red Sox season. He goes in for relief and shuts the Indians down; Red Sox advance to the ALCS. Pedro was also willing to do this in the A's series, but didn't get a chance to.

Pedro is willing to do anything for his teammates and Clemens is not. I think Pedro's headhunting tactics in Game 3 were more of a way for him to get his teammates fired up. Pedro is the ultimate team-oriented pitcher and Clemens is the ultimate individual pitcher.

I can't argue the stats, but I would be willing to bet that most of those hit batsmen occurred in Pedro's early wild days and when he needed to protect his teammates. Clemens only wants to protect "his" plate.

That was the best thing that happened for baseball in a while.

I'm going with the numbers here - Pedro hits more batters per pitch than Clemens. As far as classless goes - I bet being hit by a classy pitcher and a classless one feels the same - pretty shitty!