A Tale of Pitching Comparisons

Yesterday had an juxtaposition of sports and worth and I think the values are completely out of whack. First comes this story from USA Today about Yankees mega-millionaire pitcher Roger Clemens:

Roger Clemens appeared set to make his 2007 major league debut Saturday against the Pittsburgh Pirates after throwing 54 pitches during batting practice at the New York Yankees' minor league complex.

The seven-time Cy Young Award winner made 21 throws in the outfield and eight warmup tosses Wednesday before his 20-minute batting practice session against players from the Yankees' extended spring training team.

Clemens also took part in a short fielding session before jogging around the area outside the complex.

snip

If Clemens is added to the major league roster on Saturday, he would earn $17,442,637 this season and cost the Yankees $6,977,054 in luxury tax, a total of $24,419,691. Clemens agreed May 6 to a one-year contract worth $28,000,022 — the last two digits matching his uniform number — but only gets paid his major league salary once he is on the big league roster.

Roger Clemens is at best a six inning pitcher and if he wins more than 8 games the remainder of this year, I would be surprised.

Compare Clemens with this young lady:

After throwing more than 1,000 pitches in a week to lead Arizona to its eighth NCAA softball title, Taryne Mowatt finally admitted the obvious.

“Now that the week is over, I can admit I'm extremely tired now,” said Mowatt, who set a Women's College World Series record by pitching 60 innings.

“My arm, it's felt better.”

Taryne Mowatt pitched 8 games in 7 days for the Arizona Wildcats who won their 8th NCAA championship.

While I admit that the pitching motion in fast pitch softball is much different than the bone punishing baseball pitching, Mowatt was firing pitches in at 65+ miles per hour and threw over 1,000 pitches in a week. Clemens, who is some 25 years Mowatt's senior, will probably have to play 9 to 10 games to equal Mowatt's pitch total and it remains to be seen if the Yankess can even make the playoffs.

Hats off to the Arizona Wildcats, who not only fought back from the loser's bracket to make it to the championship series, but came back from a game down to win the last two games in the best of three series.

So who is the more valuable player?