The odds of having any stat geek on the jury is pretty small. More likely the case will have to be made to people who don't care much about baseball.

But it's more fun, at least on this site, to imagine making a case before a SABR jury. I give you exhibit J:

In 1998, Roger Clemens pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays. That season he knew if he threw a pitch in the right location, he would get a groundball to shortstop. The shortstop on that team was Alex Gonzalez, and as you probably know, all Alex Gonzali are great defensive shortstops. He would pick the ball up and throw the batter out at first. In fact, Toronto shortstops did this often enough to record 447 assists.

In 1999, Derek Jeter played shortstop for the Yankees. About this time the sabrmetric community first noticed that his range was not all that the media claimed it to be. Clemens could make the same pitch, and the result would be a ground ball past a diving Jeter. Yankees shortstops (primarily Jeter) recorded only 402 assists that year, 45 fewer than the Blue Jays in 1998.

Faced with more baserunners and an inability to turn that pitch/location combination into the outs he was accustomed to, Roger Clemens was forced to adjust his pitching style. Forcing a pitcher to adjust this way can have negative consequences during an adjustment period. As a result, his strikeouts were down, his walks up, and his homeruns were up, as the lack of defensive support threw off his entire game.

In spite of this, Clemens had a slightly better than league average ERA. Hardly a terrible season.

We could go to exhibit W in Bernie Williams, but that would require a comparison to Jose Cruz Jr., center fielder, so the defense won't want to go there.

Davidoff today:

Clemens’ defense strategy is to discredit Pettitte

“Contrary to what [U.S. Assistant Attorney Steven] Durham said [Monday], we’re not going to say anything bad about Andy Pettitte,” Hardin said. “They are still friends. They just can’t talk because of this. … We think at the end of the day, Andy Pettitte’s testimony will be the most convincing of all that Roger Clemens did not use steroids. Then you can decide who’s right and who’s wrong. “

Translation: “Of course we’re going to discredit Pettitte. We’ll do it politely, though.”

The defense is not going to rip into Pettitte; they're simply going to use his committee deposition to point out that Pettitte left open the possibility that he misunderstood the 1999/2000 conversation.

And they will point out that Pettitte, despite their years training together and being on the same team and being close friends, never saw anything, and never heard Clemens say he had used steroids.

They don't have to call Pettitte a liar at all, and I'd be shocked if they do, explicitly or implicitly.

If Walton had allowed Pettitte to discuss his connection with McNamee, then Clemens’ attorneys would have needed to go harder after Pettitte, challenge the trustworthiness of someone who would use illegal performance-enhancing drugs. That job would have fallen to Hardin’s associate Michael Attanasio. Hardin, having worked briefly as Pettitte’s attorney when the Mitchell report became public, would have had to recuse himself from this witness.

I disagree.

Because the Pettitte-McNamee relationship is off the table, however, Attanasio gently can wonder whether Pettitte misremembers (it’s a real word) the supposed conversations he had with Clemens about illegal PED usage in 1999. He also probably will prod Pettitte to credit Clemens for helping him becoming a better pitcher, and to praise Clemens’ work ethic.

Again, the road map for handling Pettitte is all in his committee deposition. And if done right, Pettitte's overall testimony helps Clemens.

The only way they imply Pettitte is a liar is if he deviates significantly from his committee deposition testimony and either (a) expresses absolute certainty over the 1999/2000 conversation, or (b) somehow comes up with more damning testimony than what he testified to before. And if that's the case, they can read his committee deposition back to him and ask him why he's changing his story, previously expressed under oath.

the lack of defensive support threw off his entire game

The prosecution might counter this argument with the fact that NYY had a better Defense efficiency rating than the Jays in both seasons.

As per Baseball reference:

1998

NYY .708 (#1 in the American League)
Jays .692 (4th)


1999

NYY .696 (4th in the A.L.)
Jays .678 (11th)

On a team level it appears that the Yankees defense actually helped Clemens despite Jeter.

According to Durham, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman will testify that, after Clemens got pounded by the Red Sox in 1999 ALCS Game 3 , Cashman went to check on Clemens in the Fenway Park clubhouse - with the game still going on - and Clemens told Cashman, “I need McNamee. Get McNamee here.” McNamee indeed joined the Yankees the next season, and Clemens enjoyed a second-half resurgence - thanks to illegal PEDs, McNamee will testify.

I understand what this is supposed to suggest, but if the evidence about the alleged conversation is this general then it's pretty weak, even by steroid-show-trial standards. I haven't been paying close attention to the Clemens trial, so maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the allegedly untrue testimony was Clemens saying that he didn't use steroids knowlingly and never told Pettitte or anyone else that he used HGH.

Maybe you buy that and maybe you don't, but I don't think a player rehiring a trainer he'd worked with successfully before proves much. If you already buy that McNamee was constantly shooting up Clemens than who cares the exact moment that Clemens brought him back into the fold.

Roger Clemens BABIP on grounders (from B-R):

1998: .168
1999: .275

Clemens an Pettitte were good friends, trained together for years, and Clemens introduced Andy to his complete workout regimen. Yet in all that time, there was never a single discussion of using steroids, nor did Pettitte see any evidence that Clemens was doing so. I rather think Pettitte's testimony is going to help Clemens here.

I understand what this is supposed to suggest, but if the evidence about the alleged conversation is this general then it's pretty weak, even by steroid-show-trial standards.

Right. "Hey, hire my personal trainer!" is not exactly smoking gun type stuff.

I haven't been paying close attention to the Clemens trial, so maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the allegedly untrue testimony was Clemens saying that he didn't use steroids knowlingly and never told Pettitte or anyone else that he used HGH.

Clemens is basically saying he never used steroids or HGH, period, and that the only thing McNamee injected him with was B12 and lidocaine.

Something I found interesting from reading Clemens's committee deposition: he thinks McNamee slipped him an amphetamine at one point.

Quoting now:

On one specific occasion, he -- he had a vitamin package that had two or three vitamins in it. And it was what I know now and I will tell you that, but let me just stay on the subject here. The vitamins he would have open and put in a little like butter dish or something like that where I would come in and take it. He would be off maybe going to the gym to get the lights on to work, whatever. And on one specific occasion he gave me a white, it was a white small pill. And within an hour-and-a-half of taking that pill, I was -- I don't know what it is like to drink 10 cups of coffee, but I was throwing my pen, and I could barely hang onto the ball. And I asked him what that was. And he told me it was similar to a Hydroxycut or a ThermaCore. And I said from that point on -- I said don't ever -- you leave my vitamins in their packs. And I feel that it was some kind of -- like amphetamine or something. It wasn't a vitamin, because it made me, my body feel like I have never felt before. I was edgy, I really couldn't -- not that I couldn't hold the ball, but I was edgy. And that was one confrontation we had.

Clemens an Pettitte were good friends, trained together for years, and Clemens introduced Andy to his complete workout regimen. Yet in all that time, there was never a single discussion of using steroids, nor did Pettitte see any evidence that Clemens was doing so. I rather think Pettitte's testimony is going to help Clemens here.

Agree. And, again, this is going back to 1999/2000, before the steroids issue had really erupted. Before Bonds hit 73 homers. And of course before testing.

I'm very interested in indigenous cultures generally and fairly well-read. But I admit I don't have any clue why the Americans feel that the proper way to honor their gods is to ritually drag their scapegoat through a series of judicial proceedings lasting several years. The Aztecs at least got it over with quickly.

after Clemens got pounded by the Red Sox in 1999 ALCS Game 3 , Cashman went to check on Clemens in the Fenway Park clubhouse - with the game still going on

Naturally, because during the game there were a lot of us wondering aloud, "Where is Roger?"