Scott Carson

Stats man Scott Carson is now in his 18th season as "third man in the booth" during Blue Jays telecasts.

Brandon Morrow had a rough start in Oakland.

The dog days of summer are finally starting to wear on the Toronto Blue Jays.

A West Coast, three-city road trip that started with wins in three of the first four games has seen their young rotation begin to wobble following two straight losses in Oakland and facing a five-hour flight to Boston. Now they head into the hornet's nest at Fenway Park where they haven't exactly overwhelmed the opposition in recent years.

The Jays' rotation has been great this season with Ricky Romero and Brett Cecil stepping it up in their sophomore seasons, Brandon Morrow making the transition from reliever to starter and Shaun Marcum coming all the way back from Tommy John surgery. But over the last week to 10 days, with their innings pitched getting up there along with total pitches thrown, they have started to show some wear and tear. That was never more apparent than in Morrow's start in Oakland, nine days after his 137-pitch, one-hitter against the Rays. The Jays' hardest throwing starter didn't exactly light up the gun and was removed after just four innings and 80 pitches.

That didn't raise concern, but when you factor in his diabetes on a cool night, where his body was burning insulin just to keep warm, it's easy to see why Morrow had such a short night.

What should be of concern, though, is that there has been no middle ground on this trip. The starters have been either very good in the wins or very bad in the losses, nothing in between.

This chart shows just how big the chasm has been on this road trip:

This is why the whispers of the Jays going to a six-man rotation over the final month of the season once the rosters are expanded make perfect sense. While they remain just on the fringes of the Wild Card race, this was never supposed to be a season where they would contend for the post-season. Adding extra innings and pitches makes no sense in the bigger picture.

But they will be really up against it this weekend in Fenway Park. Of their three starters - Cecil, Romero and Marcum - only Marcum has had any success in Boston, most likely because the other two are young and left-handed. And when put up against the three starters that the Sox are throwing at them - Jon Lester, Dice-K Matsuzaka and Clay Buchholz (combined 35-16, 3.03 ERA) - and there's a very good chance this trip that started so promising might end up quite forgettable.

But the blame shouldn't fall completely at the feet of the rotation. As has been the problem for much of this season, the Jays clutch hitting was virtually non-existent on the California leg of this trip as they went 8-for-46 (.174) with runners in scoring position and fell back into some bad habits.

The main culprits were the 3-4 hitters - Jose Bautista and Vernon Wells - who combined to go 0-for-9 with five strikeouts, four from Bautista.

After a solid start to his season after a sub-par 2009 due to injuries, Wells' production has fallen off. Through June 27th, he was hitting a solid .279 with 18 HR and 44 RBI. But from that point on, those numbers have fallen off considerably (.236, 3 HR, 13 RBI). One at-bat on this road trip has stuck out, a three-pitch (all curves) strikeout against A's left-hander Gio Gonzalez that Wells swung and missed on; all of them curves down and in, and out of the strike zone. It was very reminiscent of last season when injuries sapped him of his ability to stop his swing.

One has to wonder if Wells is completely healthy.

Young pitching struggling is one thing, but the lack of clutch hitting has shown no signs of ending. That should trouble the powers that be and bench staff more than anything.

ROCKET'S LAST LAUNCH

It sure seems like Roger Clemens' legacy as a Major Leaguer won't be the seven Cy Young Awards, 354 wins or 4,672 strikeouts from his 24 seasons in the bigs, but as a liar and cheater if U.S. government lawyers can prove that he committed perjury before Congress. But if it all turns out to be true and he did take performance-enhancing drugs as he revived his flagging career in the late 1990s, then he should be sentenced to the max.

All he had to do was admit what he did and life would have gone on, just as it has for Andy Pettitte, Alex Rodriguez and the rest who admitted to steroid/human growth hormone use.

A quick look back at his career stats is all one needs to see to start and wonder what was up. After winning his first three Cy Youngs by age 28, Clemens' career started to drop off considerably beginning in 1993. Over the next four seasons, Clemens' record was an unimpressive 40-39 by the time the Red Sox let him leave via free agency following the 1996 season.

The Blue Jays took a flier on him around the time that he hooked up with personal trainer Brian McNamee, the one who blew the whistle on his alleged steroid use. He won a pair of Cy Youngs in his two seasons in Toronto and went on to win two more, one with the Yankees and one with the Astros, the final one at age 41.

That's well passed the best before date of most other power pitchers.

But all of this shouldn't have come as a surprise. The name Roger Clemens appeared 82 times in the Mitchell Report when it was released in December of 2007. Unless a whole lot more people than his trainer had it in for him, this was clearly not a case of a bunch of players "misremembering" what was going on during those years.

For the first time in his long, and now sullied career, being stubborn and arrogant finally grounded "The Rocket."