I don’t dig the beisbol, but even I’m impressed by 43-year-old Roger Clemens‘ mind-boggling pitching performance this year, as expounded by John Romano.

In fact, Romano thinks there’s not enough noise being generated over The Rocket’s latter-day resurgence:

It’s been nearly 40 years since a pitcher has had an ERA so low. And no one has ever had a better ERA relative to that season’s league average.

So why no prime time cut-ins? Why no breathless discussions of his greatness? Why is the Hall of Fame not following him from town to town?

Maybe because he has been screwed by teammates in Houston. The way he’s pitching, Clemens should be 18-2. But, because of a lack of offense and bullpen collapses, he is 11-4. In three starts, he’s left with the score tied 0-0. In four others, relievers have blown a save.

Ah, you say. There’s the flaw. He can no longer throw deep into games. Um, not really. Coming into the season, he had averaged exactly seven innings per start in his career. This season, he’s averaging 62/3 innings.

No matter how you dissect it, the guy’s been phenomenal.

And he’s 43.

In the print edition of today’s paper, there was a chart accompanying this column detailing pitchers who dominated their peers by percentage. Unfortunately, the chart didn’t make it to the online edition. So I’ve re-created it here:

It’s a very pertinent way of looking at a player’s performance — really, the best way. The best measure of your performance is how you do against your competition. Clemens’ separation from the pack in the here-and-now, by such an impressive margin, is what counts here.