Clemens creeps closer to Hall of Fame threshold

BOSTON -- Curt Schilling isn’t the only former Red Sox great who received an increase in Hall of Fame voting results.

Roger Clemens, who won the first three of his record-setting seven Cy Young Awards for Boston, received 242 votes on Tuesday and appeared on 61 percent of the ballots.

That is a slight uptick for “Rocket” from the 59.5 percent of the votes he received last year. Clemens is eligible to be on the ballot for two more years.

? Complete Hall of Fame election results

Derek Jeter and Larry Walker are the two who got elected from this year’s BBWAA ballot. Schilling finished next with 278 votes, leaving him 20 short of being elected.

As for Clemens -- who earned the nickname “Rocket” early in his career with the Red Sox -- he would be the epitome of a no-brainer if statistics were the only thing being evaluated.

However, the 354-game winner carries baggage when it comes to his Hall of Fame candidacy. Clemens was associated with performance-enhancing drugs several times in the Mitchell Report, which was released to the public two months after the righty pitched the final game of his career.

Clemens has adamantly denied that he used steroids, and he never failed a test during his career.

The powerful righty had 4,672 career strikeouts. He won the World Series with the Yankees in 1999 and 2000. In ’86, when Clemens won the Cy Young and MVP Awards, his Boston Red Sox came one strike away from winning the World Series, only to fall to the Mets in seven games.

PED use has also kept another Red Sox star out of the Hall of Fame to this point in Manny Ramirez. However, unlike with Clemens, there is no gray area when it comes to Ramirez and PEDs. He was suspended by MLB for failing drug tests in 2009 and ’11.

This is Ramirez’s fourth year on the ballot, and he received 112 votes for 28.2 percent. That is a slight improvement from the 22.8 percent Ramirez got last year. Ramirez has another six years of eligibility on the ballot.

A right-handed hitter with a near-perfect swing, Ramirez was a force for nearly his entire career, slashing .312/.411/.585 with 555 homers and 1,831 RBIs. Along with Schilling, he helped guide the Red Sox to World Series championships in 2004 and ’07. Ramirez played in two other World Series with the Indians (1995 and ’97) and helped the Dodgers to the NLCS in ’08 and ’09.

Closer Billy Wagner, who spent the final two months of the 2009 season with the Red Sox, got 126 votes for 31.7 percent on his fifth year on the ballot.

Right-handed starter Brad Penny, who also pitched a portion of the 2009 season for the Sox, received one vote and was knocked off the ballot.

Josh Beckett, who pitched seven seasons for the Red Sox and helped guide them to the ’07 World Series title, didn’t get any votes in his first and only year on the ballot.

First baseman Carlos Pe?a, who grew up in Haverhill, Mass., played college baseball at Northeastern and spent a month with the Sox at the end of the 2006 season, also didn’t receive any votes on his first and last year on the ballot.