Aces of Diamonds

Baseball Digest, July, 2000 by Gordon Edes

Club's No. 1 Pitcher Is Even More Valuable Than You Think

When he takes the mound, his teammates feel they don't have to score eight runs to win the game

HOME RUN HITTERS, PETE Rose once moaned, drive the Cadillacs. Since even backup catchers travel in style now, Rose probably would have to amend that statement to say the home run hitters get the Mercedes dealerships. They also get the chicks, according to a popular TV ad that ran last summer.

But if it's a World Series ring you're after, the bashers are not your best bet. The last home run champion to play for a World Series winning club was Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt, and that was for the Phillies 20 years ago. You have to go back to the 1985 Kansas City Royals and Steve "Bye Bye" Balboni to find a World Series champ with a 35-home run hitter.

But since the 1961 expansion, pitchers who led their leagues in winning percentage have gone to the World Series 27 times, 15 times in the American League, a dozen times in the National.

The game may be homer-happy--a record 5,528 baseballs were launched out of major league parks last season--but for October memories, there's nothing like an ace.

"An ace dominates you," said Dave Stewart, the Toronto Blue Jays' assistant general manager who routinely destroyed the Red Sox and their ace, Roger Clemens, when he pitched for the Oakland A's.

"He changes losing streaks into winning streaks. He's the guy who starts the first game of the playoffs and the guy who starts the last game of the playoffs. He's the guy who lets everyone know on his team that everything's OIL He's the one who tells his team, `If I'm out there against the other team's No. 1 guy, I'll be the last one standing.'"

The epitome of an ace in 1999, even though his team fell one step short of the World Series, was Pedro Martinez, who won 23 games, twice more in the postseason, and had an earned run average of 2.07, less than half the league average of 4.86.

"He's one of the greatest pitchers in the history of the game," said Jim Leyland, the former manager of the Pirates, Marlins, and Rockies now working as a special assistant for the Cardinals. "I guarantee you, when Jimy Williams gets in his car to go to the ballpark on the days Pedro pitches, he knows he's going to win that day."

Consider this: Mark McGwire or Pedro Martinez? Apples and oranges, you say?

Maybe, except: by this measure. In games in which McGwire homered last season, the Cardinals went 24-32, a .429 winning percentage. In games in which Martinez started, the Red Sox went 24-5, a winning percentage of .828. All the Red Sox had to do was a little better than split the games Martinez didn't start, and they finished with 94 wins.

"We people have a tendency to want to put a person in that (all-time) category before his time," said Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, who in 1968 had a season even more spectacular than Martinez's, winning 22 games, including 13 shutouts, and registering a 1.12 earned run average, third-lowest in big league history.

"If he quit today, then what would he be at the end of a career? That's when you have to assess it. You can't do that now. But does he have some of the best stuff you've ever seen? Yep, 'cause he does. But you need to wait before making judgments."

1999-23-4, 2.07 ERA, 213 IP, 313 SO 1995-1999--86-39, 2.78 ERA, 1, 100 IP, 1,265 SO Pedro Martinez

There is no model

How to define an ace?

"I don't know how many of them there are," said Phillies right-hander Curt Schilling, who would make most everyone's short list, "but I've always believed they're like the days of the week. If you can't name them off the tip of your tongue, then they're not an ace.

"It's something you have to earn and you have to maintain. It's not, win 20 games and be an ace. It's going out there and having the other team saying, `Oh no, this guy is throwing today,' which I'm sure that's what is done when Pedro pitches. Randy Johnson. Kevin Brown. Greg Maddux. Mike Mussina. Guys like that."

The ace comes in every variety of packaging. There is the 6-foot-10-inch Johnson, the Arizona left-hander who seems as if he can almost reach inside a hitter's shirt before releasing his ferocious fastball. Maddux, the methodical Atlanta artist, pitches as if he lives inside a hitter's head. Clemens, the tough Texan, now relies on his splitter as much as his fastball to buckle a hitter's knees. And Martinez, the diminutive Dominican, has the stuff and the will to break a hitter's heart.

"He's a freak of nature," Schilling said of Martinez. "He's small, but he has the long arms and big hands that go with being a power pitcher. Because English is his second language, people don't understand that Pedro knows how to pitch. He understands how to pitch. I've watched him time and time again, and above his stuff is the fact he knows how to pitch."

Sports Illustrated recently noted that Whitey Ford is the only pitcher in the Hall of Fame who is under 6 feet tall. Martinez is listed at 5-11, and that's generous. It's also irrelevant, according to Don Gullett, a barely 6-footer who threw a 95 mph fastball in pitching both the Reds and Yankees to the World Series.