You know that you have heard or read some commentator or analyst refer to a mystical, mythical, and, up until now, largely undefined entity: the “Number One Pitcher,” or “Ace.”  Some analysts, who are reasonably stupid, define this using a pitcher’s win-loss record.  Others use a pitcher’s “stuff” to distinguish the Ace from the “middle-of the rotation guy.”  Often times when I hear this term used, there are specific minimum requirements associated with it that are both completely arbitrary and often too strict.  Other times its simply based on reputation.  “Mark Mulder gave the Cardinals what they were lacking last year - A true ace!” Here at NoMaas, we frown upon such nonsense, so I’ll be using actual pitcher performance.  And, in the absence of a better, more comprehensive statistic, I will be using Value Over Replacement Player, henceforth to be referred to as VORP.

So now that we know how we’re ranking pitchers, we’re still left with the question of who is a real “Ace.”  It seems obvious to me.  What is a Number One pitcher?  Why, he’s a pitcher who is number one in his pitching rotation.  That’s what an “ace” means.  Though, I’ve never heard any #2 pitcher referred to as a deuce.  (I’m going to promote this practice: my disciples, please support me in this endeavor.)  Obviously, not all starting rotations are created equal.  Colorado’s number one this year was Jeff Francis, who sported a less-than-glittery ERA+ of 87.  Can you imagine anyone reasonably comparing him to Johan Santana or Pedro Martinez?  I sure can’t.  If he gets traded to the Red Sox in the off-season, is he going to give them the “ace” they were missing this year.  I doubt it.  So, obviously, given what I’ve told you so far, we need to rank all the starting pitchers in baseball by VORP.  Thankfully, baseballprospectus.com already did this for me.

So now I have a list ranking all of the most valuable pitchers in baseball.  So how many qualify as Aces?  Well, the obvious answer would be 30, because there’s 30 teams in baseball, and, were these pitchers distributed equally, the top 30 would be front-lining their staff.  Great, exercise over.  There are 30 aces in baseball, and they are: Roger Clemens, Johan Santana, Andy Pettitte, Chris Carpenter, Dontrelle Willis, Pedro Martinez, Roy Oswalt, John Smoltz, Jake Peavy, Mark Buerhle, John Patterson, Roy Halladay, Kevin Millwood, Carlos Zambrano, Bartolo Colon, John Lackey, Jon Garland, Jarrod Washburn, Freddy Garcia, Brandon Webb, Joe Blanton, Randy Johnson, Tom Glavine, Esteban Loaiza, Barry Zito, Jose Contreras, Jorge Sosa, Rich Harden, Tim Hudson, and Kenny Rogers.

Somehow that just doesn’t feel right.  30 aces?  That seems like too many.  Because we haven’t addressed the critical question: Is the best pitcher on the worst staff really an ace?  That seems hard to justify.  I would think a starting pitcher, to be an ace, would have to be capable of front-lining an above-average rotation.  So that cuts our list in half.  Now, we have 15 aces.  That seems more reasonable.  And to those of you saying “But Brisco, Halladay missed a lot of the year, should he really be considered an ace?”  It is hard to say a guy who only started 19 games is an ace.  But, consider this.  If we prorate his VORPal performance over 30 starts, he ends up with an 83.2, which would have been the best in baseball.  So to say he’s the 12th best pitcher in baseball after being the best for two-thirds of the year doesn’t seem that unreasonable.

Here we have another problem: Pitching performances from year-to-year can be flukey.  To take the top performers this year and say that they’re the top performers period seems short-sighted.  So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.  I’ll take three-year data, still available on BP, and I’ll weigh it like so: 2005, 100%; 2004, 50%; 2003, 25%.  You’re probably saying “But Brisco, isn’t that a pretty arbitrary weighting system?  Shouldn’t you check the correlation of past performance in VORP to its predictive value in the future?  Wouldn’t that make more sense than just guessing?”  Yes, it would, but that would require more time that I currently don't have available.. However, If anybody reading this wants to figure that out, they can email me at briscountyjr.nomaas@gmail.com.  You give me better rankings, and I’ll be happy to edit my article and credit you in it.
 
 

Name	2005 Team	Three Year Score
Santana, Johan	Minnesota	130.18
Clemens, Roger	Houston	122.28
Martinez, Pedro	New York(N)	110.25
Oswalt, Roy	Houston	99.45
Zambrano, Carlos	Chicago(N)	93.53
Peavy, Jake	San Diego	92.45
Willis, Dontrelle	Florida	91.88
Carpenter, Chris	St. Louis	89.2
Pettitte, Andy	Houston	88.45
Buerhle, Mark	Chicago(A)	87.53
Hudson, Tim	Atlanta	84.35
Halladay, Roy	Toronto	82.95
Johnson, Randy	New York(A)	81.55
Hernandez, Livan	Washington	80.475
Colon, Bartolo	Los Angeles(A)	75.75

So, using this ridiculous system, I came to the astonishing conclusion that the three best pitchers in baseball are Johan Santana, Roger Clemens, and Pedro Martinez.  That is about as surprising as a sunrise.  Certain names, like Livan Hernandez and Mark Buerhle, might seem a little odd on that list.  However, it should be noted that what they lack in dominance, they make up for in dependability: Hernandez has led the NL in innings pitched each of the last three years, while Buerhle has led the AL in the last two.  Colon, who, despite his AL Cy Young win this year, has not been dominating since 2002, has average 224.3 innings pitched a year over the last three.  The remaining pitchers, Oswalt, Zambrano, Peavy, Willis, Carpenter, Pettitte, Hudson, Halladay, and Johnson should not be much of a surprise.   I must add, as a side note, that, technically speaking, the number 14 pitcher on this list should have been John Smoltz, with a three-year score of 81.15.  But considering he was used exclusively as a reliever in 2003 and 2004, I did not feel he could be included.  A weak showing this year kept Jason Schmidt off the list(66.63), but had I done this a year ago, he would have scored a 106.68.  So what is the predictive value of this?  Who knows?  Pitchers are notoriously hard to predict.  But for now, at least we know what an ace is.

Update:  You’re sure to hear the media anoint Josh Beckett the new Red Sox’ ace in the upcoming days and weeks, largely referring to his impressive performance in the 2003 postseason. He has a three-year score of 59.33.  Based on the average VORP provided by a league average pitcher over the course of 200ip, an average score, or “middle-of the rotation” score, is about 50.  So Beckett ranks as a moderately above-average #3 pitcher.