Acey-deucey

Great topic for a rant, John. Mind if I join ya?

People like to talk out of both sides of their mouth regarding being an “ace” and what it even means. Sometimes you hear “ace” referred to in the way it is done so by the guy referenced in the column. Sometimes you hear people say that not every team has an ace.

I’m going to say this as simply and explicitly as possible, if the term “ace” is being used to simply designate the best pitcher on a team, it is an utterly meaningless distinction, for fantasy baseball or any other purpose. You know who morphed the usage of this term into such a disingenuous machination, it could have only been player agents searching for marketing tools. Coming into last season, only Jeremy Guthrie’s agent could have referred to his client as Baltimore’s “ace” with a straight face.

I presume the etymology of this label has something to do with a deck of cards. Can we accept that as a safe assumption, fellas? I’d say so.

Okay, so not every card hand has an ace. Sometimes, you are playing a hand 5-card of poker and you are dealt two aces in the same hand, say the ace of Haren and the ace of Webb. Sometimes you are dealt a bunch of low value cards, and by definition one of them is going to be the highest in your hand, but that doesn’t make that card an ace!

(Now, some may say that every suit has an ace, so that supports the every team should have an ace perspective. They may say that I’m comparing teams to “hands” when I should be comparing them to suits. I say, nice try, but no dice. Rotations change often, like hands in cards. The value of its components change relative to the rest of the hand and to all the hands held by other players. Suits are too static for this comparison. Intuitively, “hands” makes a lot more sense. Just trust me.)

So, getting back to my rant, the appeal of using the definition of “ace” as the best pitcher on each individual team is that it is clean. There’s little subjectivity involved. My contention that an “ace” is a pitcher that overwhelmingly likely to be better than whoever else the team opposing his is starting is a little sloppy. Where we draw the line is subjective; how small is the group? I’m far more willing to live with the subjectivity whether John Lackey is really an ace, than accept, for simplcity’s sake, a definition that implies either Dan Haren or Brandon Webb is not, while somebody currently on the Washington Nationals is. I fail to see how this can even be disputable.

And, to underscore John’s point, if anything, as fantasy owner of a player like Kershaw or Sanchez’s stature, you’d PREFER he pitch later in the rotation to minimize the likelihood of matching up against the Lincecum’s and Santanas of the world. And, that’s assuming that 1-1, 2-2, etc. match-ups are more likely than match-ups of pitchers in different rotation spots - which I’m not nearly certain is the case.