October 10, 2008
Pre-order the 2009 Annual The 2009 Hardball Times Annual, to be shipped in early November, is ready for preorder. This year's Annual will, once again, be the best yet. We're beefing up our articles to include 40 prominent writers, such as Craig Wright, Rob Neyer, Joe Posnanski, Don Malcolm, Tangotiger, MGL, and many others. Please support THT and order it directly from ACTA today. If you can't afford to purchase from ACTA, then please order from Amazon with this link.  Thanks.
Rich Barbieri John Barten Sal Baxamusa John Beamer Brian Borawski John Brattain Craig Brown Matthew Carruth Derek Carty Alex Eisenberg Mike Fast David Gassko
Brandon Isleib
Chris Jaffe Josh Kalk Chris Neault Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! John Walsh Geoff Young And here's the full roster.
Or you can search by:
THT's ToolboxStubHub is where fans buy and sell Yankees Tickets, Red Sox Tickets, White Sox Tickets, Mets Tickets and all other baseball tickets. If you are looking for World Series Tickets, ALCS Tickets or NLCS Tickets, you can find them at StubHub! More hot selling tickets include: Cubs Tickets, Astros Tickets, Dodgers Tickets, Angels Tickets and Detroit Tigers Tickets. Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. 
All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a
Creative Commons
License.
|
Who is/was better: Pedro Martinez or Johan Santana?by John BeamerAugust 20, 2007 It isn’t usually too tricky to finger pitchers who totally dominated their era. Sandy Koufax in the mid 1960s, Steve Carlton in the late 1970s and Greg Maddux for much of the 1990s, and that is ignoring the likes of Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson who have seemingly been around for eternity and have won Cy Young awards in three different decades. There are two notables missing from my list above. One who arguably had two of the greatest seasons of all time in the latter part of the 1990s, and one who dominates all and sundry today. No doubt you guessed from the title of the column, we are talking about Pedro Martinez and Johan Santana. 2006 saw the reigniting of a debate that hasn’t been heard since Martinez’s 1999 season. Whether a pitcher can win the MVP? Once again that festooned a series of comparisons between the two great men. Let’s try to shed a little light on the what-fors and what-nots and work out who has been more valuable on a year by year comparison. At this point we'll put to one side the 2007 season as there is still plenty of baseball to play. However, at the end of the column we'll look at how Johan's 2007 performance alters the conclusion. My interest was first piqued in this a few months ago after I wrote a column about B-R PI. I looked at the number of consecutive 10-strikeout games and reported the following: Player StreakStart Streak End Games W L BB SO HR Pedro Martinez 19/08/1999 09/04/2000 10 8 1 11 130 2 Randy Johnson 13/04/2001 13/05/2001 7 3 2 13 90 5 Pedro Martinez 15/04/1999 18/05/1999 7 6 1 13 84 1 Nolan Ryan 19/05/1977 16/06/1977 7 4 2 45 90 3 Randy Johnson 31/07/2002 25/08/2002 6 5 0 14 79 3 Randy Johnson 25/04/2000 21/05/2000 6 3 1 11 71 6 Randy Johnson 20/07/1999 16/08/1999 6 3 1 11 65 4 Randy Johnson 19/06/1998 16/07/1998 6 4 2 10 74 5 Pedro Martinez 03/06/1997 30/06/1997 6 2 2 15 72 3 Nolan Ryan 25/09/1972 18/04/1973 6 5 1 25 76 1 Johan Santana 20/06/2004 11/07/2004 5 3 2 8 58 4 Pedro Martinez 12/05/2001 04/06/2001 5 3 1 7 59 3 Pedro Martinez 25/06/2000 28/07/2000 5 3 0 6 58 5 Randy Johnson 24/09/1999 14/04/2000 5 5 0 4 56 5 Randy Johnson 28/08/1998 18/09/1998 5 5 0 9 63 0 Curt Schilling 15/08/1997 06/09/1997 5 3 0 6 58 1 Pedro Martinez 14/08/1997 04/09/1997 5 2 2 14 59 4 Randy Johnson 09/06/1993 30/06/1993 5 4 1 14 60 3 Nolan Ryan 22/08/1989 12/09/1989 5 1 3 15 58 2 Dwight Gooden 27/08/1984 17/09/1984 5 4 1 10 65 1 J.R. Richard 16/09/1979 10/04/1980 5 3 1 10 63 1 A reader wrote me and claimed that if you dug behind the numbers my final statement is false and Santana still has the potential and trajectory to be better than Martinez. Hmm, I'm not so sure. First let’s recount a short history of the two players. In the red corner: Pedro MartinezPedro Martinez was born in the Dominican Republic in October 1971 and got his first taste of big-league action in 1992 when he donned the Dodgers’ uniform as a relief pitcher under the watchful eye of his brother and then Dodger ace, Ramon Martinez. Soon, he was deemed surplus to requirements by Dodgers' boss Tommy Lasorda (who thought Martinez too short to be a starter) so found himself on the staff of the Montreal Expos come the strike-shortened 1994 season. It was in Canada that Pedro bloomed into one of the top pitchers in baseball. In 1997 he posted a 17-8 record for the Expos and led the league in most categories; his line included 1.90 ERA, 305 strikeouts and 13 complete games—those numbers led to him securing the first of three Cy Young awards. That season was the first since Walter Johnson’s 1912 in which a right handed hurler had a sub 2.00 ERA and mowed down more than 300 batters. In late 1997, Pedro was shipped off to the Red Sox and signed a lucrative $75 million six-year deal—the largest ever to a hurler at that time. Martinez continued to dominate and in 1999 he had perhaps one of the finest pitching seasons in recent memory going 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and 313 strikeouts, winning the pitching triple crown, securing a unanimous Cy Young and just missing out on first place in the MVP race despite garnering most first place votes. In 2000, Martinez had another great season posting a 1.74 ERA. Clemens' ERA, which was the 2nd lowest in the league, was more than double that! Martinez continued to dominate in 2001 before going on the DL. He bounced back for another great season in 2002 (2.26 ERA) and 2003 (2.22 ERA) before leading the Red Sox to World Series glory in 2004. He then became a free agent and wound up playing for the Mets where he was still did wondrous things with the baseball but could no longer dominate as he did in the past. He spent more time on the DL and there were question marks over his stamina as he struggled to go deep into games. Now age 35 and having spend much of the year on the DL there is doubt as to how long he has in the top echelons of the game. In the blue corner: Johan SantanaThere is less to say about Santana, primarily because he is nearly a decade younger than Martinez. He was born in Venezuela in March 1979 and was on the books of the Astros and Marlins before making his major league debut with the Twins in 2000. Initially he was used as a long reliever by the Twins and it wasn’t until late in the 2003 season that he transitioned to the starting rotation at which point he won his last eight decisions and led the Twins into the play offs, much to the delight of Aaron Gleeman. Since then Santana has fronted the Twins’ rotation and been a beacon of consistency—not that this has always been a good thing. Typically Santana starts the season slowly before becoming utterly virtually unbeatable after the All-Star break. Year 1st 2nd 2004: 3.78 1.21 2005: 3.98 1.59 2006: 2.95 2.54 2007: 2.75 ? This has meant his season ERA has never been in Martinez territory but his peripherals are similar. In the second half of 2004 Santana posted an ERA of 1.21, became the first pitcher since 1961 to yield less than four hits in ten consecutive starts, and broke the second half win-loss record with a 13-0 performance. In total for 2004 his overall record was 20-6 with a 2.61 ERA. Like Martinez in 1999, Santana was the unanimous Cy Young winner for the AL. 2005 and 2006 were almost repeats of 2004. In 2005, Santana struggled early and dominated in the second half recording a 2.87 ERA (0.01 behind AL leader, Kevin Millwood) but finished with a 16-6 record as a weak Twins line-up probably cost him a second consecutive Cy Young. 2006 again saw the first-second half split in numbers and he became the first hurler to with the Major League Triple Crown since Dwight Gooden in 1986. He also secured a much deserved second Cy Young award, again with a unanimous vote. The scout's perspectiveIn his pomp Pedro possessed a 95-97 mph fastball than moved viciously as it crossed the plate; he also had a plus curveball and a wicked change up. It was this combination of heat and deception that resulted in so many whiffed batters. As his career progressed his arm dropped lower and he currently throws from a low three-quarters position that gives more disguise to his delivery. In recent years Pedro has made a number of adjustments and his fastball is typically around the 90mph mark but does max out in the mid-90s if he ratchets it up. Pedro succeeds on his wide range of deliveries and subtle changes in arm action that befuddle opposing batters. That description of Pedro Martinez around the turn of the century would not surprisingly fit Johan Santana today. Santana dominates with his fastball that tops out at 97mph but is usually in the 95mph range; combine that with a change-up that looks identical on release and you have a lethal combination. He also makes use of a plus slider/curve but it is the devastating change-up that is usually his strikeout pitch. Although Santana has a similar pitch repertoire to Martinez his arm angle is higher, at an 11 o’clock position rather than a low three-quarters point, which Pedro tends to favor. Although the mechanisms are slightly different the pitch types are similar and the results largely equivalent. A comparison through age 27Reading the bios above it intuitively seems that Pedro was the more dominant pitcher but that is ignoring the fact that Martinez has been through the peak of his career whereas Santana is still on the ascent. Here are some numbers for the two up to their age-27 seasons (which is 2006 for Santana): Johan Santana Age ERA K/9 BB/9 HR/9 GS 21 6.49 6.7 5.7 1.2 5 22 4.74 5.8 3.3 1.2 4 23 2.99 11.4 4.1 0.6 14 24 3.07 9.6 2.7 1.0 18 25 2.61 10.5 2.1 0.9 34 26 2.87 9.2 1.7 0.9 33 27 2.77 9.4 1.8 0.9 34 Pedro Martinez AGE ERA K/9 BB/9 HR/9 GS 21 2.25 9.0 1.1 0.0 1 22 2.61 10.0 4.8 0.4 2 23 3.42 8.8 2.8 0.7 23 24 3.51 8.0 3.1 1.0 30 25 3.7 9.2 2.9 0.8 33 26 1.9 11.4 2.5 0.6 31 27 2.89 9.7 2.6 1.0 33 Surprisingly close! If we ignore Martinez’s historically great age-26 season then you might believe these two hurlers were the same man as both would have a career ERA of 3.27. Quit howling—I know we can't go around voiding seasons but we are just trying to account for the difference between the two pitchers. If we look just at the peripherals we see that there isn’t much to choose between the two in strikeouts but Santana has slightly better control. All told at the end of age 27 Santana had a marginally better K/BB ratio of 3.7 to Martinez’s 3.3. However, that is a bit disingenuous because we know that Santana was fooling around in the pen until 2003, perhaps allowing him to pitch a bit more aggressively. What if we restrict the peripherals for the three-year period prior to age-27 season. Johan Santana Pedro Martinez K/9 9.71 10.12 BB/9 1.90 2.65 HR/9 0.91 0.79 We see a similar pattern. Santana had a better K/BB ratio although Pedro had more raw power. Over that period Santana also had a marginally better ERA, so does that mean he was a better pitcher at that age? Not necessarily. Based on this analysis there isn’t a huge amount to choose between the two except that Pedro had already proved he was capable of the truly spectacular season as the sub 2.00 ERA in 1997 showed. In Pedro’s next five seasons his ERA would never exceed 2.50. That was when he was at his best. To date, Santana has yet to post an ERA less than 2.50. One thing we must do before we leave this topic is adjust for context. An ERA of 1.90 sounds great until we find that the league average was 1.60! It wasn’t, of course, but let’s run the numbers. Johan Santana Year Age ERA Lg ERA ERA+ 2000 21 6.49 5.27 81 2001 22 4.74 4.53 96 2002 23 2.99 4.42 148 2003 24 3.07 4.62 150 2004 25 2.61 4.73 181 2005 26 2.87 4.4 153 2006 27 2.77 4.47 161 Pedro Martinez Year AGE ERA Lg ERA ERA+ 1992 21 2.25 3.44 153 1993 22 2.61 3.93 151 1994 23 3.42 4.22 123 1995 24 3.51 4.23 121 1996 25 3.7 4.31 116 1997 26 1.9 4.21 222 1998 27 2.89 4.61 160 Aside from Pedro's superlative 1997 where his ERA+ notched a nose bleeding 222 the numbers are in a similar band. Translating to winsPeripherals and ERA are all well and good but at the end of the day we care about wins. How many wins did Santana and Martinez contribute to their respective teams over this part of their careers? We have the data to work this out. We can use the formula (ERA-lgERA)*IP/90 to calculate wins above average each year. Age Johan Santana Pedro Martinez 21 -1.17 0.11 22 -0.10 1.57 23 1.72 1.29 24 2.73 1.56 25 5.37 1.47 26 3.94 6.19 27 4.41 4.47 Total 16.90 16.65 Well, again they are surprisingly close. After seven years in the bigs Santana racked up a third of a win more than Pedro did but the difference is barely significant. One other thing to note is that Santana had three 4 WAA seasons by age-27 while Martinez had just two. Although Santana may seem a whisker ahead, our cut-off point in comparing the two players is fortuitous. For what was to come from Martinez were possibly two of the greatest seasons of all time, and had we included those our data would tell a completely different story. How can Santana become a great?Take a few seconds to admire what Pedro achieved from his age 28 season onwards. Age ERA K/9 BB/9 Lg ERA IP WAA 21 2.25 9.0 1.1 3.44 8.0 0.1 22 2.61 10.0 4.8 3.93 107.0 1.6 23 3.42 8.8 2.8 4.22 144.7 1.3 24 3.51 8.0 3.1 4.23 194.7 1.6 25 3.7 9.2 2.9 4.31 216.7 1.5 26 1.9 11.4 2.5 4.21 241.3 6.2 27 2.89 9.7 2.6 4.61 233.7 4.5 28 2.07 13.2 1.6 5.01 213.3 7.0 29 1.74 11.8 1.3 4.97 217.0 7.8 30 2.39 12.6 1.9 4.53 116.7 2.8 31 2.26 10.8 1.8 4.42 199.3 4.8 32 2.22 9.9 2.3 4.71 186.7 5.2 33 3.9 9.4 2.5 4.87 217.0 2.3 34 2.82 8.6 1.9 4.19 217.0 3.3 35 4.48 9.3 2.6 4.31 132.7 -0.3 Given the context, and especially the rise in offense, Pedro’s effort has got to be one of the most impressive consecutive stretches of pitching bar none. For Santana to match that performance in the coming years his 2004-2006 K rate has to increase 16% and his 2004-2006 walk rate has to fall 8%. You’d also be asking him to dial his ERA down by 0.4-0.6 points, which is to a level he has never achieved over a full year. And he’ll need to repeat that for five years. Wow, that is some ask.
|
