STARTING ROTATION

RHP Roger Clemens

Clemens won seven Cy Young awards over a 24-year career, two of those while leading the league in pitching’s Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts and ERA) twice (1997 and 1998). He led his league in those categories 16 times. Clemens also helped his teams to six pennants and back-to-back world championships with the New York Yankees (1999 and 2000). His average season was 17-9 with a 3.12 ERA (30% lower than the league average) and 224 strikeouts.

Clemens also leads all pitchers in context neutral championship win probability added (0.46), but will also be criticized by some for his links to HGH use.

LHP Randy Johnson

From 1999 to 2002, Johnson was awarded four straight NL Cy Young Awards, earned three ERA titles and struck out at least 334 batters each season. Among pitchers with at least 4,000 career innings, only Nolan Ryan had a higher career strikeout rate than Johnson after accounting for era, league and park effects.

RHP Walter Johnson

“The Big Train” ended his career with a 2.17 ERA, the lowest among pitchers with at least 4,000 career innings after accounting for era, league and park effects. He also won the ERA title five times.

RHP Greg Maddux

Maddux is perhaps the most efficient starting pitcher to ever take the mound. He was so efficient that a start in which a pitcher tosses a complete-game shutout on fewer than 100 pitches is now called a “Maddux.” Since 1988, the first year accurate pitch-count data is available, Maddux ranks first in the majors with 14 such starts during the regular season. No other pitcher has thrown more than seven.

RHP Pedro Martinez

The three-time Cy Young Award winner is one of five pitchers with at least 3,000 strikeouts and fewer than 1,000 walks. In addition, batters scored 540 fewer runs against him than expected after taking into account the men on base and outs left in the inning of each at-bat. Only Clemens, Lefty Grove and Maddux were better. Martinez also provided a quality start (three or fewer earned runs in six or more innings pitched) two-thirds of the time, with an average game score (an all-in-one metric to measure pitching performance) that was well above the norm.

LHP Clayton Kershaw

Among left-handed starters, only seven have produced more wins above replacement than Kershaw (65.3). However, none of those seven had a better ERA (2.44, 57 per cent better than average) after adjusting for era, league and park effects.