The One

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Plympton91 said:
What is the right price for Lester?
 
To me, you have to start by setting the bar at what you want in a championship caliber rotation.  With that standard, I classify Lester as usually a very good number 2 who occasionally rises to the occasion and pitches like a number 1 and occasionally regresses to a number 4.  So, I think you want to pay him like a number 2, not a number 1.  The set of recent signings of number 2 quality starters (Sanchez, Kuroda) seems like it is in the $16 to $18 million a season range rather than the $20 million range.  I would limit the years to 6 and hope for only 5 to get it done.
 
So, I think 5/$90 or 6/$105 is what would be a fair deal for both sides.  The leverage is with Lester though, so they'll probably have to go higher.
 
I'm farming this out from the Lester thread. It occurred to me that I agreed with Plympton here, but that I might be wrong. What I'm wondering is whether or not the standard that I, and perhaps others, apply to consider if a pitcher is a "number 1" starter is so stringent that only a handful of pitchers qualify. Such a high standard would, in effect, call into question the very notion of what being a "number 1" is. For example, if we determined that there were only five number 1s in the whole league, that would sort of strain the language.
 
So who currently do we think qualifies (should qualify?) as a "number 1" in the league right now, and how many of them are there?
 

bankshot1

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There are a lot of "1s" , but few Aces.
 
IMO in the AL the 1s-Aces would include: Verlander, King Felix, Price
in the NL: Kershaw, Lee, Wainwright and until his elbow blew-out, Matt Harvey.
 
IMO Lester is a 1 1/2 just slightly below the AL guys listed above, but as proven he can pitch with them and beat them on the biggest stages.
 

m0ckduck

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I think of a true Ace as a pitcher that  has a ~70% chance of the opponent's #1 (i.e. the generic, league-wide #1) in the opener of a playoff series when the two teams seem more or less equal in other respects. This, to me, is a subjective definition of 'what it feels like to root for a team with a true ace'— it's what I felt when we had Pedro in his prime (although god knows we didn't get to watch him start enough series), Schilling in '04 and Beckett in '07— that's the pantheon of guys we've had in recent memory that I considered true Aces ©. 
 
I'm not smart enough to do the math, but if you average all the #1 starters across the league and then figure out a baseline of who has a 70% chance of beating that generic #1— that's where I'd start. But of course this discounts factors like performance heading into the playoffs, plus prior big game experience. A guy like Verlander wouldn't appear on this list for 2013 unless you weighted it towards second-half performance strongly. 
 

Snodgrass'Muff

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It's an interesting question and one I've waffled on quite a bit over the years.  At times I feel like an ace is someone who has been one of the top pitchers in the league consistently over a period of time, not just over the course of one season.  At others, I think it's a pitcher who has had a truly dominant season and that it's okay to say "He's been an ace for this season."
 
Ultimately, for me, it requires excellence beyond being the best pitcher on whatever pitching staff you are on.  Of course, limiting the term "ace" to the Pedro's and Koufax's of the world would render it redundant and useless as we already talk about those guys as being the greatest ever at their craft.  It is, however, difficult to parse the idea of an "ace" out from the idea of a hall of fame pitcher since there is going to be so much cross over between the two groups.  Being one of the best pitchers in the world, even for a season, will usually mean a talent level high enough that they should be sniffing the Hall of Fame when they hang up their cleats so long as they were healthy enough to log the innings necessary.
 
Right now, if I had to name every pitcher I consider an ace, the list would be Kershaw, Price, Verlander, Hernandez, Lee, Scherzer, Hamels, and Sanchez.  Doug Fister is just outside of that list for me, and both Sale and Darvish are banging on that door waiting to be let in.  Jose Fernandez looks like he has the talent necessary to get there if he can stay healthy and maintain consistency.  Matt Harvey will probably get there if he recovers well from Tommy John surgery.  Sabathia pitched his way out of that list in 2013 and Verlander's season could have been a small step toward declining into something less than an "ace" but might have just been a brief blip where he was merely really fucking good instead of otherworldly.  2014 should tell us a lot there.
 
This is obviously all very subjective, but I would have a hard time swallowing a definition of "ace" that included more than a relatively small group of pitchers.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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I think it's easier to define an "Ace" than a "Number 1 starter" but, as Rev said, kind of useless since there are so few.  Also, if you don't happen to develop one in your farm system - and without looking at any stats - it would seem to me to be more cost-effective to have 5 good pitchers than 1 great one and a few average ones.
 
Sickels put up a definition based on major league scouting:  http://www.minorleagueball.com/2012/8/7/3226335/defining-1-2-3-4-5-starters.  Combining Sickels and the other thoughts in this thread, it seems like the definitions would be something like this:
 
"Ace" = perennial All-Star; possible HOF; at least two plus pitches and plus command or three plus pitches.
"Number 1/2" = perennial All-Star consideration; two plus pitches / one plus pitch and plus command with at least average third pitch.
"Number 3" = perennial average to above-average pitcher; three pitches with one plus; innings eaters
"Number 4/5" = every other starting pitcher in the majors.
 

Plympton91

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The way I think about is by starting from the assumption that it needs to be somebody I'm comfortable going up against an "Ace" without feeling like the game is wildly lopsided. Less subjectively, I would say that in building a playoff rotation, I'd want a guy in the top 10 to 15, another guy in the top 30 as my number 2, and another guy in the top 50 as my #3, and a solid #4. To me, Lester's inconsisency since mid-2011 bumps him out of the top 10 to 15.
 

Wingack

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bankshot1 said:
There are a lot of "1s" , but few Aces.
 
IMO in the AL the 1s-Aces would include: Verlander, King Felix, Price
in the NL: Kershaw, Lee, Wainwright and until his elbow blew-out, Matt Harvey.
 
IMO Lester is a 1 1/2 just slightly below the AL guys listed above, but as proven he can pitch with them and beat them on the biggest stages.
 
I would say there are a few more than what you have listed. The one name glaringly missing from this thread is Stephen Strasburg. Performance-wise he is an ace. The only thing that would hold him back is that he hasn't thrown over 200 innings.
 

sfip

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Given that a pitcher is a starter with whatever qualifies as a minimum number of IP, couldn't you argue that a #1, #2, etc., can simply be by range of ERA+ by either the last year or the last 3 years?
 

mauf

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Only 71 pitchers have thrown 450+ innings over the past 3 seasons. If you take the top 20% of those, you'd have a decent working definition of a #1 starter -- and consistent with P91's perspective, you'd have a lot less than 32 guys who make the grade.

Using that method, and going strictly by ERA (simplistic, I know), here are your 14 "#1 starters":

Clayton Kershaw
Jered Weaver
Cliff Lee
Justin Verlander
Chris Sale
Madison Baumgarner
Gio Gonzalez
Jordan Zimmerman
David Price
James Shields
Cole Hamels
Matt Cain
Kyle Lohse
Felix Hernandez

Jon Lester is #51. His home park and competition hurt him. So do his hard-luck 2012 numbers -- if you use his xFIP instead of his ERA for that season, his 3-year numbers vault into the top 30. Even so, the data support P91's contention that Lester doesn't quite measure up to a rigorous definition of a #1 starter. Or, more accurately, he no longer measures up -- using the 2010-12 window, Lester ranks 13th of 76 pitchers with 450+ IP; using 2009-11, he ranks 12th of 74.

Looking at last year's FA class -- using 2010-12 numbers, with 76 pitchers in the data set -- Zack Greinke was #8, Anibal Sanchez was #15, and Edwin Jackson was #30.