Ron Guidrey was an ace fora year, m aybe more. Cleamons, juiced or not, was an ace: the kind of guy who the othe team would say, “do we have to bat against him?”

And all this time I thought an Ace is what gave you “31 for two” in Cribbage when the count reached 30!

: )

[27] haha

an “ace” is usually a qualitative construction

So context matters. But ERA is only a part of it for me. In order for me as a fan to expect a starter to win (given average run support), I need him to give me innings and not give up runs. So if a guy has a low ERA (hi there, Joba) but doesn’t give you innings, he is no “ace”.

See Lester’s performance a few days ago, he was utterly dominant: 10 Ks in 6 innings. He left with the lead and the sox lost. An ace doesn’t do that, in my book. An ace either pitches a whole game or hands off to a closer (ala Pedro in 2003).

I don’t need Ks to define an ace (see Greg Maddux), just innings and ERA*.

*Yes, I know ERA is defense dependent.

There are 30 teams in MLB, so to me, an Ace, for that year, is one of the top 10-15 pitchers in MLB, or one of the top 5-8 in each league.

In the AL, the current top 8 in ERA are Zack Greinke, Edwin Jackson, Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez, Jarrod Washburn, Cliff Lee, Josh Beckett and Justin Verlander. Or course, ERA+ would be better, and other stats would need to be in the mix to make a better judgement.

Joba is 12th, so he’s getting close. Lester is 18, AJ is 22, CC is 25, Wakefield is 28 and Andy is 29. #20 thru #25 are all pretty close to one another.

So certainly (by my definition) CC is nowhere near ‘Acehood’. CC has been good to very good, but less then I had hoped for. AJ has been very good and hasn’t hit the DL yet, so who can complain.

Very nicely done!

Life is good!

Thanks Will!

: )

I’d also like to say that though Burnett is getting big money, no one around here had any ace expectations for him. In fact expectations were for not finishing the season and hope was for a #3 type, if I remember correctly. He’s definitely outperformed expectations by a good number of Banterers (so far, knock on wood) including Alex B. But now that he’s going alright, it seems like we are raising our expectations and that’s only going to end sadly. In my opinion, if we get a #2 for three of the four years, we’ll be dancing in the streets (given expectations at the time).

Finally, Joba might show Ace stuff, but he’s very young and will almost certainly have some erratic starts before he gets into that stable zone we seem to call ace-hood.

I miss having XM in the car, Dibble and Kennedy were great on the ride home.