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THE OAKLAND ATHLETICS and Seattle Mariners are playing a baseball game on a Tuesday night in Oakland, and it’s difficult to describe the silence. There are maybe 1,000 people in the stands at first pitch, and few of them have the energy or the inclination to make any noise. The team is the worst in baseball and the stadium is the worst facility in professional sports and the owner is two weeks removed from signing a land deal — one he will cancel before signing another — that he hopes will take the team to Las Vegas. It’s raining, and the Warriors are playing the Lakers across the Bay. The silence is its own crushing roar.

The slogan “Rooted in Oakland” is still splashed inside and outside the ballpark, and at this point it can be read only as sarcasm or a cruel joke. The team has spent the past several years doing nothing to encourage fans to attend games only to wield the team’s lack of attendance as a weapon in its relocation efforts. Ticket prices have gone up while the team’s payroll, by far the lowest in baseball, has been reduced to beaks and claws.

John Fisher, A’s owner and Gap heir, has agreed to purchase the land in Las Vegas for what is termed a privately funded $1.5 billion retractable-roof ballpark. But the team is requesting nearly $400 million in tax money — for a team and an ownership group the city never requested and isn’t sure it wants — before it finalizes the second land deal on the Strip, which will require the demolition of the Tropicana Las Vegas. With Rob Manfred giving Major League Baseball’s imprimatur, the A’s no longer seem interested in the Oakland option: a fantastical $12 billion waterfront real estate venture (housing/retail/hotel/ballpark) that would have included hundreds of millions in public funding to facilitate the privately funded — that term again — $1 billion-plus ballpark. It’s an ongoing saga that calls for its own chapter in a textbook on late-stage capitalism.

A poll conducted by the Nevada Independent online news site showed 41% of those questioned supported public assistance for the project, and 38% were opposed. The land purchase from Bally’s Corp. was announced Monday, but Fisher and team president/pitchman Dave Kaval face a tight deadline to get the legislation on the proposed public funding before the Nevada state legislature before its session ends on June 5.

Jorge Leon, a lifelong Oakland resident and president of the Oakland 68s, a fan group that champions everything Oakland, says, “The rich history of baseball in Oakland hangs on some selfish trust fund man who has no idea how this community works.” (Kaval, the spokesman for team ownership, declined to comment.)

The RingCentral Coliseum is a massive bowl of concrete and the last of the multipurpose stadiums built in the 1960s and ’70s, can be charitably described as a throwback or realistically as a relic. After a flurry of renovations coinciding with Kaval becoming team president in 2016, the A’s have done little to improve the fan experience. They installed tabletops in a few sections and rebranded them as suites, but on rainy nights the concession-stand employees that work underneath the Diamond Level seats directly behind home plate are forced to dance around a steady stream of rainwater — and whatever else is along for the ride — cascading into their workplace. The road to Vegas, it appears, is paved with filth.

The ongoing decay works to ownership’s advantage. Remember the raw sewage that flooded the home dugout 10 years ago? Well, this year’s version is the possum that lives in the visiting team’s television booth, a fixable problem that plays better if it remains unfixed. Get a load of this mess. Who wouldn’t want to leave?

There have been so many name changes that the California Department of Transportation appears to have given up. It’s been McAfee and Overstock and O.co and now RingCentral, but the exit signs on Interstate 880 still call it O.co and every single human other than contractually bound announcers calls it the Coliseum.

The signal for the team’s flagship radio station, a Bloomberg affiliate, drifts into static about 35 miles from the ballpark on a clear night, closer during the day. Just one beat writer, an MLB.com correspondent, travels with the team, and he makes about half the trips. The team’s television broadcast recently made news when the play-by-play announcer, Glen Kuiper, was suspended for turning the Negro League Baseball Museum into a racial slur.

As the A’s take batting practice and manager Mark Kotsay speaks to a small media contingent in the dugout, the hosts of the YouTube show “A’s Cast” are broadcasting live from a folding table in the vast acreage of foul ground near third base. The host, professionally upbeat, was cueing up replays of decisive moments in the A’s most recent win, which boosted the team’s record to 6-29. The A’s come into this Tuesday night game, the first of a three-game series with the Mariners, with a -117 run differential that — spoiler — will get worse by the end of the night. I call up “A’s Cast” 90 minutes before first pitch to run the viewership from 25 to 26.

Kotsay seems determined to defy his surroundings by infusing it with optimism, the way a fancy hotel has a signature scent. A reporter asks him how he spent his off day — anything but baseball seems to be the theme of these gatherings — and Kotsay talks about working in his yard, cleaning up his outdoor kitchen, washing his F-250 only to see it rain hours later. Symbolism wields a sledgehammer in these parts. Noting that Seattle rookie Bryce Miller is making his first big league start, against Mason Miller, making his third, Kotsay asks, “Think we could get Miller to sponsor this game?”

It’s not common to hear leaf blowers grinding away during batting practice in a big league stadium, but it happens here. Eighty minutes before first pitch, when most parks are filling up with fans clumping around the dugouts seeking autographs and baseballs, the stadium crew was blowing water out of the seating areas and into the concourses.

Twenty minutes before game time, there were seven people in Section 122, field level even with the third-base coach’s box. Six hundred and sixteen seats by my count, and seven humans. A group with pregame field access congregated behind home plate as one of them, a gray-haired guy wearing a personalized A’s jersey, lay on the grass with his head cupped in his hand to get a photo taken next to the Rickey Henderson Field logo.

So this is how it begins; the long, painful and quiet end. It’s obvious by now, if it wasn’t before, that the only proper way to capture the crushing bleakness of this scene is from a seat in the right-field bleachers.

The bedsheets are removed from their canvas tote and taped along the right-field wall starting about 15 minutes before first pitch. Different versions of the same message: #FisherOut/SELL SELL SELL/Kaval=Liar/the word Gap circled with a line through it.

The protest is led by Leon and the Oakland 68s, the group responsible for, among other things, the incessant drumming that pounded down from the right-field bleachers during every inning of every A’s home game. Leon, the leader of the 68s, says, “We’ve been a walking billboard for the A’s.”

The news of the Fisher group’s planned land purchase in Las Vegas is changing that. The most obvious change is the lack of drumming since the announcement, a silent protest Leon says is “our way of showing what it would be like without us in Vegas.” The A’s lease at the stadium runs through next season, and the earliest the proposed $1.5 billion retractable roof stadium in Las Vegas can be ready is 2027. That means this — decay, anger, and an announced crowd of just over 2,500 — could be the start of a nearly four-year goodbye. “If it turns out they’re leaving,” Leon says, “if there’s so much as a shovel in the ground in Vegas, they can pack their bags. No reason to have your ex-girlfriend hanging around.”

The only time the 68s heard from A’s management was when they exceeded size limits by hanging a giant STOP BLAMING US sign on the right-field scoreboard. They adapted, removing it from the wall but holding it up between innings.

(The signs received their moment of fame after they were digitally removed from a highlight on the MLB At Bat app when Oakland rookie Ryan Noda hit a home run that cleared the bedsheets and landed in the bleachers.)

“The way I protest is to show up and be a stick in their back,” says Leon, who works for an Oakland-based environmental consulting company. “I’m here to be annoying and point out the history. I want the ownership group to think, ‘Get this guy out of here; he’s bothering me.'”

Wearing a wool beanie and wire-rimmed glasses, Leon begins with the first pitch. “Fisher sucks!” is followed by chants of “Sell the team” and “Stay in Oakland.” Two batters in, perhaps sensing that his negativity was souring the mood, Leon yells, “We back the players!” and then begins a tour around the bases.

“Ryan Noda’s a legend,” he shouts, and Noda, a rookie first baseman, drops his head and kicks at the dirt, as if he doesn’t hear.

“Tony Kemp’s an amazing human being!” Kemp turns from his position at second base to perform a quick half-bow.

“Nick Allen, welcome back!”

Allen, called up from the minors the day before, tips his cap from shortstop.

It takes a moment for all 11 of us in sections 148, 149 and 150 to absorb what just happened: A man in the right-field bleachers, maybe 200 feet away and 50 feet above the infield, effectively communicated with players on the field in between pitches.

Leon, sensing he’s got an audience and eager to try out some new material, cups his hands around his mouth and yells, “I’m caught up on ‘Ted Lasso!'” Someone nearby mutters, “Don’t ruin it.”

In the front row there’s a bearded guy in a Ryan Buchter jersey and a woman in an “I Believe in Stephen Vogt” sweatshirt. The Buchter jersey guy, looking at his phone, yells, “Fisher’s at the Warriors’ game!” Nina Thorsen, a producer for the local public radio station, is sitting in the third row wearing a SELL T-shirt and tapping on the seat in front of her with a set of drumsticks. She says the seat, $900 for a full-season ticket in 2019, cost $2,000 this season. Leon’s wife and two children, 2 and 4, are sitting a few seats to his left. Leon starts a “Sell the team” chant and Dennis Biles, whose booming voice and creativity complement Leon’s, helps carry it to the deepest regions of the stadium.

When the chant dies down, Leon yells, “Don’t shop at Gap … or Old Navy … or Banana Republic.” He expresses his displeasure with Manfred. Every word is like a howl in a cave, the sound waves pick up volume and intensity as they bounce around, filling all crevasses. Friends are texting that the television broadcast is picking up every word, loud and clear.

“Don’t forget Kaval,” Buchter jersey guy says of the team president, who coined “Rooted in Oakland” only to become the fans’ main target of anger. He uttered the famous — in these parts, anyway — words “parallel paths” in reference to the team’s alleged interest in both Oakland and Las Vegas. He once got into a Twitter war with a digital seagull and replied “OK boomer” on the same platform when San Francisco Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins dared to question the team’s now-abandoned strategy of airing the team’s radio broadcasts exclusively online. And so, just to make sure the bile is distributed equally, Leon screams, “Dave Kaval’s a snake” before returning to his now-drumless chants:

Stay in Oakland

We hate Fisher

Sell the team

Vogt is in town, as a bullpen coach for the Mariners, and he’s as close to royalty as it gets in Section 149. “We believe in Stephen Vogt” was a mantra that started with the drumbeat of the right-field bleachers and traveled through the stadium during Vogt’s 4½ seasons as a catcher in Oakland. Before the game, Vogt was asked about what he thought of the growing possibility the team might leave. “It stirred up a lot of emotions,” he said. “I mean, they’re the Oakland A’s. It’s just a sad day.” Sitting in the Mariners’ bullpen, he’s probably 150 feet away and 50 feet below us, and Leon yells, “Hey Vogt, buy our team.” Vogt laughs and doffs his cap, and at this point it’s worth noting that a baseball game is taking place amid all of these separate long-distance conversations. Emboldened by Vogt’s response, Leon yells, “You and [former Athletic Josh] Reddick get together and make it happen.” By now the entire Mariners bullpen is engaged in this conversation. They’re laughing and jostling Vogt as he drops his head. Even from here, you can see his shoulders shaking.

Leon looks at the scoreboard and says, “Maybe we’ll win the 50-50 tonight and buy the team.” Thorsen laughs and says, “Hey, it’s up to $270 already.”

Of the 11 people sitting in the four sections of the right-field bleachers, three are not regulars: me and two guys sitting in the front row, three or four rows in front of Leon and directly behind a “Kaval=Liar” sign draped on the rail in front of them. Their clothing is neutral, and they don’t seem to know anyone, but they’re minding their own business, watching the game like all of this is perfectly normal. When Leon is quiet, you can hear the guys shelling their peanuts from three sections away.

“You guys all right?” Leon asks. They turn and nod. One of them gives a thumbs-up and Leon says, “Cuz I’ll be doing this all night.”

Imagine working for something your entire life, with one impossible goal of being among the best 780 people in the entire world at what you do, and then finally achieving it only to find it takes place here, where the voice of one disenchanted man in the far reaches of the stadium plays on repeat in your head.

“I miss the drummers out there,” Kemp says. “You can hear him everywhere, clear as day. I’ve never experienced that in a big league park, ever. … I’m not even mad at him. I just keep trying to reiterate to everybody that you’re in the big leagues and don’t let the outside circumstances affect your play. You’re still a big leaguer, even though the situation around you might not be how you expect the big leagues to be.”

When I begin to recount Leon’s interaction with Vogt, a former teammate, Kemp stops me and says, “Oh, I know. I heard every word of it.”

For most of the players, and they can’t say this, the best outcome is to play well enough to be worth something in a trade. Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Sean Murphy — they all reached stardom with the A’s and were traded before the bill came due. “We had some good players, but that’s just the way it goes,” Chapman, Toronto’s third baseman, told SportsNet Canada. “All of us knew we weren’t going to be there long-term.”

Against this backdrop, Mason Miller pitched the game of his life, throwing seven no-hit innings before being removed because of his pitch count. After his last out, the 6-foot-5 Miller charged off the mound like a bear, pumping his arms and screaming to the heavens. For once, Leon wasn’t the loudest voice in the house.

“I won’t speak for everybody,” Miller says, “but I’ve played a lot of games in that environment, coming from D-III. We weren’t playing in front of a lot of crowds.”

Generally speaking, it’s not a good sign when your prized prospect harkens to his Waynesburg University days in the President’s Athletic Conference to find the right comparison for a big league environment.

When he took the mound in the second inning, Miller turned the PitchCom speaker in his cap down to its lowest volume level because he was afraid the hitters could hear what was coming. “I’m pretty sure they can’t,” Miller says, “but I turned it down to make sure.”

Miller left the game leading 1-0, and about 20 minutes later the Mariners were shaking hands after a 2-1 win. Sadly for the A’s, it was probably one of the season highlights. Oakland’s starting pitchers set a record for most games without a win to start a season, with 32. Through 43 games — and 34 losses — the pitching staff had an ERA of 7.21, 1.71 runs per game more than the second-worst White Sox. Their run differential through 43 games was a staggering -160. They’ve lost in a multitude of grisly ways, including one to the Reds when a slow grounder toward first in the ninth inning hit the base and morphed into a two-run double. And, now, this: a rookie making his third big-league start throws seven no-hit innings and the bullpen coughs it up.

The day after Miller’s stellar outing — and about a week before Miller would go on the injured list with the dreaded “forearm tightness” diagnosis — Kotsay was asked how he’s coping. The question was tinged with the understanding that losing games at a historic rate is about all anybody can expect of this roster and this payroll, and for once you could see the optimism fall from Kotsay’s face. If this look had a scent, it would have been foul. He thought for a moment and said, “I sat in my office a long time last night, with my uniform on. I’ve always said today’s a new day, and we’ve tried to stay positive amid a lot of distractions.”

They’re trying to stay positive in Section 149, too. “It’s not a done deal,” Thorsen says “We’ve seen this act before.” They’ve read the reports that Fisher is having trouble finding the funding for his Vegas venture, which sparked a debate over whether he should be described as “the brokest rich dude” or “the richest broke dude.” They hear rumblings that Warriors owner Joe Lacob might swoop in and buy the team. “It would be perfect,” Leon says. “He can say, ‘Sorry I moved the Warriors, but I kept the A’s.’ He’d be a legend.”

This moment, though, feels quite different, more like the beginning of a quiet, depressing march to an inevitable conclusion. If baseball has any role in the apocalypse, it’ll look something like this: maybe a thousand people scattered across a massive building, the rain coming down steadily, and one man screaming into the night, his words echoing off thousands of tons of concrete.

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What defines an ace in 2025? Breaking down what success looks like for today’s star pitchers

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September 18, 2025

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What defines an ace in 2025? Breaking down what success looks like for today's star pitchers

  • David SchoenfieldSep 17, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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    • Covers MLB for ESPN.com
    • Former deputy editor of Page 2
    • Been with ESPN.com since 1995

Baseball fans who grew up on 20-game winners understand — sometimes with much chagrin, sometimes with more emphatic degrees of horror — that the expectations for a starting pitcher are much different in 2025 than 10 years ago, let alone 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

The complete game is all but dead — no pitcher has more than one nine-inning complete game this season. One hundred pitches is now viewed as the top limit for a pitch count, with pitchers rarely exceeding 110 — Randy Johnson had more 110-pitch outings just in 1993 than every starter combined in 2025. Pitchers get more days off between starts. And the list goes on.

Forty years ago in 1985, 20-year-old right-hander Dwight Gooden went 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA while leading the National League with 16 complete games and 268 strikeouts; left-hander John Tudor went 21-8 with a 1.93 ERA, 14 complete games and 10 shutouts.

Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal are this season’s equivalents to Gooden and Tudor, the top starting pitchers in the majors, but when you dig into their numbers compared to their 1985 counterparts, the change in the modern game for pitchers is obviously apparent and raises the question: What does an ace look like in 2025?

Skenes, who’s the heavy favorite to win the NL Cy Young Award and should finish with the highest WAR for a Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher since the lively ball era began in 1920, has an MLB-best 2.03 ERA while leading the NL in strikeouts and WAR. He has had 11 scoreless outings this season — but his win-loss record is just 10-10. Skubal is the favorite to win the AL Cy Young Award for the second straight season with just 13 wins and may not reach 200 innings, just as he didn’t this past season.

While Tudor had 10 shutouts in one season, there have been just 12 complete game shutouts across the entire major leagues in 2025, nobody with more than one. The only pitcher with a shot to win 20 games, which was once the longstanding prerequisite to win a Cy Young Award, is Max Fried, who has 17 but might make just two more starts. And Skubal’s and Skenes’ numbers aren’t even unique from recent Cy Young winners: We’ve seen starters secure the honor with 13 wins (Robbie Ray in 2021 and Felix Hernandez in 2010), 11 (Corbin Burnes in 2021 and Jacob deGrom in 2019) and even a mere 10 (deGrom in 2018).

But even if their stat lines differ from past top hurlers, Skenes and Skubal are having great seasons within the context of how the game is played in 2025 and how pitchers are now managed. We’re not going back anytime soon to 1969, when 15 pitchers won 20 games, or 1974, when 34 pitchers threw at least 250 innings (we’ll be lucky to get two or three pitchers to reach 200 innings in 2025).

So, as the regular season winds down, we set out to find what defines a great season for an ace in 2025. How should we compare the aces of the past to those of today? And what is the measure of success for an ace in 2025 compared to years prior?

To answer these questions, we went back 50 years to compare 2025 to 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2015. My colleague Kiley McDaniel suggests that there are generally about 12 aces in any given season, so we’ll use that: the 12 aces from each of those seasons. Let’s get into it.

Note: The 12 aces for each season were selected using Baseball-Reference WAR, innings pitched, ERA and ERA+ (which adjusts for each pitcher’s league and home park run-scoring context) as the primary guidelines.

1975

Aces: Jim Palmer, Catfish Hunter, Tom Seaver, Jim Kaat, Randy Jones, Frank Tanana, Andy Messersmith, Bert Blyleven, Steve Busby, Gaylord Perry, Jerry Reuss, Vida Blue

Average ace line: 20-12, 2.69 ERA, 288 IP, 244 H, 191 SO, 80 BB, 37 GS, 19 CG, 5 SHO, 138 ERA+, 6.8 WAR

Average MLB starter: 3.80 ERA, 4.9 SO/9, 1.49 SO/BB ratio

What defined an ace in 1975: Durability … and wins.

Defining stat: Our aces completed 226 of their 439 starts (51%) and averaged 7.8 innings per start.

The 1970s were a pitching-rich decade — there were 96 20-win seasons in the decade — with starters carrying big workloads, especially early in the decade when 40-start seasons and 300 innings were routine. If you were an ace, the expectation was that you would finish the game. No pitcher exemplified this quite like Gaylord Perry: From 1970 to 1975, he averaged 321 innings per season and completed 64% of his starts.

The Cy Young winners in 1975 were Palmer (23-11, 2.09 ERA, 8.4 WAR, 323 IP) and Seaver (22-9, 2.38 ERA, 7.8 WAR, 280 IP), and like all the Cy Young winners in the 1970s — except Seaver in 1973 (when he won 19 games) and three relievers who won — they won 20 games. The Cy Young-winning starters in this decade averaged 23 wins — and often, wins were the deciding factor in the vote.

There was no shortage of aces to choose from in 1975 — among those who failed to make the cut were Nolan Ryan (missed time with an injury and had just 2.6 WAR), Steve Carlton (3.56 ERA, 2.2 WAR), Fergie Jenkins (25 wins in 1974, but a 3.93 ERA in ’75), Don Sutton (16 wins, 3.5 WAR) and Phil Niekro (15 wins, 3.20 ERA). In other words: five future Hall of Famers in their primes.

1985

Aces: Dwight Gooden, John Tudor, Bret Saberhagen, Dave Stieb, Charlie Leibrandt, Bert Blyleven, Rick Reuschel, Orel Hershiser, Fernando Valenzuela, Jack Morris, Ron Guidry, Bob Welch

Average ace line: 18-8, 2.54 ERA, 248 IP, 204 H, 67 BB, 167 SO, 33 GS, 12 CG, 4 SHO, 157 ERA+, 6.6 WAR

Average MLB starter: 3.96 ERA, 5.2 SO/9, 1.65 SO/BB ratio

What defined an ace in 1985: A great secondary pitch.

Defining stat: The 157 ERA+ was a big increase from 1975.

It’s probably not fair to compare Skenes to Gooden, since Gooden’s 1985 season ranks as one of the best pitching seasons of all time. In a normal season, Tudor would have cruised to a Cy Young Award, but he finished second to Gooden in ’85 while Saberhagen — another right-hander who was just 21 years old — won AL honors after going 20-6 with a 2.87 ERA. Thanks to Gooden and Tudor, the average ERA+ of the 1985 aces soared much higher than in 1975, but because they were pitching fewer innings, their overall value remained almost identical.

Gooden and Saberhagen had blistering fastballs, and just them and Welch probably fit the description of “fastball pitcher” — unlike many of the 1970s aces who did rely heavily on a fastball. For the most part, however, this group stands out for a notable secondary pitch as the best weapon — and even Gooden had that monster 12-to-6 curveball. Tudor and Leibrandt were lefties with great changeups. Stieb had one of the best sliders of all time and Blyleven one of the best curveballs. The young Hershiser certainly had above-average fastball velocity, but changed speeds with his sinker, cutter, curveball and changeup. Fernando had the famous screwball, Morris a forkball and Guidry a slider.

By 1985, we had started to see an increase in the power game — home runs had increased from 0.70 per game in 1975 to 0.86 in 1985. It wasn’t quite so easy to rely primarily on a great fastball with more power up and down the lineup. Case in point: The 1975 Reds, with one of the best lineups of all time, hit just 124 home runs, which would be below average by 1985 and would outrank only the Pirates in 2025. We also see the transformation from four-man to five-man rotations and the advent of the modern closer, which led to fewer innings and fewer complete games — although our aces still averaged nearly 250 innings.

The 1980s was the worst decade for Cy Young selections. Four relievers won, but even worse were the selections of Pete Vuckovich in 1982 (3.34 ERA, 2.8 WAR) and LaMarr Hoyt in 1983 (3.66 ERA, 3.7 WAR), who won only because they led their respective leagues in wins. Leaving out the relievers and the 1981 strike season, the average Cy Young winner in the 1980s won 22 games.

1995

Aces: Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, David Cone, Mike Mussina, Kenny Rogers, Dennis Martinez, David Wells, Tim Wakefield, Tom Glavine, Hideo Nomo, Kevin Brown, John Smoltz

Average ace line: 16-7, 2.99 ERA, 202 IP, 170 H, 61 BB, 166 SO, 29 GS, 5 CG, 2 SHO, 157 ERA+, 5.9 WAR

Average MLB starter: 4.53 ERA, 6.0 SO/9, 1.82 SO/BB ratio

What defined an ace in 1995: Figuring out how to survive the PED era of increased offense.

Defining stat: We start to see an increase in K’s per nine from our aces. In 1975, it was 6.0; in 1985, 6.1; in 1995, it increased to 7.4.

This was the strike-shortened 144-game season, so the aces are missing about three or four starts from a full 162-game season, which would have given us at least a couple 20-game winners (Maddux and Mussina each won 19) and a bunch more pitchers with 200 innings.

Around this time, the game’s top-level pitchers became even more dominant in comparison to the league average starter as an offensive boom arrived due to PED usage and a livelier baseball. Our group of aces in 1995 — which didn’t include Roger Clemens or a young Pedro Martinez — had an ERA 52 percentage points better than the average starter and a strikeout rate per nine that was 23 percentage points higher. Despite the high-run environment, Maddux went 19-2 with a 1.63 ERA while Johnson went 18-2 with a 2.48 ERA and 294 strikeouts in just 30 starts to win Cy Young honors.

In one sense, we were entering the era of the super pitcher: Maddux, Johnson, Clemens and Pedro all arguably rank among the 10 greatest starting pitchers of all time, dominating in a high-offense era, while Mussina, Glavine and Smoltz are Hall of Famers. In 1995, the MLB average was 4.85 runs per game — compared to 4.21 in 1975 and 4.33 in 1985 — and would climb above five runs per game in 1996, 1999 and 2000. The increased offense across the sport contributed to the decline in innings pitched, along with the continued evolution of the modern bullpen.

The average nonreliever Cy Young winner in the 1990s (skipping the shortened 1994 season) won 20 games per season, with a few still securing the honor mainly because of their win total (most famously, 27-game winner Welch in 1990 over 21-game winner Clemens, despite Clemens posting an ERA more than a run lower, 1.93 to 2.95).

2005

Aces: Roger Clemens, Dontrelle Willis, Johan Santana, Pedro Martinez, Andy Pettitte, Roy Oswalt, Randy Johnson, Chris Carpenter, Roy Halladay, John Smoltz, Mark Buehrle, Jake Peavy

Average ace line: 16-8, 2.82 ERA, 220 IP, 190 H, 46 BB, 185 SO, 32 GS, 4 CG, 2 SHO, 155 ERA+, 6.1 WAR

Average MLB starter: 4.36 ERA, 6.0 SO/9, 2.08 SO/BB ratio

What defined an ace in 2005: Striking out a lot more batters than they walked.

Defining stat: Strikeout-to-walk ratio. In 1975, our aces had a SO/BB ratio of 2.4; in 1985, 2.5; in 1995, 2.7; but in 2005, it was all the way up to 4.0.

For whatever reason, 2005 saw a minor dip in offense from surrounding seasons (the MLB average was 4.81 runs per game in 2004 and 4.86 in 2006 but 4.59 this season). Clemens had his last great season, leading the NL with a 1.87 ERA and 7.8 WAR, although with 13 wins, he finished third in the Cy Young voting behind Carpenter (21-5, 2.83 ERA, 5.8 WAR) and Willis (22-10, 2.63 ERA, 7.3 WAR). The AL Cy Young voting similarly registered wins as the priority: Santana was 16-7 with a 2.87 ERA and 7.2 WAR and should have won, but 21-game winner Bartolo Colon with a 3.48 ERA captured the honor.

Overall, our aces carried a similar workload to 1995 and remained as productive, with a high ERA+ while averaging over 6.0 WAR. The biggest difference, of course, was how the aces got there: more strikeouts and fewer walks. Halladay best symbolized this new generation of aces, who combined strikeout stuff with great control. Indeed, he made the list of aces even though he made just 19 starts in 2005 — but he went 12-4 with a 2.41 ERA and 5.5 WAR, good enough to crack the top 12. Call that season a sign of things to come, where you wouldn’t need to pitch 220 innings to be one of the most valuable starters.

The typical Cy Young winner in the 2000s still averaged 19.5 wins, with new “lows” set in 2006 when Brandon Webb won with just 16 wins and then Tim Lincecum in 2009 with 15 wins.

2015

Aces: Zack Greinke, Jake Arrieta, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Dallas Keuchel, David Price, Sonny Gray, Jacob deGrom, Madison Bumgarner, Felix Hernandez, Corey Kluber, Gerrit Cole

Average ace line: 17-8, 2.56 ERA, 218 IP, 172 H, 45 BB, 225 SO, 32 GS, 3 CG, 2 SHO, 156 ERA+, 6.1 WAR

Average MLB starter: 4.10 ERA, 7.4 SO/9, 2.73 SO/BB ratio

What defined an ace in 2015: Strikeouts!

Defining stat: The strikeout rate for our aces climbed to over one per inning at 9.3 K’s per nine.

This season featured one of the best three-way Cy Young races of all time, when Greinke and Arrieta posted ERAs under 2.00 while Kershaw had a 2.13 ERA with 301 strikeouts. Greinke was 19-3 with a 1.66 ERA and 8.9 WAR, but Arrieta won after going 22-6 with a 1.77 ERA and 8.3 WAR.

The increased strikeout rate is a reflection of a couple of things: We were near the beginning of the high-velocity era for pitchers, but what set apart these aces is multiple strikeout pitches to go along with their fastballs. Arrieta featured two fastballs, a slider, curveball and changeup, and Greinke had the same five-pitch repertoire. Kershaw had pinpoint control of his fastball and two unhittable off-speed pitches in his curveball and slider. King Felix had an A+ changeup and a great curveball. Kluber parlayed a cutter/slider/curveball combo into two Cy Youngs. Scherzer and deGrom had everything — overpowering fastballs, control and multiple off-speed weapons. It was a new wave of dominance that we had never seen before.

The typical Cy Young winner in the 2010s still averaged 18.8 wins. It was a very controversial selection when Hernandez won in 2010 despite going just 13-12 for a terrible Mariners team, and wins still generally remained a key factor in Cy Young voting during this decade. As late as 2016, Rick Porcello (22-6, 4.7 WAR) beat out Justin Verlander (16-9, 7.4 WAR) primarily because he won more games (Verlander actually had more first-place votes, 14 to 8). However, the tide had shifted by the time deGrom took home the honor in 2018 and 2019 despite winning just 10 and 11 games, respectively. He was clearly the best pitcher in the NL and received 29 of 30 first-place votes both years.

2025

Aces: Paul Skenes, Cristopher Sanchez, Tarik Skubal, Hunter Brown, Garrett Crochet, Nick Pivetta, Freddy Peralta, Ranger Suarez, Zack Wheeler, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Logan Webb, Max Fried

Average ace line: 13-6, 2.65 ERA, 174 IP, 137 H, 44 BB, 195 SO, 16 HR, 29 GS, 1 CG, 0 SHO, 162 ERA+, 5.4 WAR

Average MLB starter: 4.23 ERA, 8.2 SO/9, 2.77 SO/BB ratio

What defines an ace in 2025: Dominance over shorter outings.

Defining stat: Our aces have allowed no runs or one run in 171 out of 346 starts.

Those totals will climb a bit over the final days of the season, but we’re still seeing a 30-to-40-inning drop in workload from a decade prior, and thus a slight drop in overall value despite a high rate of productivity. The trade-off with fewer innings is that these aces are expected to dominate over those shorter outings, which often now last just six or seven innings. Skenes has pitched more than seven innings just three times and Skubal just twice (although, one of those was his first career complete game).

Of course, fewer innings means fewer decisions and thus fewer wins from the elite starters. The eight Cy Young winners from 2021 to 2024 averaged just 15.1 wins per season and the last 20-game Cy Young winner was Verlander in 2019.

Conclusion

The days of multiple 20-game winners vying for Cy Young honors are long gone, but I hope we’ve adjusted our thinking and can still appreciate what Skenes and Skubal — and Sanchez, Crochet, Brown and the other top starters — have accomplished in an era that is much different from 1975 or 1985.

A stat like WAR is a good way to look at this. Skenes has 7.2 WAR — higher than nine of the Cy Young starting pitchers of the 1970s and eight from the 1980s. Skenes is just as valuable in 2025 as many of the top pitchers were 40 and 50 years ago in their era.

Will his 2025 campaign go down as a legendary season like Gooden had in 1985? No, 10-10 is not the same as 24-4, and losing that aspect of baseball history no doubt stirs up much of the consternation about the “decline” of the starting pitcher. But let’s leave it at this: Dwight Gooden was a must-watch star in 1985, just as Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux were in 1995, just as Clayton Kershaw in 2015 and just as Skenes and Skubal are in 2025.

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Dodgers considering Ohtani helping as reliever

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4 hours ago

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September 18, 2025

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Dodgers considering Ohtani helping as reliever

  • Alden GonzalezSep 17, 2025, 10:17 PM ET

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      ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.

LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani has proved to be a viable starting pitcher as the postseason approaches, but Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged Wednesday that the organization has considered whether he might be more valuable helping a weary bullpen — perhaps especially in a shorter series like the three-game wild-card round.

It remains far more likely that Ohtani will serve as one of the Dodgers’ starters in the playoffs, but Roberts said the possibility of Ohtani helping out of the bullpen is “something we’re all talking about.”

“I know that we are going to be talking about it,” Roberts said. “I think the one thing you can say, though, is that we use him once every seven days, eight days, nine days — [11] days in between his last start — so to think that now it’s feasible for a guy that’s just coming off what he’s done last year, or didn’t do last year, to then now put him in a role that’s very, very unique — because he’s a very methodical, disciplined, routine-driven person. The pen is the complete opposite, right? You potentially could be taking on risk, and we’ve come this far, certainly with the kid gloves and managing.”

The Dodgers’ caution while managing Ohtani’s return to the mound in the wake of a second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament was evident Tuesday, when Roberts removed him after five no-hit innings despite just 68 pitches. That decision was predetermined, Roberts said, a function of the team’s hesitancy to push him beyond the five-inning threshold this season.

Ohtani said he understood the decision but added that he wants to “pitch as long as possible.” Later, while addressing the Japanese media, Ohtani expressed an openness to playing the outfield in order to remain in the lineup after exiting as a reliever, saying: “I’ve had conversations with various people, and the idea of me pitching in relief has come up. As a player, I want to be prepared to handle whatever role is needed. If I do end up pitching out of the bullpen, I think that could also mean I’d need to play in the outfield afterward, depending on the situation. So I want to be ready for anything, no matter what comes my way.”

Major League Baseball’s two-way rule, adopted in 2019, allows Ohtani to remain in the game as the designated hitter if he starts on the mound and is replaced. But if he were to start a game — even in the playoffs — as the DH, then pitch in relief, the Dodgers would lose the DH once Ohtani stops pitching. Ohtani’s only path to remaining in the game in that situation would be to play the outfield — something he did seven times with the Los Angeles Angels in 2021.

Ohtani, though, has not done any work in the outfield this year. The Dodgers, meanwhile, are naturally hesitant to add more responsibilities to a player who’s also a catalyst atop their lineup, not to mention a legitimate stolen-base threat.

Asked if Ohtani in the outfield is on his radar, Roberts smiled and said, “No.”

“There’s a lot of variables,” Roberts said, “but to know that he can potentially run out there, it’s great. Maybe just in theory. But, again, I love him for even throwing that out there.”

The Dodgers have long been open to the possibility of Ohtani closing out a critical game in October — like he did to seal a championship for his native Japan in the 2023 World Baseball Classic — but the prospect of him helping as a reliever has ramped up as the bullpen has continued to struggle and the rotation has taken form.

The Dodgers have five other effective starters in Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw and Emmet Sheehan, the latter of whom also has proved to be effective out of the bullpen. Some of their highest-leverage relievers — Blake Treinen, Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates and Michael Kopech among them — have struggled to varying degrees.

If Ohtani were to pitch in relief, it would be in the ninth inning. But juggling warming up in the bullpen if his turn to bat is coming up, or if he’s required to run the bases, could prove difficult. And the Dodgers would be at risk of either losing him as a hitter or forcing him to play the outfield if the game extends to extra innings.

“I don’t know if it’s a pipe dream,” Roberts said of Ohtani playing the outfield, “but it’s very commendable from Shohei.”

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Bubbly flows as Cubs reach 1st playoffs since ’20

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7 hours ago

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September 18, 2025

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Bubbly flows as Cubs reach 1st playoffs since '20

  • ESPN News Services

Sep 17, 2025, 04:38 PM ET

PITTSBURGH — The Chicago Cubs, who haven’t been to the postseason since the 2020 season, were in the mood to party Wednesday afternoon — and so they cut loose.

After clinching a National League playoff berth with an 8-4 victory against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Cubs players and coaches high-fived and hugged each other on the field before taking the celebration up a notch in the visitors’ clubhouse at PNC Park.

With tarps in place and most wearing protective eyewear, a jubilant bunch doused each other with champagne and beer while others puffed victory cigars. Some did both.

Everything was muted during the coronavirus pandemic when the Cubs last qualified. They held off after making it in 2018, hoping to win the NL Central, just to finish second to the Milwaukee Brewers.

“It’s a grind of a season. You celebrate the first goal you accomplished,” manager Craig Counsell said. “We’ve made it to our first goal and that’s exciting. For everybody that’s been a part of the grind the whole year, for everybody that’s worked so hard to put us in this position, it’s a fun thing to do.

“You don’t get to do this in regular jobs — get to celebrate and throw champagne on each other. You just don’t get to do it, right? So you take advantage of it, have fun with it, enjoy each other and celebrate each other.”

Ian Happ homered and drove in three runs as the Cubs won their fourth straight for their seventh victory in eight games.

The Cubs (88-64) seemed destined for the playoffs since going 18-9 in May. Still, this hasn’t been straightforward. They lead the NL wild-card standings and are 4 1/2 games back of the first-place Brewers in the Central, having surrendered the division lead on July 28 after sitting alone at the top through July 19.

“When you’re in it, you think it’s going to happen every year,” pitcher Matthew Boyd said. “The fact and the reality is this is really hard to do. … This means so much to all of us. We’re not done yet. That’s the most important thing. We still know where we want to go.”

Happ popped the cork — in the clubhouse and on the field. The Pittsburgh native has played nine years with the Cubs. He was a rookie in 2017, when Chicago won the NL Central just one year after ending a 107-year drought without winning the World Series.

Happ was there with Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Schwarber, Kris Bryant, Javier Baez and others. This time, it was Pete Crow-Armstrong by his side, pulled into a tight hug for a simple message.

“There was definitely a mention of, ‘This is not the last,'” Crow-Armstrong said. “I mean, Ian learned from some of the best. Ian is one of the best at passing that on. Ian has meant a lot to me, just as a person. I’ll follow his lead. … I’ve got full trust in Ian Happ as a leader.”

Crow-Armstrong was dynamic with 25 home runs and 71 RBIs through in 95 games through the All-Star Break. The 23-year-old has cooled considerably, having four homers and driving in 19 runs since, and is looking forward to starting fresh in the playoffs.

“I don’t know. I’ve never done this,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I’m just excited to keep doing what we’re doing, doing what we’ve done all year. I’ve never experienced October baseball. I’m just ready to go all in.”

It might be necessary.

Kyle Tucker, an All-Star right fielder, has been on the injured list since Sept. 9 with a left calf injury. He will visit with a physical therapy group in Florida used in his recovery from a right leg injury while with the Houston Astros last season.

Tucker is hitting .270 with 22 home runs, 73 RBIs and 25 stolen bases in his first season since being traded to the Cubs in December.

“We’re aligned with Kyle,” Counsell said. “This is the best way for him to make some improvements. Unfortunately, we’ve plateaued and we weren’t making progress. That’s frustrating for Kyle.”

For every mention of how great Wednesday’s celebratory moment was, there was one of how it’s not enough. The Cubs want more. Not just the division, but the World Series. Tucker would make that easier, but this wasn’t the day to worry.

“We got to go to the playoffs in 2020, but doing it near the end of a true 162 is totally different,” Nico Hoerner said. “Baseball is such a game of persistence and comradery. Getting to celebrate like this is a really special thing.

“It’s obviously not our ultimate goal, but it’s still a huge milestone along the way. It’s awesome to celebrate with this group.”

And with the Cubs reaching their first goal on the road, Counsell couldn’t help but think about their fans back in Chicago.

“You want the fans to be able to experience October baseball and be a part of that and take them on a journey with the team. That’s so much fun,” Counsell said. “Those are the people you think about when this stuff happens — everybody that puts in the work, everybody that shows up at 12 o’clock for a night game and all the fans that come every day to Wrigley.

“We want them to be able to enjoy the best of baseball, which is October.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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