OF ALL THE things to cause outrage, to intensify the bleating that baseball is broken and the Los Angeles Dodgers are the culprit, the signing that generated the most consternation was that of a relief pitcher. Not Shohei Ohtani‘s $700 million contract in 2023. Not the $325 million guaranteed to Yoshinobu Yamamoto a few weeks later. Not the $182 million that added two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell last offseason. Not even the drastically under-market deal signed by Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki that winter. There was something about the four-year, $72 million contract given to left-hander Tanner Scott in January that infuriated fan bases in every market outside of Los Angeles — even the only one that dwarfs it.

“It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things they’re doing,” New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner told the YES Network a week after the Scott deal. That the Yankees — the most valuable franchise in baseball, the game’s foremost revenue machine, owners of the highest payroll each of the first 14 years this century — had joined the chorus typically reserved for smaller-market teams questioning the game’s fairness was no accident. Even if formal discussions about Major League Baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement are half a year away, the campaign to capture the hearts and minds of the paying consumers has already begun.

So far, the case made by Steinbrenner and a cadre of other influential team officials has focused more on what’s wrong with baseball’s current financial system than what they would prefer in its place. That preference, according to conversations with more than two dozen people — including officials from MLB and the MLB Players Association, players, owners and personnel from the other three major men’s North American sports — need not be spoken aloud to be understood.

MLB wants a salary cap, and between now and Dec. 1, 2026, when the current collective bargaining agreement expires, those two words — which owners regard as a necessity and the MLBPA as a profanity — could presage the fate of the 2027 season. Owners, sources said, have not yet decided whether they will take the biggest run at the implementation of a cap since 1994, when the union’s refusal to budge on the matter led to the cancellation of the World Series. Players are preparing for it, though, and plan to refuse any such entreaties, regarding a continued pursuit of a cap as a declaration of war.

Without the exceptional spending of the Dodgers and New York Mets in recent years, the case for MLB to forsake the economic system that has led to more than a quarter-century of labor peace would not have nearly the public support it does. And yet the purported facts pertaining to salary caps, which exist in the NFL, NBA and NHL, are often misunderstood.

What’s not is the disparity between what the Dodgers are spending on their payroll compared with their peers. Currently, sources said, Los Angeles is carrying a $340.9 million payroll. Because the Dodgers have exceeded every threshold of the league’s luxury tax — which kicks in at $241 million and includes penalties for repeat offenders — they owe an additional $167.4 million.

The Dodgers’ total projected outlay of $508.3 million is just a few million dollars shy of the combined payrolls of the game’s six lowest-spending teams — Miami, the Athletics, Tampa Bay, the Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh and Cleveland — all of which carry sub-$100 million rosters. Los Angeles will pay more in penalties than 16 teams do for their whole roster and have guaranteed enough going forward that they’re already over the CBT threshold for 2026 and, if it’s still around, 2027.

On the day of Scott’s signing, MLB Trade Rumors ran a two-question poll for its readers. The first asked: “Do you want a salary cap in the next MLB CBA?” After more than 35,000 votes, the results — however skewed by the frustration over the Dodgers’ spending and use of deferred money — were overwhelming: 67.2% said yes. The second question painted an even darker portrait: If it meant the implementation of a cap, 50.2% of respondents said they were willing to lose the 2027 season.

The Dodgers’ relative struggles this season have cooled some of the pro-cap pontification. Rather than some unstoppable machine, they’ve been merely very good: 85-67 (tied for the fifth-best record in MLB) with a run differential of +122 (fifth in baseball). The optics of their profligate spending nevertheless brand them as a symptom of a system run amok. Whether the inequities — some real, some perceived — define the game enough to warrant a wholesale overhaul of its economic system is a decades-old debate once again being relitigated, regurgitated talking points and all.

“The only way to fix baseball is to do a salary cap and a floor,” Dick Monfort, the Colorado Rockies owner and chair of the league’s labor committee during the most recent basic-agreement negotiations, told the Denver Gazette in March. Other owners, including Baltimore’s David Rubenstein, have explicitly addressed the need for a cap, a change from the unspoken compact that since 1994 has treated the topic as a third rail.

Players have greeted the new tack with pushback. Philadelphia star Bryce Harper stood nose-to-nose with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and told him any talk of a cap would require him to “get the f— out of our clubhouse” earlier this summer. Union officials, in their own meetings with teams, have made abundantly clear their position: A cap is a red line, and any time spent discussing it is wasted.

How much of the rhetoric is pretense and how much is real will reveal itself over the next 14 months. Both sides have other pressing priorities for now: MLB is trying to navigate the collapse of the regional-sports-network model that for years enriched teams via local television contracts, and the MLBPA is under investigation by federal investigators looking into alleged financial malfeasance. Soon enough, the calendar will bring the sides to the bargaining table and force them to train their attention on the ideological chasm that exists. It’s not just the 2027 season that’s at stake. It’s the future of the game.

WITH A LITTLE over a week left in the 2025 regular season, all eight teams that have exceeded the luxury tax threshold this year are in position to make the playoffs. Even though the Dodgers are not the juggernaut they seemed heading into the season, October nevertheless beckons. And if the Mets can maintain their fragile hold on the final National League wild-card spot, it will leave just four opportunities for the remaining 22 teams.

MLB’s argument for a cap starts with shrinking the economic disparity to foster fairness regardless of market size and revenue. Payroll correlates more strongly with winning in baseball than in any of the capped sports, and this reality alarms league officials.

“How do we compete?” one midsized-market team president said. “We try to do everything right. We draft well. We develop well. And then we get the s— kicked out of us by clubs that buy their players. It feels like the game is rigged.”

Though the late 1990s and mid-to-late 2000s come close, never before has there been a payroll divide like today. Money does not guarantee winning — the 2023 Mets, 2023 Yankees, 2019 Cubs and 2019 Red Sox all carried top-two payrolls and spent their Octobers at home — but it certainly helps. The same high-spending teams dominate the winter — over the past three years, the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees and Phillies have signed 10 of the 17 nine-figure free agents — and target the top-tier talents with whom lower-revenue teams typically don’t engage.

“I don’t blame owners for not wanting to lose money,” one small-market owner said, voicing a long-held contention of MLB teams: They are simply not very profitable. While that is unknowable — only the Atlanta Braves, who are owned by Liberty Media, share their financials publicly — Forbes this year in its valuation of MLB teams estimated that 11 had lost money, led by the Mets at $268 million. The other 10 teams, it said, bled $311.5 million combined. MLB’s profitable teams, in the meantime, made a combined $639 million, with the Red Sox at $120 million profit and the Cubs at $81 million.

But fans don’t follow their teams for profit-and-loss statements, and the belief among those in favor of a cap is that lessening financial disparity will improve competitive balance. Certain data points support this idea. Teams with top-10 payrolls reach and win the World Series significantly more often than lesser spenders. Smaller markets — which, in almost every case, likewise carry smaller payrolls — are practically nonexistent at the end of October.

And yet, as the MLBPA attempts to fight the prevailing narrative that the game would be better off with a cap, it can point to small-market success stories which illustrate that the have-nots in baseball can win.

The best team in MLB this season carries the 21st-highest payroll in the game at around $115 million. Only three of its 28 players signed as free agents — and one of them re-signed after being drafted and developed by the organization. The Milwaukee Brewers are an anomaly, yes, but they are also a compelling counterpoint to the notion that financial disparity disqualifies small-market, low-revenue teams. And they are not alone. The Tampa Bay Rays made the World Series in 2020 with the 28th-ranked payroll, and the Cleveland Guardians reached the American League Championship Series last year with the 23rd.

None of the three has won a World Series this century, but more than half of MLB teams (16) have. That beats the NHL (14), NFL (13) and NBA (12). Other measures point to parity on par with the other sports: The number of teams to make the playoffs in the past half-decade and decade, those that made it to the final four and even those that reached the championship series, is similar to — and, in some cases, better than — the capped leagues.

This is where the cognitive dissonance of a cap reveals itself. How should a league judge parity? What do fans desire? What’s signal; what’s noise?

At the end of the day, as a large-market owner acknowledged, more than focusing on flattening payrolls and increasing competitiveness, the primary benefit — and motivation for a significant number of owners — of a cap is increasing franchise values. If baseball teams are a break-even business, as officials often contend, the easiest area in which owners can make a return on their investment is in the growth of the asset. In recent years, the owner said, the value of MLB franchises has plateaued, particularly when compared with the three capped sports, prompting frustration among owners and impelling the push for a cap.

“That’s what this is all about,” one longtime labor lawyer said. “That if the costs are fixed, the franchise values will go up.”

THE UNION’S ANTI-CAP beliefs are every bit as fervent — if not more than — as MLB’s pro-cap line. From Marvin Miller to Donald Fehr to Michael Weiner, nearly five decades of union leadership has instilled in players the creed that a cap is more problem than panacea. During the union’s tour this season around clubhouses, players said, union officials have railed against the idea.

Manfred and league officials have pitched players on the notion of money left on the table. In a capped system, the parties would first define baseball-related revenue, then negotiate a percentage that goes to the players. Although any discussion of the revenue pool would be contentious — for example: would it include money generated by ancillary businesses owned by teams, such as the Battery that surrounds Atlanta’s Truist Park? — the league has leaned strongly into the idea that players would make more money under a cap than they do now. Some of the 1,200 members who comprise the MLBPA buy the argument.

“Most of my younger guys want a cap,” one agent with more than a dozen major league players as clients said. “They see it in the other sports. It’s normalized to them. And they think for everything they could get in bargaining — especially more money earlier in careers or earlier free agency — it would be worth it.”

Multiple agents agree that there are plausible scenarios in which players would benefit in the short and long term from a cap. Acceding to one could allow the players to negotiate earlier free agency, for example, which the league would never consider otherwise.

But union officials have spent their own sessions pushing back on the idea that a cap is a salve. Why, they said, would teams be any more inclined to grow revenues in a capped system than they are in an uncapped system? If a cap means more money for younger players, why can’t the same be the case in an uncapped system? If a cap would guarantee players a larger share of industry revenues, why can’t an uncapped system?

Ultimately, the skepticism of a capped system is rooted in two principles, which the union full-throatedly shares with players. The first is the detriments of a ceiling on player salaries; caps are zero-sum, the union reminds them. And any conversations about money are theoretical, at least for now. One area in which owners have yet to find agreement, sources said, is what a capped system in baseball would resemble. The NBA has a soft cap with significant penalties for overages and a salary floor at 90% of the cap. The NFL is hard-capped, with a firm ceiling and a floor of 89% of the cap over a four-year period. The NHL’s system includes a hard cap of $95.5 million and a floor of $70.6 million.

In its first proposal during the 2021-22 negotiations that led to a 99-day lockout by MLB, the league offered a $100 million floor with a $180 million soft cap — $30 million less than the previous first threshold of the luxury tax, also known as the competitive balance tax (CBT). The MLBPA quickly condemned the plan, and the league backed away from blowing up the game’s economic structure in its later offers.

The second principle the union is sharing is that every deal after the first is bound to get worse. Look at the three capped sports. They’ve gone backward in terms of revenue split. In the NFL’s initial collective bargaining agreement with a cap in 1994, the players received 64% of revenue. Today it’s 48%. Basketball (1984) and hockey (2005) started at 57%. Now it’s 51% in the NBA and 50% in hockey.

“Once you’re in a capped system, you never get out,” one MLBPA official said. “Whatever that special introductory offer is, once they have you, they know you’ve lost.”

AS MUCH AS MLB wants a salary cap now, multiple owners said they believe the only real path to one would require missing the 2027 season. And as unpalatable as that is to players, it’s similarly so to owners, not just because of what they’d lose out on today but the money they would cede in the future.

The collapse of regional sports networks has left Manfred with what could be a blessing in disguise. MLB’s national television contracts expire following the 2028 season. Between now and then, Manfred hopes to whip up support across the game to nationalize local rights, too. Although convincing the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs and other teams with their own RSNs or strong local television deals to join a potential 30-team package won’t be easy, multiple sources said the league is confident in its ability to consolidate local rights and shop them to streaming services that would pay billions for a guaranteed audience on nearly half the nights of the year.

Provided that audience is still there. Manfred worked for MLB in 1994 and is acutely aware of how destructive the lost World Series was for attendance and television ratings. If MLB is going to maximize its TV rights, doing so coming off a down ratings year in 2028 after losing the 2027 season could prove financially calamitous.

“It’s going to be very hard to have a cap in this round of bargaining,” the longtime labor lawyer said. “Because the media transition is still ongoing.”

It’s not the only item on Manfred’s docket, either. He hopes to name two expansion franchises and devise realigned divisions before his planned retirement in January 2029. All of that uncertainty makes an endeavor already fraught with peril even more so — and sets up the sort of centralization of revenues that mimics the capped leagues. Whether the players would be any more open-minded to a cap then than they are now could be determined in the years to come.

In the meantime, the argument over a cap will rage. The league will continue to make its case to a public that has increasingly warmed to the notion of something to fight back against the big spenders in the same way MLB tried to in the late 1990s when the Yankees were the Evil Empire and the CBT was introduced to tamp down the spending gaps that pervaded the sport.

“It hasn’t worked,” one league official said.

Neither at the top, where the Dodgers are spending half a billion dollars, nor at the bottom, where the A’s have carried an Opening Day payroll that ranks among the bottom quarter of the league for 18 consecutive seasons, as have the Pirates for 21 of 22 campaigns, and the Rays for 24 straight years. Over the past three winters, 13 teams have not guaranteed a free agent deal for more than $50 million, an alarming figure that speaks to the aversion of some owners to play even in reasonable financial sandboxes.

Without a floor, there’s not much the MLBPA can do other than hope the teams at the top continue chasing wins. And with that comes more disparity, a likelier scenario in which CBT payors continue to rack up wins, and further bifurcation in a system whose warts have grown ugly enough that the public is skeptical it can be fixed.

It’s why Tanner Scott, of all people, caused the consternation he did on that mid-January day. It wasn’t just what the Dodgers had assembled; it was that all of their advantages — the TV deal, the other revenue streams and the munificent ownership group that reinvested in the on-field product — would allow them to continue outspending their peers by hundreds of millions ad infinitum without outside intervention.

As long as the leviathans continue to invest in high-end stars and push payrolls to places previously unimaginable, status quo suits the MLBPA just fine. They can tweak revenue sharing, offer incentives to lower-revenue teams that spend, juice CBT penalties. The drawbacks to capped systems, in the eyes of union and player leadership, are too plentiful for them to even entertain the idea. Just look, one veteran player said, at the NBA. If a capped system is so good for all parties involved, why are the LA Clippers being accused of trying to circumvent it with an off-the-books deal for star forward Kawhi Leonard?

“I don’t want one team spending half a billion dollars and another spending $50 million, either,” he said. “But if a cap is the only answer, we’re all in trouble.”

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.

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.”