Who are the #1 Starters in Baseball?

This, like movie stars, seems like it is an area where there is a lot of ambiguity. Some people take a very restrictive view. “Oh, he’s a good pitcher, but he’s not a true ace.” I’m taking the view here that there are 30 teams, and if every team had one of the best pitchers, there would be 30 of them, hence the term #1 starter. So, I’m going to try to list who they might be, and we’ll see how many of them fit our pre-conceived notions.

I’m going to look at it from the standpoint of if we selected 30 pitchers this year. We can look to the past, but we don’t want to go too far in the past. If Greg Maddux came out of retirement, he would still be a Hall of Famer, but he would also no longer be a #1 starter. Conversely, we don’t want to be too enamored by very recent success with a small sample size. For example, 22-year old Michael Pineda of Seattle is off to a good start, but he’s only thrown 102 innings in his career. Probably not enough to get on the list even if the rate stats are in the range. I don’t want to reward a hot 2 month stretch, either. A history of above average pitching is better than more inconsistency with better numbers in 15 starts in 2011.

Anyway, let’s get to it. I’m doing this absolutely free form–I didn’t make my choices before I started this exercise. First, the easy choices, without much comment:

[photo via Getty]