The Best Clutch Starting Pitcher of Our "Era" (Whatever THAT Means)

This weekend, I had a discussion over drinks and garbage plates with my friend Melissa about clutch pitching, particularly who is the best clutch STARTING pitcher (aka, pitchers who aren't the messiah and wear No. 42 for the New York Yankees) of our era (let's define it as 1990ish until the present.) She said Pettitte, I said Beckett. My mom always stressed that it's not important to prove you're right, etc. at every moment, especially when you're dining with a female, and I definitely learned that lesson the hard way in 2002 when I survived an assassination attempt (excerpted from "Things You Don't Know About Joe Checkler," Houghton Mifflin, 2007.). In this case though, I was generally interested in looking at the numbers of those two to see which one was a better argument, not to publicly embarrass Melissa on a highly read public forum like Liners, Sliders and Scoops.

I then - the next day of course because it would have been really rude to do this in the middle of a garbage plate - decided to off the top of my head take eight others who might want to be considered. I'm talking about pitchers who pitched a lot of postseason ball since 1990, and I came up with this list. I really think you'll like it:

DAVID CONE: 18 career postseason starts (3 relief appearances), 111.1 innings.

ANDY PETTITTE: 40 career postseason starts, 249 innings (of course
helped out by the Yankees ruling and expanded playoffs. Cone only
pitched in expanded playoff seasons for half of his career.

RANDY JOHNSON: 19 career postseason starts (3 relief appearances), 121 innings.

PEDRO MARTINEZ: 16 career postseason starts (3 relief appearances),
94.1 innings.

GREG MADDUX: 35 career postseason starts (5 relief appearances), 198 innings.

JOSH BECKETT: 14 career postseason starts (1 relief appearance), 93.2 innings.

CURT SCHILLING: 19 career postseason starts, 133.1 innings.

TOM GLAVINE: 35 career postseason starts, 218.1 innings.

JOHN SMOLTZ: 27 career postseason starts (14 relief appearances), 209 innings.

ROGER CLEMENS: 35 career postseason starts (1 relief appearance), 199 innings.

So those are our guys.

Now, I didn't just saturate your eyes with stats because I (like most people who have a baseball IQ above 74) don't believe in all stats telling all the story, ESPECIALLY wins and losses, and ESPECIALLY wins and losses in the postseason, when a manager is more likely to take out his pitcher early because the game means so much and he needs to get his best reliever in. That said, I felt like I had to eliminate from our argument any pitcher who has a career LOSING record in the postseason... (bye-bye Johnson, Maddux and Glavine). That leaves us with Schilling, Smoltz, Beckett, Pettitte, Pedro, Cone and Clemens.

Again, stats aren't everything, but I think we can easily right here just take out anyone with at or above 3.50 career ERA in the postseason (not because that's bad - pitching against really good hitters in the postseason, that's actually a fine ERA. It's just that with this sample, there are guys that are so much better than that (like .75 runs or more better) that we can easily eliminate some people here that don't belong in the discussion. (Bye-Bye Clemens, you're a steroid-pilfering douchebag anyway. Unfortunately, Cone and also Melissa's loverboy Pettitte is also gone here. He has the highest (by far, besides Cone at 3.80) ERA of any of these pitchers, 3.90. That's roughly the SAME ERA Pettitte's had in his regular season starts (3.91), which is NOT bad.

Many people think clutch performance is defined by fulfilling the barfbag quality cliche "rising to the occasion" and doing BETTER in the postseason or big games than the regular season, but I disagree because I'm much smarter than you and I've researched this, and - well - just sit down and listen to me. The key is to stay AT the level you've reached during the postseason (or maybe be sometimes better, it's okay to be better), because if you can have the same performance against GOOD competition as you do against a mix of GOOD and BAD competition, well then Johnny Appleseed, you're doing a frickin' amazing job.

Pettitte for his career in the postseason is 17-8 with a 3.90 ERA, which is very good. He has also, however, given up MORE hits than innings pitched in the postseason, which shouldn't be a surprise.

That's what he's done in the regular season too. He gets a lot of ground balls, gets out of jams, has mental fortitude, believes Jesus Christ is the man who taught him the cut fastball, etc. But he's also given up 27 homers in the postseason. Which isn't a horrific number for 249 innings, but Jesus Christ only gave up 7 homers in 249 innings in the New Testament. Looking at him (Pettitte, not Christ) year by year, he has pitched some memorable great games (like that 1-0 game in Atlanta in '96), but his only superior postseason was 2000, when he pitched well in every round. While he's definitely a guy I wouldn't mind pitching a big game for me, he's not in the top 5 of our era.

The top 4 are (in no particular order): Schilling, Smoltz, Beckett and Pedro.

PEDRO
Compared to what you might expect from a legend, Pedro hasn't always been incredible in the postseason. He has pitched memorable games, like coming out of the bullpen against Cleveland in '99 or whatever year it was and throwing 6 no-hit innings, but he's rather underwhelming (6 wins, 4 losses, 3.46 ERA, for a guy who in the regular season is 219-100 with a 2.93 ERA). His strikeout rate, which is much better than 1 per inning in the regular season, drops to almost EXACTLY 1 per inning in the postseason. Again, these aren't bad numbers, they just eliminate him from our impossibly hard test. Bye Bye Pedro.

BECKETT
I'm wrong on Beckett. I let my eyes deceive me (I saw him pitch one of the toughest and best games anyone will ever pitch, a complete-game shutout as a rookie to win the World Series on the road at Yankee Stadium.)

(Side note: letting our eyes and our memories deceive us is the hardest thing about sports arguments. We tend to remember things we want to remember, and forget things we want to forget, and as time goes on we really start to get Fuzzy Zoeller. It's easy to remember Pettitte's 1-0 win in the '96 series, but he gave up roughly 1,842 runs in Game 1, if I remember.)

Back to Beckett, He's some kind of competitor, he's mean, he LOOKS like a winner whatever the hell that is (I think it means there are little "Ws" in his eyes), but really, I was irresponsible to call him the best postseason pitcher of our era. In 2003 and 2007, his numbers are amazing. In no series was his ERA over 3.26, and in ALL THE OTHER ONES it was less than 2. But in 2008 and 2009, he hasn't done the same. He would have to have another 2003 or 2007 before he gets himself back in the discussion. He was the best postseason pitcher of the first 7 years of the 2000s, that can be said. But not of our era...

SCHILLING AND SMOLTZ
That leaves us with Schilling and Smoltz. It's a tough one for me. I love Smoltz and I hate Schilling.

I think Schilling is just annoying, creepy, and perhaps a murderer. I think Smoltz reinvented himself 74 times, learned to pitch sidearm because his arm hurt too much when he threw overhand, he went to Iraq and captured Saddam Hussein with his bare hands and gripped Saddam's face like a split-fingered fastball and threw it 76 MPH. He's like great. But whatever, I can't worry about that now. I'm objective and stuff.

I've never seen numbers like these. Schilling's career postseason ERA is 2.23, which is 1.23 runs BETTER than his regular season ERA. That's unbelievable. Smoltz's is an also awesome 2.67.

Schilling is 11-2, Smoltz is 15-4. These are the only two on this list whose numbers GET BETTER in the postseason. Do you know how hard that is? You're only playing against the best teams in baseball (and early in Smoltz's career and also Schilling's, only the FOUR best teams made the playoffs instead of the eight best). That's like REALLY hard (that's what she said.)

I loathe just looking at numbers to do this, they really don't tell all the story. So what I might do is just give this to Schilling based solely on the fact that his teams won 3 World Series titles, and Smoltz's only won one. Schilling also pitched that shutout in the '93 World Series the day after a 15-14 loss that kept the Phillies alive (I'm not looking this up, but I think I'm right) and was one of the two reasons that the D'Bags (I mean backs) spanked the Yanks in 7 in '01 (despite giving up that toe-level homer to Soriano to lead off the 8th in Game 7.)

Maybe that is a tad unfair, especially considering that Smoltz only really had one bad start in his World Series career. But that's what I'm doing. I'm going with Schilling.

Either way, you can take your pick. But unfortunately, neither my or Melissa’s argument - and believe me we're both really smart (she solved the Rubix Cube in 8.4 seconds at the age of 3) - have much juice to them...

You're welcome for being back.