Baseball: Schilling is first of the Big 3 undefeateds to lose

Curt Schilling lost today, though he didn't pitch badly. He went six innings, gave up six hits but only one walk, and struck out nine. His big mistake was giving up a 2-run HR to catcher Toby Hall, who is having a good year thus far, but career-wise is no big deal.

Tampa Bay's starting pitcher, Scott Kazmir, who walks way too many batters and has given up over 1.5 base runners per inning for his career--and for this season--brought it all today. Obviously he was psyched up for Schilling. He pitched 7 innings, gave up 5 hits and 1 walk, struck out TEN, and gave up one unearned run and one earned run.

His relief corps tried to blow it for him. With one out in the 9th, Chad Orvella gave up: back-to-back HR's; then a walk, which begat a steal of 2nd, which begat a wild throw, which gave the runner third; then Orvella hit the batter; then the batter took second. Still only one out, and a million ways to get that tying run home from third. But Youkilis struck out and Loretta grounded out. Game over.

So, Schilling now has a loss and the question is: Who will hold onto his undefeated status longer, Greg Maddux or Pedro Martinez?

I hope they both make it to something like 8-0 or 9-0, to make it exciting. But if I'm not mistaken, Maddux has been dominating in all of his starts, while Pedro is lucky not to have one or two losses.

Am I correct?

BHN

[Edited on 4/30/06 by BaseballHistoryNut]

Schilling's loss was pretty dissapointing. He could've tied the Red Sox record for wins in the month of April (5 by Pedro, and Ruth, I think). Anyway, I never expected Schilling to get off to such a fast start in the first place, and he still pitched a good game. For some reason Tampa Bay always does well against the Sox, and Kazmir pitched an amazing game. Ortiz has 10 homers, though, and the game came down to the wire. Unfortunately, us Sox fans are use to heartbreaking losses, but remain optimistic.

I think Pedro will go the longest undefeated. It seems all the legendary pitchers the Red Sox give up on (Clemens) because of "age" or whatever reason, go on to make make the Red Sox front office look like idiots. I loved Pedro and he is the greatest pitcher I've ever seen. I'm biased but BHN can back me up stat wise, I think. Off-topic, Yankees-Red Sox series starts tonight, and there's added drama since it's Damon's return to Boston (I understand if this is less exciting to everyone else than it is to me).

Yes, I can.

TO THIS POINT IN TIME, I would rank Clemens as the greatest righty of all time, and Pedro second (and to hell with Walter Johnson, Cy Young, etc.), because Clemens has pitched much longer, won many more games, won two more ERA titles, etc. I don't care about the Cy Young Awards: the sportswriters hate him, so they've f'ed him out of several of those, most outrageously so the year they gave it to Zito.

BUT....

He, and not Clemens, has the all-time best career Adjusted ERA, and it's not even close. All other pitchers with 10 or more years are behind the great master, Grove, who won 9 ERA titles in bad/terrible parks for southpaws in a 17-year career. Pedro, on the other hand, has a career Adjusted ERA which will have to fall a long way to be below Grove's... THAT is how much better he currently is than all other pitchers of all-time.

So who cares what the sportswriters say?

And oh, yes: His won-loss percentage is preposterous. Now, mind you, Grove's is pretty preposterous, too, at 300-141, and if you take away his first two years and last two years, it's something like 263-103, which nobody would ever touch... except maybe Pedro. His record is 202-84, which is just about the same thing--> only a slightly lower percentge, with well fewer wins.

So yes, Pedro Martinez is the greatest inning-for-inning pitcher of all time, to date. But if he wants to be the greatest PITCHER of all time, or at least the greatest RIGHTY of all time, he will have to win a lot more games. And even if his given birth date is valid, he'll be 35 this October.

He can be thankful Grove spent those 5 years caught up in that independent minor league team, and therefore "only" won 300 games.

But Clemens didn't, and it would be hard to rate Clemens behind a man who, while clearly better on an inning-for-inning basis, has about 140 fewer wins and two fewer ERA titles.

In my opinion, people who want Pedro to be the best inning-for-inning pitcher ever are already there, with room to spare. But people who want him as the greatest OVERALL PITCHER ever have at least 2 guys to pass (Grove & Clemens).

BHN

Pedro and Maddux are both still undefeated (5 wins), but they're are a couple of undefeated pitchers with 4 wins, Bronson Arroyo among them. Yet another pitcher the Red Sox gave up on too early. Anyone think Willy Mo Pena was the better player in that trade? Did anyone know that Arroyo had this kinda pitching in him?