Top 106 Baseball Players: #19 - Pedro Martinez

Pedro Martinez

Pedro Martinez was the best pitcher in baseball for several years around the turn of the millennium, and a few of his seasons rank among the best seasons by a pitcher in history.

Pedro first pitched for the Dodgers in 1992, joining a team where his older brother Ramon was the star pitcher, but the team did not feel that he had the ability to be a starting ace, and he was traded to the Expos after the 1993 season.

He showed steady improvement through his first 3 seasons in Montreal, including a perfect game that he lost in the 10th inning in 1995 then took the league by storm in 1997, when he threw 305 strikeouts with an ERA of 1.90 and a league-leading 13 complete games. He won his first Cy Young that season, becoming the only Expo ever to win the award, and also became the only pitcher under 6 feet tall to ever throw 300 strikeouts in a season.

Rather than lose him to free agency the next year, Montreal traded Pedro to the Red Sox just days after he won the Cy Young, and his 7-year stretch in Boston was legendary. After coming in #2 in the Cy Young voting in his first season in Boston, he took home the award in 1999, when he won the Triple Crown with 23 wins, 313 strikeouts, and a 2.07 ERA. He was just as good in the playoffs, pitching 17 scoreless innings with 23 strikeouts, but they fell to the Yankees in the ALCS.

Between the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2000, he had 10 consecutive games with at least 10 strikeouts, 3 longer than the previous record of 7, which he also owned. He also set the record for consecutive innings with a strikeout, reaching 40 during 1999. He also became the first pitcher ever to start an All-Star game by striking out the side that season.

His very best season came in 2000, when he posted a 1.74 ERA, less than half of the next-lowest ERA, Roger Clemens' 3.70. He also set a record with a WHIP of 0.74 that season, allowing only 128 hits and 32 walks in 217 innings that season, and he was awarded his 3rd Cy Young in 4 years after the season.

A rotator cuff injury in 2001 caused him to miss half of the season, though he was still the best pitcher in the AL. He led the league in ERA and winning percentage in both 2002 and 2003, but was overlooked in the Cy Young voting each time, despite leading the winners in every major category each time.

In 2004 he had the highest ERA in his season up to that point, as it reached 3.90, but he was able to reach the World Series for the first time in his career, where he pitched 7 scoreless innings as Boston swept St. Louis to take home their first championship in decades.

After the title, he left Boston to sign with the Mets, where he had one more solid season, then faded into obscurity as injuries began to take their toll. He did get the opportunity to pitch in one more World Series with Philadelphia in 2009, but recorded a loss in each of his starts.

Martinez was the second-fastest pitcher to reach 3000 strikeouts, trailing only Randy Johnson, and is the only pitcher to retire with more than 3000 strikeouts in fewer than 3000 innings pitched. His career winning percentage of .687 is second to Whitey Ford in the modern era, and his peak was higher than any other modern pitcher. Though his great years ended abruptly, he is still definitely one of the greatest ever to play the game.