Here are four simple reasons to go with Atlanta in the National League Championship Series against Florida:
Greg Maddux. Tom Glavine. John Smoltz. Denny Neagle.
It is far and away the most expensive rotation in baseball history. It has a four-time Cy Young Award winner in Maddux and a couple of other Cys in Glavine and Smoltz. It has this season’s only 20-game winner in the National League in Neagle.
If the Braves go on to win the World Series this year, the debate may begin over whether it’s also the greatest starting rotation baseball has seen. But now isn’t the time for the Braves to ponder such questions, as everyone in the organization is well aware.
“The only way you make those comparisons is retrospectively, when their careers are over,” Braves General Manager John Schuerholz says. “Right now I know they are carving their niche in the annals of baseball history by what they’ve done and for how long they’ve done it.”
Plenty of staffs over the decades have had two or three outstanding pitchers to lead them, but few have had four top-of-the-line starters who would be aces on almost any other team.
The last staff to finish with four 20-game winners was the 1971 Baltimore Orioles, with Dave McNally (21-5, 2.89 earned-run average), Jim Palmer (20-9, 2.68 ERA), Mike Cuellar (20-9, 3.08 ERA) and Pat Dobson (20-8, 2.90 ERA). Palmer is the only Hall of Famer, although McNally and Cuellar also had very successful careers.
Maddux, with a career record of 184-108 and a 2.81 ERA, may be the only certain Hall of Famer of the Atlanta bunch. But Glavine (153-99, 3.40) and Smoltz (129-102, 3.45) have been among the best in the business for years, and Neagle (65-44, 3.83) is in only his fourth full season.
Asked how the Braves’ foursome compares with the ’71 Orioles’ staff, Maddux says ’71 is ancient history.
“In ’71, what were we?” says Maddux. “A bunch of 5- or 6-year-olds who didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’. It’s hard for me to compare the team I’m on to those teams. There are a lot of differences. The game has changed over the years. I have no way of knowing what it was like back then. No disrespect, but I was born in ’66, and I didn’t really like baseball until the ’80s. It’s not fair for me to try to compare the team I’m on to some of the best teams of the ’50s, ’60s or ’70s, or even relate to it.”
But it’s fair for anyone else to compare the relevant numbers and wonder which foursome is the better. After the ’71 season, Baltimore’s rotation was a combined 368-212, a winning percentage of .634. Atlanta’s foursome has a combined regular-season record of 531-353, a .601 winning percentage.
It often is said it was easier to win 20 games in those days because the four-man rotation was still in vogue and starters received more starts. But the ’71 Orioles group combined for 142 starts that year, only seven more than the ’97 Braves foursome.
“It’s tough to win 20 games,” Neagle says. “You also have to have some things go your way. Smoltz and Glavine easily could’ve won 19 or 20 games themselves. They just didn’t have the run support, didn’t have the luck.”
There are a few similarities between the two great rotations and their teams. Neagle is the “designated Dobson” of the Braves, missing a start in the division series against Houston, despite being the only 20-game winner in the National League. Dobson didn’t get an ALCS start in ’71 because the Orioles swept their opponent, Oakland, in three games.
Baltimore manager Earl Weaver used all four of his starters in the ’71 World Series against Pittsburgh. But the Orioles, despite taking a 2-0 lead, lost in seven games, with Steve Blass outdueling Cuellar in the final game. The Braves had a 2-0 lead over the Yankees in last year’s World Series, but lost the next four.
It only proves again that reputations mean nothing in the postseason. The 1954 Indians won 111 games behind a rotation of Early Wynn (23-11), Bob Lemon (23-7), Mike Garcia (19-8), Bob Feller (13-3) and Art Houtteman (15-7). Yet they were swept by the New York Giants in the World Series, when the Indians hit only .190 against Giants pitching.
Maddux. Glavine. Smoltz. Neagle.
Best rotation ever?
Smoltz doesn’t want to hear it.
“We can’t get caught up in that,” he says. “I don’t think anyone here does. We can’t get caught up in the `Team of the ’90s’ talk, or what we need to do to prove to people that we’re the greatest team of the ’90s. It doesn’t matter. This is what matters now. Each level. You never know how many years you’re going to have an opportunity to do this. You’ve got to forget all the years past.”
But Neagle believes comparisons between the Braves rotation and the ’71 Orioles rotation are fair, but only if they’re put into proper context. In other words, ask him again in 2002.
“Obviously, we’ve heard the comparisons all year long,” Neagle says. “I think in all fairness to those guys (from the ’71 Orioles), we need to pitch together for a number of years. We need to do it over a period of time.”
Maddux already has proved over a period of time that he’s among the best pitchers of his generation, if not in history. It makes sense that the most dangerous staff ever would have one of the game’s great legends heading it up. But Maddux simply shrugs when the subject comes up.
“When somebody tells me the staff I’m a part of is as good as some of the best ever, that’s a great compliment,” Maddux says. “You take it as one and you move on. You don’t try to live up to it or prove you’re better than them. You just pitch. You just go out there and pitch.”
