John Smoltz, who will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame later this month, was part of one of the greatest starting rotations in modern history. The trio of himself, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine led a Braves staff to division title after division title in the ’90s, won a World Series championship in 1995 and have all been elected into the Hall of Fame in the last two years.
Right now, the Mets have an incredibly exciting young starting rotation themselves, but how do they compare to the historically great staff that the Braves had in that era?
“They’re way better,” Smoltz recently told the New York Daily News about the Mets young starting staff. “They’ve got more talent than we could ever have.”
These are incredibly bold words from Smoltz, who was part of a starting staff that ranked in the top three of staff ERAs for 11 consecutive years, finishing #1 in the league nine times in that span.
“The opportunities that exist today won’t allow a lot of staffs to find out what kind of staff they can be. That’s the shame of the game. The injuries have taken over,” Smoltz said.
“The inability to learn how to pitch (and) fast-tracking a lot of kids. There’s no doubt that the dynamic arms are way better than we’ve ever seen. And the issue is how long can we keep them healthy and how long can they stick together financially? What we did in the era that we did, we take a lot of pride in it. We worked really hard and didn’t miss a lot of starts.”
The Mets are no slouches themselves, as they’ve comprised themselves a young starting staff of potential aces with Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz and Zack Wheeler when he returns from Tommy John surgery next season. These ferocious five have been stellar to start their careers, as they have a combined career ERA of 2.84 in 968.2 innings pitched over the last three and a half seasons.
Still, as impressive as these pitchers have been since they’ve each been called up from the minor leagues, this staff is incredibly young, has yet to pitch together as a whole and still has a lot to prove.
“We’ve anointed people a little too quickly in this game. And they don’t have the ability to wait and learn and have a fair shake at the game,” Smoltz went on to say. “Everybody wants quick results, expectations through the roof. And that’s what these guys are fighting today. They’re not giving them the chance to fail too often. And when they do, what happens?”
I’m not sure how long this rotation that the Mets have will stay together, or if they’ll ever even all pitch together at the same time, but what they have the capability of doing is so exciting as a fan of this franchise. They may never wind up being able to accomplish what the Braves of the ’90s did–few have–but what they do have is something incredibly special.
Just Mets 