Making historical comparisons is a tricky business in baseball, especially in this era of inflated offensive statistics and diluted pitching talent, but the dominating performance of Arizona Diamondbacks starters Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling begs for a little perspective.
Particularly now.
The Orioles open a three-game interleague series against the defending world champions tonight at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, and they may want to make some hay in the opener against No. 5 starter Brian Anderson because the next two games present the biggest challenge of this rebuilding season.
Schilling and Johnson (or is it Johnson and Schilling?) just might be the most overpowering pair of starters ever to pitch for the same team ... and there have been some pretty dynamic duos over the course of baseball history.
What about Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale? Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain? Or, more contemporarily, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine?
Koufax and Drysdale might provide the best parallel. Koufax holds the National League and left-handed single-season strikeout records that Johnson seems to flirt with every year. Drysdale was a tough-as-nails, dominating right-hander who got the job done with a little more attitude and a little less flair. Both are in the Hall of Fame.
"Drysdale and Koufax were similar to these two," said longtime baseball executive Buzzie Bavasi, who was Dodgers general manager during the Koufax/Drysdale era. "The left-hander threw hard. The right-hander, like Schilling, knew how to pitch. He [Drysdale] threw hard, but he didn't throw as hard as Koufax."
The results were similar, too, though Koufax and Drysdale pitched in the same rotation for a decade (1957-1966). Johnson and Schilling have been together for less than two years - hardly the test of time - but they have emerged as the same kind of twin terrors for opposing hitters.
Johnson was 21-6 (2.49 ERA) with 372 strikeouts last year and won his fourth Cy Young Award. Schilling was 22-6 with a 2.98 ERA and 293 strikeouts to finish second in the Cy Young ballotting. The 665 strikeouts were the most ever by two pitchers from the same team.
They could be on their way to even better numbers this year. Schilling is 12-2 and Johnson is 10-2 and they are on pace to combine for 681 strikeouts. The Diamondbacks are a combined 25-4 in the games they have pitched, and we're still two weeks from the halfway point.
Koufax and Drysdale won 49 games in their best season together (1965) and had a 2.39 combined ERA, but struck out 73 fewer batters in 137 more innings than Johnson and Schilling amassed in 2001. Starters pitched in four-man rotations in the 1960s, and it was not unusual for a workhorse pitcher to crank out 300 innings, so it's difficult to make valid intergenerational comparisons, but Bavasi has watched both and he isn't afraid to render an opinion.
"I know I'm going to get people mad at me, but I would take Drysdale and Koufax," he said, "because I think they pitched against better clubs. In the 1950s and '60s, there weren't as many teams. Those guys weren't pitching to a lot of expansion players. Now there are 30 teams. There are a lot of players who wouldn't have even been in the major leagues.
"But you can't take anything from Schilling and Johnson, because there are other pitchers on other teams who are pitching against the same hitters and they aren't winning 20 games. They must be better than the rest of them. I'll tell you one thing. You put those two guys on just about any team and you're going to win the pennant."
Every generation has its pitching heroes and every era has its particular competitive environment. Detroit Tigers combo Hal Newhouser and Dizzy Trout combined for 56 victories in 1944 and had an amazing combined ERA of 2.13, but that was during the war years, when many of baseball's top stars left for military service.
Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul won 96 games over a two-year period (1934-35) before both pitchers declined sharply in the late 1930s. The Cincinnati Reds got 94 victories from Bucky Walters and Paul Derringer in 1939 and 1940. Spahn and Sain combined to form an imposing duo in the late 1940s, but the rest of the Boston Braves' pitching staff was so thin in those days that fans echoed the now-famous lament "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain."
The winningest single-season dual performance in recent years was delivered by Oakland Athletics pitchers Bob Welch (27-6) and Dave Stewart (22-11), who combined for 49 victories in 1990, but they may not have gotten full credit for their dominating performance because they were so well-supported by an intimidating offensive lineup that included "Bash Brothers" Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.
No one can dispute the impact of Schilling and Johnson, who not only were the two most effective pitchers in the National League during the regular season last year, but also went a combined 9-1 in the postseason to lead the Diamondbacks to a world title in only their fifth year.
To that point, the predominant duo of this generation was Maddux and Glavine, who have combined to win six Cy Young Awards in the National League and are the cornerstones of an Atlanta Braves team that has been in every postseason since 1991. But Schilling and Johnson, by virtue of their proven ability to each strike out 300 in a season (Maddux and Glavine have one 200-strikeout season between them), clearly strike more fear into hitters, and they accomplished something in their first full season together that Maddux and Glavine have done only once in nine years - win a world title.
So far, Schilling has been the big dog this year, with a 12-2 record and a league-leading 150 strikeouts, but even he is aware that it takes more than one or two big seasons to create a legendary duo. He has treated his good fortune this year as the result of a strong team effort and, well, a lot of good fortune.
"We're playing very good baseball on the day I pitch," Schilling told the Hartford (Conn.) Courant last week. "We're scoring a lot of runs when I pitch. That tends to alleviate a lot of the pressure. I haven't had to push it deep into games. We've scored runs, we've played great defense. To this point, it's been fun, but there's a long way to go."
Schilling still has some work to do on his legacy. He has 144 career victories and two seasons with 300 or more strikeouts, but he'll need to string together a few more great seasons to ensure the Hall of Fame.
Johnson already is in that category, with 210 career victories and the seventh-highest career strikeout total in history (3,548). If he pitches two more years, he would have an excellent chance to retire second only to Nolan Ryan (5,714) in career strikeouts.
Though his physical stature (at 6 feet 10, Johnson is the tallest pitcher in major-league history) makes it tough to compare him to other pitchers, Johnson hears his name mentioned with Koufax, who in his prime may have been the most dominating left-hander of all time.
New York Yankees manager Joe Torre faced Koufax during his playing career and has seen Johnson close up more times than he would prefer.
"They both have that air of mystery about them, knowing you can't be too comfortable in the batter's box," Torre said recently. "Randy is an intimidating presence. Sandy had a quiet meanness. He'd knock you on your butt, too, but he didn't appear like he would. I mean, how can you think that someone who took a Jewish holiday off was going to knock you on your butt, but he would."
Whether it's Koufax and Drysdale, Johnson and Schilling or Maddux and Glavine, Bavasi is sure of one thing. When you can trot out that kind of quality twice in every turn through your rotation, it makes it very easy to be a general manager.
"Those two nights," Bavasi said, "you can go to the movies."
Orioles tonight
Opponent:Arizona Diamondbacks
Site:Bank One Ballpark, Phoenix
Time:10:05
TV/Radio:Comcast SportsNet/WBAL (1090 AM)
Starters:Orioles' Jason Johnson (1-4, 4.33) vs. Diamondbacks' Brian Anderson (1-6, 5.37)
Great pitching pairs
How Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson stack up against some of the major leagues' other all-time top 1-2 pitching combinations on teams that didn't have a strong No. 3 starter:
Year...Team...Pitcher...Pitcher
2001...Diamondbacks...Curt Schilling (22-6, 2.98)...Randy Johnson (21-6, 2.49)
1971...Athletics...Vida Blue (24-8, 1.82)...Catfish Hunter (21-11, 2.96)
1966...Giants*...Juan Marichal (25-6, 2.23)...Gaylord Perry (21-8, 2.99)
1965...Dodgers...Sandy Koufax (26-8, 2.04)...Don Drysdale (23-12, 2.77)
1958...Braves...Warren Spahn (22-11, 3.07)...Lew Burdette (20-10, 2.91)
1949...Red Sox*...Mel Parnell (25-7, 2.77)...Ellis Kinder (23-6, 3.36)
1947...Braves*...Warren Spahn (21-10, 2.33)...Johnny Sain (21-12, 3.52)
1944...Tigers*...Hal Newhouser (29-9, 2.22)...Dizzy Trout (27-14, 2.12)
1939...Reds...Bucky Walters (27-11, 2.29)...Paul Derringer (25-7, 2.93)
1930...Athletics...Lefty Grove (28-5, 2.54)...George Earnshaw (22-13, 4.44)
1924...Dodgers*...Dazzy Vance (28-6, 2.16)...Burleigh Grimes (22-13, 3.82)
*-Team didn't finish first in league or division.