Pedro Martinez

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
Home List of Articles

Pedro Martinez

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Pedro Martinez

Pedro Martinez was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, 2015, with 91.1% of the vote.

Five highlights of Pedro Martinez's career:

Pedro Martinez was named to eight All-Star teams, received Cy Young votes seven times, and won three Cy Young awards, in 1997, 1999, and 2000.

Pedro Martinez's 1997 Cy Young award was the only Cy Young award ever won by a member of the Montreal Expos.

Pedro Martinez led his league in ERA five times, in strikeouts three times, in winning percentage three times, and in wins once. He led the American League in all four of these categories in 1999, when he went 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and 313 strikeouts in 213.1 innings pitched. Martinez also led the 1999 American League in lowest WHIP (0.923), fewest hits allowed per 9 innings (6.8), fewest home runs per 9 innings (0.4), most strikeouts per nine innings (13.2), and highest strikeout-to-walk ratio (8.46).

From 1997 - 2003, Pedro Martinez had an ERA of 2.20 in 1,408 innings. The next lowest ERA by any pitcher who pitched at least 500 innings over those seven seasons was Randy Johnson at 2.70

Martinez got his first major-league hit on May 22, 1994, a bases-loaded triple off Denny Neagle of the Pittsburgh Pirates, to account for all three runs in a 3-2 Montreal Expos victory.

The first two tables below present Pedro Martinez's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1992	LAN	20	2	0.2	0.4	-0.1	-0.1
1993	LAN	21	65	7.3	5.5	2.8	1.7
1994	MON	22	24	9.6	8.0	3.3	2.2
1995	MON	23	30	11.5	11.4	2.5	1.0
1996	MON	24	33	13.1	13.2	2.6	1.0
1997	MON	25	31	17.8	12.0	8.8	6.9
1998	BOS	26	33	15.5	10.7	6.9	5.1
1999	BOS	27	31	16.3	6.5	11.5	10.0
2000	BOS	28	29	16.4	7.1	11.1	9.5
2001	BOS	29	18	7.4	4.0	4.3	3.5
2002	BOS	30	30	14.8	7.5	9.2	7.6
2003	BOS	31	29	13.7	7.3	8.1	6.6
2004	BOS	32	33	14.6	10.9	5.7	3.9
2005	NYN	33	31	13.3	11.0	4.9	3.3
2006	NYN	34	23	8.4	9.9	0.2	-0.9
2007	NYN	35	5	2.3	1.5	1.2	0.9
2008	NYN	36	20	6.5	8.0	-0.0	-0.9
2009	PHI	37	9	3.8	2.7	1.7	1.2
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			476	192.4	137.8	84.7	62.6
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			16	5.1	4.8	1.1	0.5
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			492	197.6	142.6	85.9	63.1

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1992	LAN	20	2	0.3	0.2	0.1	0.1
1993	LAN	21	65	7.1	5.8	2.3	1.2
1994	MON	22	24	9.4	8.1	3.0	2.0
1995	MON	23	30	11.3	11.6	2.1	0.7
1996	MON	24	33	14.1	12.2	4.8	3.1
1997	MON	25	31	18.2	11.6	9.9	8.0
1998	BOS	26	33	14.8	11.4	5.6	3.8
1999	BOS	27	31	15.6	7.2	10.2	8.6
2000	BOS	28	29	16.6	6.9	11.5	9.8
2001	BOS	29	18	7.7	3.7	4.8	4.1
2002	BOS	30	30	14.1	8.3	7.7	6.2
2003	BOS	31	29	13.9	7.1	8.5	7.0
2004	BOS	32	33	14.6	11.0	5.4	3.6
2005	NYN	33	31	14.0	10.3	6.3	4.8
2006	NYN	34	23	9.0	9.3	1.7	0.5
2007	NYN	35	5	2.1	1.7	0.8	0.5
2008	NYN	36	20	6.0	8.5	-1.0	-1.9
2009	PHI	37	9	2.8	3.7	-0.1	-0.6
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			476	191.6	138.6	83.7	61.5
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			16	5.6	4.3	2.2	1.5
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			492	197.2	142.9	85.9	63.0

The key driver of Pedro Martinez's Hall-of-Fame case was his exceptional peak, during which time he was not just the best pitcher in baseball, but the best pitcher in baseball by a lot. In 2000, for example, he led the AL in ERA at 1.74. Roger Clemens was second in the AL in ERA that year - at 3.70, more than double Pedro's ERA!

Between 1997 and 2003, Pedro Martinez led his league in ERA five times and in strikeouts three times, winning three Cy Young awards. Shifting to Player won-lost records, Martinez earned 6.7 or more pWins over positional average (pWOPA) five times over those seven seasons.

The next table lists every player who has earned 6.5 pWOPA or more in five or more seasons, across all of the seasons for which I have calculated Player won-lost records.

Player	Number of Seasons (pWOPA >= 6.5)
Barry Bonds	13
Babe Ruth	12
Mickey Mantle	10
Lou Gehrig	9
Willie Mays	9
Jimmie Foxx	7
Mel Ott	7
Ted Williams	7
Joe DiMaggio	6
Stan Musial	6
Joe L. Morgan	6
Duke Snider	5
Roger Clemens	5
Pedro J. Martinez	5
Juan Marichal	5

While Pedro's Hall-of-Fame case is probably more of a peak case, his peak was so ridiculously good, and he had enough good seasons both before and after that peak, that he also ranks extremely high in career value. The next table, for example, shows the top 25 players in career pWins over positional average since 1947 (MLB integration).

		pWins over Positional Average Top 25 Players
	Player	pWins	pLosses	pWOPA	pWORL
1	Barry Bonds	466.8	310.6	136.5	174.4
2	Willie Mays	465.3	329.8	116.5	156.6
3	Mickey Mantle	354.1	227.5	112.2	141.9
4	Hank Aaron	496.7	369.1	98.5	142.5
5	Roger Clemens	316.9	228.6	94.6	131.3
6	Joe L. Morgan	371.9	293.9	84.9	117.6
7	Alex Rodriguez	373.8	298.7	81.2	114.9
8	Greg Maddux	327.2	271.7	77.9	115.0
9	Warren Spahn	342.7	287.4	72.8	111.3
10	Albert Pujols	359.9	267.3	71.8	104.3
11	Mike Schmidt	338.5	257.6	71.0	99.7
12	Frank Robinson	398.0	302.5	70.9	106.8
13	Eddie Mathews	320.7	240.9	70.5	99.1
14	Randy 'Big Unit' Johnson	279.8	221.0	69.8	102.9
15	Chipper Jones	336.2	257.6	69.6	98.6
16	Yogi Berra	245.5	182.0	65.7	88.0
17	Tom Seaver	306.9	258.2	65.1	98.6
18	Pedro J. Martinez	192.4	137.8	62.6	84.7
19	Rickey Henderson	428.4	350.3	62.5	100.5
20	Ted Williams	242.8	168.1	62.0	83.2
21	Jim Palmer	241.5	186.1	61.9	88.7
22	Mariano Rivera	125.9	61.1	61.4	79.0
23	Derek Jeter	367.7	323.1	61.2	94.8
24	Manny Ramirez	320.0	247.6	60.2	88.9
25	Duke Snider	270.3	198.7	59.8	84.2

And narrowing the focus to pitchers, the next table presents the top 10 players in (context-neutral, teammate-adjusted) starting pitcher wins over positional average among all players for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records.

		Starting Pitcher
		eWins	eLosses	eWinPct	eWOPA
1	Roger Clemens	303.5	235.9	0.563	71.8
2	Greg Maddux	302.2	239.9	0.557	66.3
3	Randy 'Big Unit' Johnson	262.9	214.6	0.551	51.9
4	Pedro J. Martinez	175.8	127.9	0.579	50.4
5	J. Kevin Brown	195.2	154.7	0.558	43.1
6	Lefty Grove	203.0	160.6	0.558	42.6
7	Gaylord Perry	297.7	259.0	0.535	41.6
8	Mike Mussina	216.8	178.8	0.548	41.1
9	Warren Spahn	300.6	263.1	0.533	39.4
10	Tom Seaver	274.9	239.0	0.535	38.7

Easy Hall-of-Famer.

Article last updated: October 16, 2019

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

Home List of Articles