The five best rotations in baseball

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 | Feedback | Print Entry

From the mailbag:

Q: I'm curious which team you think has the best rotation heading into 2010. What would be your Top 5 rotations? As spring training approaches and pitchers and catchers get ready to report, I'd love to read your thoughts on this in one of your blogs.

-- Matt McCarty (Lexington, Ky.)

A: Matt: Hmmmmm ... I'll give it a shot. And keep in mind we're talking about pitchers No. 1 through No. 5, not just the top one or two, in which case my vote probably would go to the Mariners (with Felix Hernandez and Cliff Lee), the Cardinals (with Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright) or the Giants (with Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain). Here goes ...

  1. Red Sox: Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, John Lackey, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Clay Buchholz, No. 6 Tim Wakefield. On paper, a strong group -- if Beckett has a season worthy of a contract drive, if Lackey succeeds in making the transition to the American League East, if Matsuzaka can finally get on the same page as the Red Sox staff and if Buchholz continues to improve.

    2.  
     

    For the rest of the best, why the Yankees got something in Thames, where Damon could land (and we mean the HOF), an absurd Drew Brees story and much more -- become an ESPN Insider.
  • Buster Olney Buster Olney

    Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of the Times' best-seller "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," a book about the Paul O'Neill-Tino Martinez Yankees dynasty of 1996-01.

    He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).

    Olney also contributes to ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight."

    Follow Buster on Twitter: @Buster_ESPN

    Ask Buster a question: Buster's Mailbag

Links

Subscribe

RSS RSS Feed

Recent Updates

Archive

More