Projecting pitchers too far into the future can be pretty dicey. Elbow problems lead to Tommy John surgery and a 15-month recovery period. Shoulder problems can end careers. Fastballs drop in velocity and effectiveness fades. As a result, teams would prefer to be pretty careful when investing money in pitching. The problem for teams, however, is that pitching is expensive. An average starter costs nearly $100 million on the free-agent market, and good pitching costs double that amount. Good, cheap pitchers are young, and while they might remain good, they will not remain cheap. Teams then choose to invest in this risky position by extending young, cheap pitching with the hope of avoiding the free-agent market. Sometimes it works, like with Madison Bumgarner and Chris Sale. Other times, like with Cory Luebke, the team gets very little in return. This spring, there is a great crop of young pitchers teams should be looking to lock up long term, led by Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom, and Sonny Gray.

A year ago at this time, I put together a list of potential extension candidates headed by Corey Kluber. Among the other players on the list were Drew Hutchison, Wily Peralta, Shelby Miller, Tom Koehler, and Dallas Keuchel, who I foolishly downplayed. Hutchison, Peralta, and Koehler had disappointing seasons while Miller was solid and Keuchel and Kluber were fantastic. That collection of players illustrates the risk both of locking up young talent and also failing to do so. Keuchel’s cost will soar during arbitration, making an extension expensive (and also unlikely), while extensions for Hutchison and Peralta would look like mistakes just one year later. Cleveland locked up Kluber, adding him to the list of pitchers extended over the past few springs. The numbers below were all current at the time of the relevant extension.

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One of the many struggles of every baseball team in the major leagues is to balance the desire to win now and the desire to win in the future. That’s why we have arguments every April about reforming the arbitration system, why teams agonize over trade deadline decisions, and why we talk about pitcher workloads toward the end of each season. We want young, exciting players to be on the field as much as possible. Due to long-term team interests, that doesn’t always happen.

For the Mets, we’ve already witnessed an innings-limit battle play out during September with Matt Harvey, Scott Boras, and Harvey’s potential playoff availability in his first year back from Tommy John surgery. And, before the World Series started, Mets manager Terry Collins alluded to Jacob deGrom also feeling the possible effects of overuse:

“He’s at a stage where the ball doesn’t have the life down, even though he has the velocity,” Collins said. “It doesn’t have the life it once had. He’s been missing balls up in the zone.”

Usually, paying too much attention to word choice in manager interviews is a pointless exercise, but when the greatest strength of a team – its young, dominant starting pitching – is publicly called into question by the team’s manager, it’s at the very least something to pay attention to.

The concern over “the wall” that Collins has been voicing in relation to his young starters is merited. Harvey is coming off a Game One start in which he had some of the worst stuff of his career. And, despite deGrom’s healthy velocity during Game Two (his average fastball was 95.5 mph, not far from his regular season average of 95.8 mph), fatigue doesn’t affect every pitcher’s game in the same way. There are many indicators, as we’ll see below, that suggest deGrom hasn’t quite been himself in his past few starts.

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On Friday night, we witnessed a matchup of starting pitchers in the Dodgers vs. Mets series that only comes along a few times every generation. Clayton Kershaw — in the middle of a career that is already alongside some of the great starting pitchers in history — went head to head versus Jacob deGrom, a leading National League Cy Young Award candidate and ace of the Mets staff.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised about the combined numbers the two starters produced: 13.2 IP, 9 H, 5 BB, 3 ER (two of which scored after Kershaw was replaced), and a staggering 24 strikeouts. The tally of strikeouts, for those who weren’t watching, was historic: Friday night marked the first game in postseason history that two starters each had at least 11 strikeouts. And, while Kershaw was very good, deGrom was better, going a full seven innings while allowing only six base runners, no runs, and 13 Ks. “Better” is in fact a serious understatement, as deGrom scythed through one of the best offenses in baseball in what was one of the most dominant postseason debuts in recent history.

Earlier this season, when Pedro Martinez was about to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, I wondered: what current starting pitcher possesses the same arsenal of pitches (by velocity) as vintage Pedro? While many commenters simply wrote “no one” in response to the article (an understandable response, given Martinez’ dominance), the answer was actually deGrom: possessing a fastball, changeup, and curveball that clocked in at almost identical speeds to 1999 Martinez.

We don’t have any data on how Martinez’ pitches moved, so comparing the all-important “nastiness” factor between Pedro and deGrom is impossible. However, the conclusion is there: deGrom has the stuff to compare to Martinez, and that simple fact is remarkable. This section toward the end of that piece comparing the two pitchers sums up both the limitations and excitement of the exercise:

“There is more to pitching than velocity, and Martinez’ acumen in terms of pitch sequencing and knowledge of hitters was one of the biggest reasons why he was so incredibly successful. deGrom might not have the other intangible skills (yet) that the newest Hall of Fame member possessed at his peak, but we can all agree: 1999 Pedro velocity is a pretty great starting point.”

Jacob deGrom isn’t Pedro Martinez. Basically no one can make that claim, and deGrom has a long, long way to go before their careers can be compared. However, for a few brief hours on Friday night, deGrom was almost as dominant as peak Martinez, and he was dominant in very similar ways. The similarities between the two were already there, and in many ways, they were cemented in the first game of the NLDS. Let’s dive into deGrom’s start to explain further.

First, there was the electric fastball, which compares very well to Pedro’s. Sitting at an average of 97 mph, he quickly established the pitch on Friday, throwing 85% fastballs in the first inning alone. From then on, he relied on the fastball in all situations and counts as his main pitch, only deviating from that plan to mix in first-pitch sliders to 44% of the right-handed hitters he faced. In fact, most of the “trouble” he got into on Friday night was against righties, so he pitched backwards to those hitters later in the game, relying on offspeed pitches early in counts to keep them off-balance.

In the first few innings, he relentlessly went after righties early in the count with fastballs before getting weak contact or whiffs with sliders, as he did to A.J. Ellis in the second inning:

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In the National League Wild Card game, we witnessed two aces going head to head in Jake Arrieta and Gerrit Cole. Arrieta pitched just as brilliantly as he had during the regular season, throwing a shutout against the Pirates and advancing to the Division Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Gerrit Cole could not match the Cubs’ ace as the long ball plagued him, giving up as many home runs as Arrieta has in his last 156 innings. Cole had a fantastic season and possesses a very bright future, but he will no longer be a part of any matchup of aces the rest of this postseason. The rest of us can move on and look at the next one, as Dodgers’ ace and best pitcher in baseball for several years, Clayton Kershaw, is set to take on the Mets’ best pitcher and emerging star in Jacob deGrom.

The Kershaw-deGrom matchup lacks the urgency present in the Arrieta-Cole winner-take-all encounter, but strictly in terms of the pitching matchup, Game 1 of the NLDS between the Dodgers and Mets should rival the Pirates-Cubs Wild Card game.

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Three historically great pitchers were inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame this past weekend, with John Smoltz and Randy Johnson representing two-thirds of the former titans to be inducted into Cooperstown. There was always something special about the final member of the trio, however. He had a season in 1999 that ranked among the greatest pitching seasons of all time, and he put together a string of seasons between 1997 – 2003 that are collectively among the most dominant ever when compared to league average. That pitcher, of course, was Pedro Martinez.

Though there might never be another pitcher with the unbelievable combination of fastball, curveball, and changeup that Pedro had, it is possible there are current pitchers with arsenals that are similar to him. Today, in honor of Martinez’ induction, let’s try to answer a possibly unanswerable question: who’s the closest current pitcher to vintage Pedro?

We’re going to focus only on Pedro’s 1999 season — when he was at the height of his powers — in comparison to 2015 starters. As a preface, here is the incredible stat line from that season:

Martinez had the 10th-best ERA+ of all time in 1999, setting career-highs in strikeouts, wins, and Fielding Independent Pitching. He also famously struck out five of six hitters in the first two innings of the 1999 All-Star Game, proving his complete dominance on the mound at the height of the PED era by fanning Barry Larkin, Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Jeff Bagwell. Some would argue 2000 was as great a season for Pedro as 1999, but we’d be splitting hairs by trying to decide between them: they both represent two of the greatest pitching seasons in history.

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The New York Mets’ young trio of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, and Noah Syndergaard have garnered quite a bit of attention of late. Our own Dave Cameron put all three pitchers in the first 30 names in his Trade Value series. The Mets were the only team with three pitchers on the list, and all three are 27 years old or younger. The Mets staff has carried a woeful offense and kept them in contention for a playoff spot. John Smoltz recently called the Mets’ young collection of talent “way better” than the 90s Braves teams that included Hall of Famers Smoltz, Greg Maddux, and Tom Glavine. While the young group is no doubt talented, how do they compare with other young groups around the league?

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The New York Mets’ top prospect list is a lot stronger now than it was when the off-season began, thanks to the R.A. Dickey trade with Toronto that brought two of the club’s Top 3 prospects into the system. The club lacks impact bats but it has a plethora of high-ceiling arms.

#1 Zack Wheeler (P)

Organizations have to make bold moves at times when trying to win championships and the Mets’ top prospect list has benefited from that, both with the R.A. Dickey trade with Toronto, as well as the deal that saw veteran outfielder Carlos Beltran head to the San Francisco Giants, an organization that has won the World Series in two of the past three seasons. That latter trade netted Wheeler, a pitcher with the upside of a No. 1 or 2 starter.

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