While the true mark of an ace is being the pitcher every knows will get the win every time he takes the bump, we tend to give out bonus points for being a stopper. It’s one thing to succeed when you’ve got the wind at your back, but quite another when you’re swimming upstream. Is it okay to mix those metaphors if we view them as sort of water-related? Whatever, I’m rolling with it.
To take nothing away from Jake Arrieta‘s otherworldly 2015 Cy Young campaign or the dual candidacies of Kyle Hendricks and Jon Lester the following year, you almost felt as though a pitcher needed to merely show up and collect his W in those years.