Ace (baseball)

This article is about the generic baseball term. For the Toronto Blue Jays mascot, see Ace (mascot).

In baseball, an ace is a starting pitcher considered the best pitcher on a team's starting rotation. Barring injury or exceptional circumstances, a team's ace typically starts on Opening Day. In addition, aces are usually preferred to start crucial playoff games, sometimes on three days' rest.[1]

The term may be a derivation of the nickname of Asa Brainard (real first name: "Asahel"), a 19th-century star pitcher, who was sometimes referred to as "Ace".[2][3]

In the early days of baseball, the term ace was used to refer to a run.[4]

Modern baseball analysts and fans have started using the term ace to refer to the elite pitchers in the game, not necessarily to the best starting pitcher on each team.[5] For example, the April 27, 1981, Sports Illustrated cover was captioned "The Amazing A's and Their Five Aces" to describe the starting rotation of the 1981 Oakland Athletics.[6]

  1. ^ "Ace". Sporting Charts. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
  2. ^ "This Day in Baseball". Archived from the original on 2006-06-22.
  3. ^ "Asa Brainard - Society for American Baseball Research". Archived from the original on 2010-07-13. Retrieved 2010-01-09.
  4. ^ "The Knickerbocker Base Ball Club" at Hickoksports.com, including a section on the rules used by the team
  5. ^ "Baseball Conversation".
  6. ^ "A's 'Amazing Aces' make it back to Anaheim for a day". Mercury News. 2016-06-25. Retrieved 2020-10-06.