Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson? Which Future HOF Ace Was Greater in PED Era?

This year, there does not have to be massive debates about morality, legality or integrity, or the lack thereof, in Major League Baseball. 

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and other admitted and/or suspected performance-enhancing drug users are still on the Hall of Fame ballot, which will be released Monday, but unlike last year, their histories and places in the game can be a secondary storyline. This time around, there are far more positive debates to be had.

For instance, in the era of rampant PED use and extraordinary offensive production, which man was the most dominant pitcher of the time: Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson? Both should be first-ballot inductees, but who would you choose: Petey or the Big Unit?

We can start with what everyone can agree upon when it comes to these two: They were two of the greatest, most entertaining pitchers in the history of the game. For healthy portions of their careers, they were can’t-miss viewing, in person and on television. While pitching in the same hitting-rich era, each was capable of something historic every time he took the ball. 

While they could hardly be more different in terms of how they looked, each was a dominant power pitcher that made even the best hitters shudder. When the Baseball Writers’ Association of America votes for the Hall of Fame this year, Martinez and Johnson are both shoo-ins the first time around, and they will remind us what great barstool debates are all about.

In this case, the debate centers on peak vs. longevity.

Martinez’s peak years were maybe the greatest peak years in the history of pitching and certainly better than Johnson’s. Martinez pitched for 17 seasons (not counting his 1992 debut when he made it into just two games with the Los Angeles Dodgers).

Between 1997 with the Montreal Expos and 2003 with the Boston Red Sox, Martinez won five ERA titles, led his league ERA-plus, FIP, WHIP and strikeouts per nine innings five times and led pitching WAR and strikeouts three times, including 1999 when he struck out 313. He also won three Cy Young Awards and finished in the top three of voting three other times.

ELISE AMENDOLA/Associated Press

His back-to-back 1999 and 2000 seasons might be the greatest consecutive years ever put together by a pitcher. He went 41-10 with 597 strikeouts in 430.1 innings with a 1.90 ERA. For contrast, the AL combined ERA in those seasons was 4.90 during the height of the PED boom.

Martinez also finished in the top-five of MVP voting twice, including a second-place showing in 1999 when Ivan Rodriguez won it in the American League. While many voters did not think so then, looking back, Martinez was the clear proper choice for the award.

"

I'm going to be like, 94 years old some day, writing about how Pedro Martinez deserved the 1999 AL MVP.

— Michael Hurley (@michaelFhurley) November 14, 2014"

Martinez also proved himself in October during that window. In 1999, he made two postseason starts and one relief appearance, pitching a total of 17 innings without allowing a run and striking out 23. He was not as dominant in 2003, the final season for the window we are discussing, but he pitched at least seven innings in each of his four starts.

Martinez, always a character and one of the game’s great personalities, is listed at 5'11", although that is debatable. His weight is officially listed as 170 pounds, although there were seasons when he looked more like a high school sophomore than a major league ace.

“The first time I met him in a major league uniform, I thought he was the ball boy,” former major leaguer Orestes Destrade told ESPN.com’s Tim Kurkjian. “Then I faced him, and said, Whoa, what is that?!!!”

Randy Johnson never had the kind of peak Martinez did—at least not statistically. However, from 1999-2002, within Martinez’s height of dominance, Johnson was clearly his National League contemporary, leading the league in ERA and FIP three times, in innings pitched twice and in strikeouts and ERA-plus four times. In each of those seasons, Johnson struck out no fewer than 334 batters. Again, this was a time when PED use in baseball was running at its wildest.

Johnson’s longevity dwarfed Martinez’s. While Johnson might not have put together a better block of dominance as Martinez, he was one of the game’s top pitchers for a longer stretch.

DAVID J. PHILLIP/Associated Press

He made his first All-Star team in 1990 at 26 years old and clearly became one of the game’s best pitchers in 1993 when he led the AL with 19 wins, 308 strikeouts and 10.9 K/9. That 1993 season was the first time Johnson was a Cy Young Award threat, finishing second in the voting. To get a grasp of his longevity, he also finished second in the voting in 2004 at age 40, a 12-season span.

Johnson won five Cy Youngs, the first coming in 1995 with the Seattle Mariners and the last coming in 2002 with the Arizona Diamondbacks at the end of four consecutive Cy Young wins. He led his league in pitching WAR six times from 1995-2004. His 4,875 strikeouts are the second-most ever. He accumulated 303 wins with a .646 winning percentage, making him one of 14 pitchers to have at least 300 wins and a .600 winning percentage.

Johnson’s postseason numbers are impressive also, but no year was better than 2001 when he went 5-1 with a 1.52 ERA and 47 strikeouts in 41.1 innings. He threw two complete games, one of them in the World Series against the New York Yankees, and made a memorable relief appearance in Game 7 of that Fall Classic to get the win.

Johnson was not just one of the most dominant pitchers of any era. He was one of the most feared. Literally, he scared hitters. He stood 6'10" and a lanky 225 pounds with a gruff face and wild hair flowing out of the bottom of his cap. He was plenty of arms and legs coming toward the mound, and his length made his high-90s fastball all the more lethal.

Then there was his slider, maybe the best the game has ever witnessed. It was death to lefties and crippling to righties. This was especially true early in Johnson’s career. He was almost as likely to throw the ball to the backstop as he was to get it within the strike zone.

He was scary. Plain and simple.

“What was the worst thing that Michael Jordan could do to you? He can go dunk on you. He could embarrass you,” former major league infielder Jeff Huson told Kurkjian in 2009. “What's the worst thing Randy Johnson can do to you? He can kill you.”

Being great for a really long time usually trumps being extraordinary for a shorter time, and this is no different. Johnson’s career—84 more wins, 1,721 more strikeouts and 1,308 more innings—is better than Martinez’s stretch of dominance, but neither should be discounted. Given the era of offense they pitched in, which included lazy drug testing, smaller ballparks and a lower mound, each man is among the game’s best 15 pitchers of all time. Easily.

If we are narrowing this debate to which ace was better at the height of the PED era, well, Martinez showed his best stuff then and in the better offensive league. For what he did when he did it, it might be the greatest pitching run in the sport’s long, storied history.

Regardless of your take in this debate, this Hall of Fame season will get the focus back to on-field performances and away from off-field embarrassments. Martinez and Johnson are at the center of the rebound, and their inductions into the baseball shrine in Cooperstown, New York, will again remind us just how beautifully entertaining and captivating great pitching can be when done at its height.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.