Pedro Was Freakin’ Amazing and He Knows it

By Chris Mottram
Pedro Martinez made his debut at Mets spring training yesterday and was his typical, awesome self. He talked a lot about how “proud” he is to have Johan on the team, but the best part were his comments about the steroid era:
“I dominated that era and I did it clean. I can stand by my numbers and I can be proud of them. I have a small frame and when I hurt all I could do was take a couple of Aleve or Advil, a cup of coffee and a little mango and an egg -- and let it go!”
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First off, I had no idea the combination of mango and egg served as a pain reliever.
Second, Pedro spits the truth. Now that Pedro is at the tailend of his career (he hasn’t started 30 games in three years) it’s easy to forget how incredible his numbers were from ‘97-‘03.
During that seven season stretch, he was 118-36 (an avg. of 17 wins per season, a number that would be higher had he not only started 18 games in ‘01), an average ERA of 2.21, struckout 300 batters twice, and won three Cy Youngs.
His ‘99 season, which was really around the peak of the ‘roid-era, has to be one of the greatest years for a pitcher ... ever. He went 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA, .923 WHIP and and 313 K’s. Appropriately enough, he finished second in the MVP voting that season to a guy who was (almost definitely) on the juice: Ivan Rodriguez.
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