But this signing represents much more, as the Phillies will trot out what looks, at first glance, to be one of the strongest rotations in baseball history. Of course, there are competing tendencies within human nature to romanticize and idealize the past, and to forget it entirely and focus on the present. After all, all the sepia tone and pleasant voiceovers on a Ken Burns documentary doesn’t replace the fact that Sandy Koufax pitched in an extreme pitcher’s era. Nor will the flashy “Four Aces” nickname make the quartet pitch any better (nor, technically, is it very accurate since Cole Hamels is probably more of a “2” than an ace). So The Common Man can be forgiven if he does not simply take Craig Calcaterra’s word that the Phillies’ 2011 staff will top the mid-nineties Braves, the 1960s Dodgers, and others and rank among the top staffs in baseball history.
With a heap of healthy skepticism, TCM broke down the best performances by a “Top 4” during the Integration Era (1947-2010) using Wins Above Replacement (and where possible, he averaged the FanGraphs and Baseball Reference versions). Anything from before 1947 seems irrelevant here because pitcher usage patterns have changed so dramatically. Also, The Common Man chose to look at individual seasons, given the likelihood that this foursome will only be together for a single year (as Oswalt is a Free Agent next year and Hamels will make in excess of $10 million in arbitration and may prove too expensive).
In the Integration Era, there have been
