A star pitcher or a star pitcher. We’re only talking about one player, here, not the question of strong pitching vs. strong hitting.

The answer, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the question of who’s more important to the end result of your team winning games?

This “chicken-egg” debate could go on forever, with both sides making strong points in their favor.

Is it the pitcher? That one big-game Ace? The 1999 Pedro Martinez, 2008 C.C. Sabathia, the 2003 Roger Clemens? There’s nobody else in the game that can affect the betting line on a single-game basis that the star pitcher. There’s no other player on the field who touches the ball every pitch on defense.

Every “expert” (they’re not – not even close) on television and Major League Baseball will tell you good pitching wins ballgames (something I’ll dispute in a minute), so wouldn’t that mean the star pitcher is the most valuable? He arguably has five times as much influence on a single game as a star hitter does.

Also worth mentioning, pitching – good pitching – can help control your defense and the other team’s hitting. They can have a major impact on where the other team hits the ball, i.e. double plays, left side of the infield, etc… How many teams have won a championship without a star pitcher?

Now let’s jump onto the other side of the fence. A star hitter is out there, presumably, every day, not every fifth day. He gets 4-5 chances a game to drastically and dramatically change the score. A pitcher is only out there once out of every five games.

I’d also dispute the blanket statement that good pitching beats good hitting. This is just not true. It’s an easy line for lazy sports broadcasters to throw out there because they heard their predecessors beat the public into the ground with it. Why? Because they themselves had to fill 4-hours of on-air time a game with useless filler.

The Chicago White Sox had a combined 932 OPS vs. Greg Maddux. Roger Clemens had a 4.89 ERA vs. the Mets, Albert Pujols has a 925 OPS against Roy Oswalt, a 1.006 OPS vs. Ben Sheets, 913 vs. Carlos Zambrano, etc…

And if good pitching always prevailed, MLB Odds say that Johan Santana would have a perfect career record. Until that happens, I’m betting on Pujols.