In baseball, a team's ace is the best starting pitcher in the team and nearly always the first pitcher in the starting rotation. Barring injury or exceptional circumstances, the ace is usually the pitcher that starts on Opening Day. In addition, aces are usually preferred to start crucial playoff games, sometimes on three days' rest.
An ace may also be simply a great pitcher, and thus teams are often referred to as having multiple "aces", such as the Atlanta Braves of the late 1990s and early 2000s, who had Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine on the team, or the Arizona Diamondbacks of the early 2000s, who had Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.
In the early days of baseball, the term "ace" was used to refer to a run.[1]
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