baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

, an ace is a

starting pitcher In baseball (hardball or softball), a starting pitcher or starter is the first pitcher in the game for each team. A pitcher is credited with a game started if they throw the first pitch to the opponent's first batter of a game. Starting pit ...

considered the best pitcher on a team and nearly always the first pitcher in the team's starting rotation. Barring injury or exceptional circumstances, an ace typically starts on

Opening Day Opening Day is the day on which professional baseball leagues begin their regular season. For Major League Baseball (MLB) and most of the American minor leagues, this day typically falls during the first week of April, although in recent years ...

. In addition, aces are usually preferred to start crucial playoff games, sometimes on three days' rest. The term may be a derivation of the nickname of

Asa Brainard Asahel "Asa" Brainard (1841 – December 29, 1888), nicknamed "Count", was the ace pitcher of the original Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first fully professional baseball team, after having pitched for the Excelsior club of Brooklyn, New York. ...

(real first name: "Asahel"), a 19th-century star pitcher, who was sometimes referred to as "Ace". In the early days of baseball, the term ''ace'' was used to refer to a

run Run(s) or RUN may refer to: Places * Run (island), one of the Banda Islands in Indonesia * Run (stream), a stream in the Dutch province of North Brabant People * Run (rapper), Joseph Simmons, now known as "Reverend Run", from the hip-hop grou ...

. Modern baseball analysts and fans have started using the term ''ace'' to refer to the elite pitchers in the game, not necessarily to the best starting pitcher on each team. For example, the April 27, 1981, ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice ...

'' cover was captioned "The Amazing A's and Their Five Aces" to describe the starting rotation of the 1981 Oakland Athletics.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ace (Baseball) Baseball pitching Baseball strategy