When we think power and baseball, our thoughts immediately drift to the steroid era, with its larger-than-life sluggers putting up video game-like home run totals.

Make no mistake about it: Baseball is still enjoying the benefits of power, but where it rests has shifted roughly 60 feet and six inches from the batter’s box out to the pitcher’s mound.

Welcome to the era of the power pitcher. 

There’s no shortage of power arms available this winter, whether it be via free agency or a trade—perhaps the most impressive grouping of power arms that we’ve seen in recent memory.

How do we define a power pitcher? For our purposes, we’ll set the following guidelines: A pitcher must have logged at least 100 innings in 2014, had an average fastball velocity of at least 90 mph and struck out at least eight batters per nine innings of work.

You’d be surprised at how many pitchers are bringing the heat these days—134 starters met the velocity requirement last year, while only 56 were up to the task when it came to making batters swing and miss.

Of all those pitchers, only 12 met both criteria—and are either free agents or known to be available in a trade this winter. We’ve already seen one of them, A.J. Burnett, come off the board, as the veteran recently signed a one-year, $8.5 million deal with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

That leaves us with 11 power arms to rank, and we’ll do so while taking age, current contract status (or projected contract status) and recent performance under consideration.

Which power pitcher reigns supreme over the rest of the crowd?

Let’s take a look.

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