The second decade of the 21st Century has arrived, and there is something missing from baseball for the first time in a couple of generations.
For the first time since Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton were dominating baseball in the 1970s, Major League Baseball is without an established class of future Hall of Fame pitchers.
Not that long ago baseball fans were being treated to an exhibition of four of the greatest pitchers of all time in Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez.
After the Big Four, we had the likes of Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling, four pitchers who were not amongst the greatest of all time but who were deserving of historical perspective and may even have a trip to Cooperstown in their futures down the line.
In 2011, Major League Baseball certainly does not feature eight starting pitchers who make legitimate Hall of Fame candidates, and frankly, there likely are not even four good names.
Let’s take a look at the best the majors can muster at this point.