Pedro Martinez

Pedro Martinez, the greatest pitcher ever. 

Not liking him is fine. Not every player in his era did. But denying his dominance at the height of one of the best offensive eras in the game's history is unjustified.

The chance for debate in Major League Baseball never ends. The individual awards were just handed out, and as if on cue, here comes the announcement for the 2015 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot ready to provide the next topic sure to spark discussion and more than a little disagreement.

Pedro Martinez has made quite a career for himself. He has toed the rubber for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Montreal Expos, Boston Red Sox, New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies. Martinez reached the pinnacle of his career, winning his only World Series title in 2004 with Boston.

There have been over 350 brothers to play in Major League Baseball history.

In some of them, the older brother was the better player.  Hank Aaron was easily a better player than Tommie Aaron.  Paul Waner was better than his younger brother Lloyd, but both are in the Hall of Fame.

So, out of all the brothers to play at the major league level, which of the younger brothers were better than their older siblings?

Baseball has always been a sport based mainly upon tradition. People fear change, and Major League Baseball is no different.

Nearly everything you see on this list comes from the past 35 years or so. Prior to that time, there was little room for individuality in the game. It was about tradition and the team. Players weren't supposed to bring any added attention to themselves except from their play on the field.

Last week, I compared Pedro Martinez and Walter Johnson to determine who the greatest pitcher of all time was. My answer was Pedro—and it wasn't even close.

The World Series champion San Francisco Giants boast arguably one of the most violent young pitchers in the game in Tim Lincecum.

However, despite his jerky wind up and fast pace, Lincecum is also known for having one of the better off-speed pitches in the majors.

So, how does Timmy stack up with MLB's all-time crawlers? Here's a list of the top changeup pitchers in the history of baseball.

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Oakland Athletics center fielder Coco Crisp is one of the key players in the team's pursuit of the American League West division title in 2011. The veteran is entering his 10th season in the big leagues and brings a lot of wisdom and experience to a rather young group.

Crisp started his career with the Cleveland Indians in 2002, before joining the Boston Red Sox in 2006. In Boston, he helped the team win the 2007 World Series. Crisp spent the 2009 season with the Kansas City Royals, before joining the A's as a free agent in 2010.

I am the first sports fan to admit that statistics spin tall tales as much as they inform.

While number-crunching has allowed us to distill fact from fiction when it comes to performance, stats have also cloaked deceptively bad players under the immunity blanket known as triple crown categories.

Stats are as damning to players as much as they immortalize (see Maris, Roger), and despite several encyclopedic volumes of evidence to the contrary, they are why Yuniesky Betancourt keeps finding work.

With the Major League Baseball Hot Stove season almost at its boiling point, many fans across Dodgertown can't help but recollect the most notable trades in the history of the Los Angeles Dodgers franchise.

Since officially moving to Los Angeles in 1958, many player trades occurred that were instrumental in winning nine National League pennants and five World Series championships. However, along with the deals that were beneficial came the deals that were dreadful, and people wonder what may have transpired if a number of these trades could have been undone.