With yesterday’s unsurprising announcement that the Mets have shut down Pedro Martinez for the season came the cap to yet another great year for the Cooperstown-bound ace, who, with some better bullpen support and fewer National League pitchers having freakishly great seasons, might well have won a fourth Cy Young award. Martinez ranks fifth in the league in ERA, first in baserunners allowed per inning, second in strikeouts, in the top ten in wins and winning percentage, and – crucially – seventh in innings pitched and third in complete games.

This last part is so important because, inexplicably, when Martinez signed he was regarded as a fragile flower, a pitcher in decline, just one fastball away from crippling injury. How he acquired this reputation is something of a mystery to me. Barring the 2001 season, when he missed two months, Pedro has been good for 200 or so innings since 1995, a record matched only by a handful of the game’s most elite pitchers, none of whom matched his effectiveness over that time. But the reputation was there, and it was good to see Pedro disprove it.

Hilariously, many skeptics are still unconvinced. While the Mets and Martinez insist that he could and would pitch if the team remained in the pennant race, and that his shutdown is just a cautionary measure meant to ensure that a few relatively minor injuries – a sore back and toe – don’t lead to more severe ones in a meaningless game or two, frantic Mets fans seem to think that the end is nigh, and that the great ace has finally broken down. Martinez’s declining velocity – he wasn’t breaking 85 mph in his final few starts – and slender frame are given as evidence that his arm is about to fall off.

All of this is rather bizarre. In his final start, a 2-1 loss to Florida last Thursday, Martinez allowed two runs over five innings, threw only 75 pitches, and was humming along just fine when he was taken out of the game. In the start before that, he threw a complete game shutout against a fine Braves team, going all the way up to 122 pitches and showing no signs of being stressed in doing so despite his slow fastball.

There are three misconceptions at play here.

The first is that Martinez is particularly prone to injury, a claim for which there’s simply no proof. Truthfully, the fact that he’s avoided major injury during his career is the best evidence that he will continue to do so. If he were injury prone, it would have showed up by now. He’s not very big; this in itself is not reason to think he’s not a workhorse. If being big and looking like a bull were enough to make a pitcher durable and the converse were also true, Chicago’s Kerry Wood would be the best pitcher since Sandy Koufax and Martinez would be a middle reliever coming off arm surgery.

The second is that Martinez’s diminished velocity is indicative of a serious injury of the sort to which he’s particularly prone. This is just untrue. The man will turn 34 next month, and doesn’t throw 97 mph anymore. His staple heater this year came in at 87 mph. Fairly minor injuries of the sort with which he’s been dealing, when they take something off his fastball, are going to drop it down into the low 80s. It doesn’t mean his rotator cuff has torn.

The third is that, in spite of all evidence, diminished velocity will lead to diminished effectiveness. This is, again, simply not true. What distinguished Martinez in his prime was not just that his pure stuff was as good as any in the game, or that he had pinpoint accuracy, but that he had a mind for pitching to rival that of Greg Maddux or Tom Glavine.

If he still had the fastball he had when he was 28, Pedro would be putting up sub-2.00 ERAs. He doesn’t; he still has a mind for the game that’s better than ever, and better stuff than Maddux had at his age. When Maddux was 34, with at best an 85-mph fastball, he went 19-9 with a 3.00 ERA in 249 1 /3 innings; Pedro isn’t going to pitch quite that much next year, but there’s no earthly reason not to expect him to pitch that well.

Instead of panicking, Mets fans should delight in having a true ace on the staff, take comfort in his long history of durability and excellence, and look forward to another Cy Young-caliber performance next year. Further, they should laud the Mets for not taking an unnecessary risk with Martinez just to quiet the doubters who think he couldn’t pitch today if the season were on the line. It’s a sign of maturity and confidence from an organization that’s showed far too little of both in recent years.

tmarchman@nysun.com