Thursday, January 3, 2019

Will Anyone Ever Win 300 Again?


"The Win" may be as dead as Cy Young, but there's still something about milestones and nice round numbers. With some rare exceptions, 300 pitching victories is pretty much a lock for the Hall of Fame and baseball immortality. The Winningest pitcher of All-Time? Cy Young of course, who won 511 games in 22 Seasons. He won 30 or more games in 5 seasons, and 20+ games in 16 of his 22 seasons. His career average over a season was 20 wins, 30 complete games and 3 shutouts. 


It was a different era of baseball in the 1890s and early 1900s when Cy Young played, and yet there were a handful of pitchers that blossomed in the 1990s to put up relatively incredible numbers. Greg Maddux is the winningest pitcher to debut since 1980, with 355 wins. That's good for 8th All-Time, quite impressive given the fact that he pitched in a 5 man rotation instead of 2 or 3 like Cy Young did for much of his prime (Cy Young even got to pitch from just 50 feet away instead of 60'6" for his first few seasons.). Roger Clemens may be controversial, but the fact that he pitched 24 major league seasons and had 354 victories. Tom Glavine had some big seasons on some great Atlanta teams, and picked up his 300th victory as a New York Met. Randy Johnson was a late bloomer in terms of pitching wins - his first 20 win season came as a 33 year old, and he rattled of 4 straight Cy Young winning seasons from the ages of 35 thru 38. He finished with 303 career Wins, though he was known more for his strikeouts, finishing 2nd All-Time behind Nolan Ryan.


The Washington / Minnesota Twins franchise has had some great pitchers. The pitcher with the 2nd most wins All-Time is Walter Johnson, who won 417 games, the only other pitcher to win over 400 games. "The Big Train," doesn't really get the same kind of love that he used to- technically he's the franchise leader in essentially every major pitching category, but the Twins seem content to ignore the stats that came before the move to Minnesota. 300 Game Winner Steve Carlton joined the Twins in 1987 to try to bolster a very thin rotation. He won just one game, taking his career total to 328, and he retired before winning another. Bert Blyleven didn't win 300 games, and that may be in part attributed for years pitching for some less than good teams. He did have roughly league average run support, and won 15 1-0 games in his career (Only Walter Johnson won more), but he had 20 no-decisions in his seasons with Pittsburgh. He also had 60 career shutouts, which is good for 9th all-time. Another long time Twin who finished just shy of the magic number 300 is Jim Kaat, who retired with 283 victories. Kaat was known for sterling defense, winning 16 Gold Gloves. He was shifted from the rotation to the bullpen at the end of his career, limiting his opportunities to accumulate wins. The trade-off was winning a World Series out of the bullpen in 1982 for the Cardinals.


The active leaders in victories? Bartolo Colon, who may or may still be active, with 247. CC Sabathia has 246, and an average season for him should vault him ahead in the leaderboard. A 10 win season would pass Colon, Bob Gibson, Jack Morris, and tie him with fellow Yankee Andy Pettitte. Felix Hernandez has 168 career wins and is still just 32 years old. He's not the same pitcher he was in his 20s, but a renaissance is not out of the realm of possibility. Cardinals great Adam Wainwright sits at 148 wins. These 4 have more than likely missed the window to make a run at 300.


So who's left with the best chance to get to 300? Boston has some intriguing possibilities. David Price is 32 and has 143 victories, Rick Porcello is 29 and has 135, Chris Sale is also 29 and has 103 victories. Former Red Sox Ace Jon Lester has 177 victories, and is entering his age 35 season. Could one of them be the next 300 game winner?


My guess? Justin Verlander has 207 victories and is 35 years old. He's pitching for a very good team that will likely win a lot of games in the next several seasons. Will he pitch until he's 40, 41, 42? His 2nd gear since joining the Astros makes me think he's got it in him. A wild card might be Verlander's teammate Gerrit Cole is 27 and has 74 career wins. He's on a great team and has a lot of innings left to pitch in his career. Zack Greinke is sitting at 187 wins right now and is 34 years old. Clayton Kershaw has 153 wins and is still just 30. Injuries have popped up in recent years, but he seems to have been adjusting to diminished velocity.

What do you think? One of these guys? Scherzer? Kluber? Trevor Bauer? A younger guy like Julio Teheran, Chris Archer, or Walker Buehler? 300 Games is 15 wins a year for 20 seasons - can anyone do that again?


For myself, the most posts I made in a year was my "rookie" campaign - I had 322 posts that year. since then, I've had under 200 a year, but I think I'm capable of being a 300 post winner again in 2019.

15 comments:

  1. I don't think anybody will ever reach 300 again, not with the way the game is being played today.

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  2. I think 300 wins is unlikely, but if I had to pick a player it would be Verlander. He seems to have found energy and is on a team which will/should provide a chance to win games. Of course he's married to Kate Upton, so maybe he's already used up his good fortune. 😄

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    1. No one would blame him if he retired and said he wanted to spend more time with his family, that's for sure.

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  3. My money would be on Verlander as well - like you said, it depends on whether his resurgence lately is for real. Of course, Bartolo is going to pitch forever, so he might just give Cy a run for his money.

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    1. I mean, if he pitches until he's 55, he will probably get to 300...

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  4. I'll make it three in a row. I think the 300 win career is a thing of the past but Verlander has an outside shot. One reason is that his mechanics are so darn perfect. I went early to a game he started last season with a friend who was a coach. We went out to the bullpen area and watched him warm up. His delivery is smooth, it never wavers...his foot landed in EXACTLY the same spot on every pitch. It was uncanny.

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    1. If he pitches for 6 more seasons and wins 15 games each year, he'll have 297 wins. The question will be whether or not he wants to keep going and also if any team will sign him on at that age.

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  5. JasonJanuary 3, 2019 at 11:33 PM

    A wild card is if the criteria for a win change. But under current rules, hard to see any current pitcher as on pace and even harder to imagine future pitchers getting there.

    Jason
    http://JasonCards.wordpress.com

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    1. Yeah, if the starter doesn't have to go 5 innings for a win, I imagine there's more chances that someone would get enough decisions.
      To me the hardest part will be keeping a roster spot for 20 or more seasons. Guys in their 30s will have a tough time making the 40 man in the current environment.
      Several free agent starters are still available right now at that age.

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  6. You know what's just as unlikely as 300 wins? 300 losses, something only two pitchers have ever reached. Cy Young and Pud Galvin (Nolan Ryan was eight losses shy of the milestone). The current losses leader among active players is Bartolo Colon with 188.

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    1. That's a great point. It will be very tough for any pitcher to have enough chances to get that many decisions as a starting pitcher now.

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  7. With the introduction of the "opener" and bull-penning in 2018, pitching in baseball is going through a bit of a metamorphosis.
    Also, the way the Indians used Andrew Miller in 2016 as a "stopper" rather than a closer we have seen the average innings per start shrink in consecutive seasons. Gone are the days when a manager allows a young pitcher to work through a a jam in the 5th or 6th inning, especially if you pitch for Dave Roberts in LA. (Boy, does he ever love to overwork his bullpen.) Heck, the AL CY Young winner this year averaged under 6 innings per start! I haven't looked it up, but I'm sure that's a first.
    I think the days of starters pitching 6+ innings on a consistent basis may be fleeting, unless you are one of the top arms in the league. If that's the case, it may be difficult for the young versions of the next Glavine/Colon/Verlander to accumulate many wins (in some organizations) until they have cemented themselves as true horses.
    I think 250 may be the new 300, and then maybe in a few decades 200 will be the threshold for greatness.
    I don't know what's going to unfold in MLB as far as pitching is concerned, but 300 wins might be something we never see again. Then again, maybe the Rays will find a way to turn Ryan Yarbrough, who won 16 games in 3 starts, into a 25 game winner out of the bullpen in 2019. That would be a game changer!

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    1. The record for relief wins is Roy Face, with 18 back in the 1959 season. The opener creates an opportunity for someone to smash that record, for sure.
      Winning 16 to 20 games a season for 15 plus years, though, that might be hard for a reliever.

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  8. I wrote a similar post a couple of years ago and thought that Kershaw or Verlander would have the best chance, followed by Sabathia and maybe Greinke. Clayton can't seem to make 30 starts a season anymore, so I don't see it happening for him. Sabathia isn't going to make it (and I didn't think he would, the premise of the post was because the YES network broadcast team thought CC had the best chance) At this point I'd say it's Verlander, Greinke, and that's it.

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  9. 300 posts in a year? I didn't reach 200 last year and that's the most I've written in four years. Kudos to you if you reach the 300 mark again. As for 300 wins... I don't see it happening. But I would love, love, love to see it happen.

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