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75 Comments on “The 300 Workout Plan”

1. 
   1: JohnA said at 11:24 am on May 21st, 2009:

   First?

2. 
   2: Garrett KBwsb said at 11:28 am on May 21st, 2009:

   So, is the Big Unit the 2nd greatest lefty in MLB history? Behind Grove, I’d always considered it a tough choice between Warren Spahn (steady, real good for a LONG time) and Sandy Koufax (spectacular, but for a much shorter time).
   Randy seems to have a little bit of both: as you and Bill James mentioned, his peak compares well with Koufax’s. And anyone closing in on 300 wins obviously has passed the longevity test.

   I think he’s #2.

   My list:
   1. Grove
   2. Johnson
   3. Spahn
   4. Koufax
   5. Steve Carlton
   6. Carl Hubbell
   7. Tom Glavine
   8. Whitey Ford

   Not sure of the next two. Eddie Plank?

3. 
   3: John said at 11:34 am on May 21st, 2009:

   One longshot candidate, I think, is Jamie Moyer. He’s currently sitting at 249, and struggling a lot. But he won 16 last year. He came into the year with 246 career victories. If he can average 16 a year for the next three years, he’d be sitting at 294 career wins.

   Of course, at the moment Jamie Moyer looks completely shot to me. He’s no longer getting the borderline strike call, it seems, and he needs the umpire’s help in making the plate bigger than it actually is in order to be effective. But there’s also no real reason why he can’t get it together and put together another year like last year. He’s already under contract for next year with the Phils. I think it’s an interesting “what if” scenario.

4. 
   4: JK said at 11:51 am on May 21st, 2009:

   I wonder how Santana would fall into places…
   Age 30 – 114 (and counting) Avg: 127
   Age 29 – 109 Avg: 109
   Age 28 – 93 Avg: 93
   Age 27 – 78 Avg: 78
   Age 26 – 59 Avg: 61
   Age 25 – 43
   Age 24 – 23
   Age 23 – 11

   Very interesting…

5. 
   5: Alex Poterack said at 12:20 pm on May 21st, 2009:

   The fact that Jon Garland has a shot at it should show how flawed the 300 win stat really is. Should he accomplish it (and it’s a possibility, as Joe points out), that’ll make for an awful interesting HoF discussion. Then again, maybe “He was a league average pitcher!” vs. “But, but, 300 wins!” isn’t all that interesting.

6. 
   6: Paul White said at 12:52 pm on May 21st, 2009:

   Much the same could be said for the 3,000 hit plateau. If Garret Anderson or Johnny Damon eventually cracks that nut, I sincerely hope that kills off the “automatic Hall pass” cache attached to that number.

7. 
   7: JD said at 12:56 pm on May 21st, 2009:

   My pick for the next 300 game winner (after saying that Johnson would absolutely get it) about 3 years ago was Buehrle. He’s on a great pace, he’s been healthy, he doesn’t throw hard but never really has. He’s actually putting up Glavine-lite numbers in the AL, a big-time hitters park, and with a bad defense playing behind him most of his career. This has been balanced out somewhat by run support, but I often wonder what Buehrle’s career would look like at this point if he had pitched all those years in Oakland or San Diego.

8. 
   8: BillP said at 12:57 pm on May 21st, 2009:

   [Overall (with 2009 projection)
   2008: 20-11, 2.78 ERA, 1.053 WHIP, 206 Ks, 39 walks.
   2009: 30-4, 2.78 ERA, 1.044 WHIP, 215 Ks, 30 walks.

   That, friends, is consistency.]

   Hey, hey, HEEYYYY, now wait a minute there, Joe. Carlos Beltran has been called consistent, too, but we all know how crappy a player HE is.

   /Yes, sarcasm.

9. 
   9: timmy! said at 1:11 pm on May 21st, 2009:

   Great post Joe.

   I’d love to see Roy O get 300 wins but I don’t know if he plans to play long enough, or if even the offense can get him enough runs to win. In 6 of his starts this year I believe the offense has scored 2 or fewer runs, he’s currently 1-2 on the season. Which leads to the point that Wins as a stat are crap.

10. 
    10: Frank said at 1:12 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    All it takes is 15 wins a year for 20 years, so yeah, even a guy like Garland (career ERA+ 104, not far behind Early Wynn and Don Sutton) can do that. I would bet on Halladay getting there, and some other sleeper candidates, I think, include Jeremy Bonderman and Felix Hernandez. We have not seen the last of them!

11. 
    11: TjMac said at 1:15 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    I may have just missed it, but did you mean the 12 pitchers to reach 300 in the modern era, or something to that effect? I don’t see Cy Young mentioned, though I think he made it to 300.

12. 
    12: Ted said at 1:15 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    No way Garland reaches 300 wins.

    I know it is fashionable to knock wins as a measure of pitching effectiveness, and overall I agree with the sentiment, but 300 wins is still a big deal. Sure it is artificial and arbitrary and whatever, but 300 wins means 15 wins per season over a 20-year career. Should that guarantee an invitation to the Hall? I don’t know, maybe not, but it sure is damn impressive. I don’t think not reaching 300 should be a big knock on someone, but I do think that reaching 300 should be treated as something special.

    But back to my main point, no way Garland reaches 300. He is too mediocre to be given many more chances at the major-league level. He will eventually go the way of The Livan and so many others who can no longer find work, and it will happen long before he reaches 300 wins.

    Also, 3,000 hits is a big deal, and if Damon makes it to 3,000 I think we should consider his candidacy for the Hall. Maybe he isn’t deserving, I have never really thought about it, but 3,000 hits is compelling.

13. 
    13: Daniel said at 1:26 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    I would probably give Halladay the best shot. The guy just knows how to pitch. I watched him pitch against the Angels a week ago and I was simply amazed. He threw cutters all night long to Gary Matthews. They would start on the inside half and burrow in right under his hands at 91, 92 MPH. Gary was helpless. He struck out twice swinging over the top of those things. Finally, his last at bat, you could almost see something in Matthews click. He was determined not to get out on that damn inside cutter. He fouled a couple off, took a couple pitches to even the count at 2 – 2, and then Halladay threw him a picture perfect two-seamer at the same speed, 91 MPH, that started just inside and tailed over the inside corner. Matthews simply stared at it. Halladay threw four different fastballs that game (that I noticed), each with the exact same motion, each from 90 – 92 MPH, each with different movement – a cutter, a sinker, a two-seamer and a four-seamer. It was brilliant. I hated that the Angels were losing, but it was masterful pitching. I couldn’t help but be impressed.

    I’d give Buehrle a decent shot, since he seems like he’ll have the ability to pitch into his 40’s. He’ll be much more dependent on the team around him, though. The guy I think won’t get there is Pettitte. He seems like he’ll retire any season. I think he has the ability, but guys like Maddux and Johnson never seemed to want to retire. Pettitte has considered it seemingly every off-season.

14. 
    14: Somebody said at 1:30 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    alex–

    garland would surpirse me too. but on the other hand, at somepoint, the longevity consistency becomes a stat in itself. pitch in the league for 20 years by itself is pretty impressive. i wouldnt put julio franco in the Hall, but for example, jamie moyer probably doesnt deserve to be enshrined, but he probably deserves a picture with a caption there.

15. 
    15: Trey said at 1:33 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Thanks, Joe and Bill, for taking the opposite position of most of the media. Why not Jon Garland? Ted says he is “too mediocre.” I don’t think he’ll get there either, but the point is that mediocrity + longevity on a team that can score some runs will get you there. A guy like him, with a bit of luck, could have a chance.

    I wouldn’t be surprised to see another 350+ winner in our lifetime. Just imagine a if someone like Moyer had figured it out in his mid-late 20’s.

16. 
    16: jaymarkm said at 2:16 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    He’s probably got less of a chance of 300 wins than I do of a bowling a 300 game (and I’m a terrible bowler), but an interesting guy is Tim Wakefield. He’s got 183, so he needs to average 12 a year for the next decade (he’s been average around 11 or so for the past 8 years). He’d actually have well over 200 if the Sox hadn’t stuck him in the bullpen for 4 years, too! Another decade would put him well into his fifties, but he throws like a sixty year old anyway. So maybe he has to stop trying to sneak the occasional 75 MPH “fastball” past guys, but there’s no reason that he couldn’t pitch another decade as a 4-5 starter, and age ain’t nothin’ but a number to a knuckleballer.

17. 
    17: James Crabtree said at 2:17 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Please don’t use “it is what it is” again. That’s a horrible, trite, and meaningless line and its being used to DEATH now days. I heard Brian Cashman interviewed by Cowherd the other day and he said “it is what it is” at least three times in just a couple of minutes. We’ve got to stop that just as we need to kill off saying “like” all the time.

18. 
    18: jaymarkm said at 2:23 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    And here’s a great debate over “does 300 automatically = Cooperstown.” What if Wakefield, against all odds, gets there? What if he’s never won more than 17 games in a season, he’s got an ERA well over 4.00, and he basically just has a rare skill that involves him pushing a ball towards home plate over and over and over and over again…but he’s won a couple (or more) World Series, he’s been a master of that rare skill. That would be a fun debate.

19. 
    19: Justin said at 2:26 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    I don’t get the sense that Garland will come terribly close at all. He’s always seemed to be the type of guy who will be average to slightly above average when everything’s going well, but guys like him (middling stuff, no Ks, not an overpowering groundball guy) tend to walk a very fine line between being decent and being unpitchable. The past year-plus, his ERA’s approached five and his WHIP’s been above 1.50, so it seems like he might be reaching a point where his middling stuff isn’t quite enough anymore.

    Mind you, Sidney Ponson keeps getting trotted out there by some team or another. Maybe if Garland gets a couple of DUIs and punches a judge, he’ll keep getting more chances.

    Sabathia’s an interesting case, and I’m curious to see how his workload and body type affect him. Will he be a David Wells-style hefty lefty and pitch effectively into his 40s (albeit with better stuff), or a Sid Fernandez-style guy who has to battle injuries for a while?

20. 
    20: Matt S said at 2:35 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    TjMac,

    Yeah Joe must be talking about the modern era. Cy Young has 516 wins credited to him by Baseball-Reference. I actually wrote a paper about the most unbreakable record in baseball… hint it is Cy Young’s 516 wins. People talk about Joe D’s hitting streak, or Pete Rose’s hit total but never about Young’s wins.

    Not to hijack the thread, but 511 wins is insane. The second closest is Walter Johnson with 417. AND after that the next closest is Christy Mathewson with 373 (and Pete Alexander).

    This day and age the average pitcher, making all his starts in a five man rotation will get 35 per year. How about a hypothetical? Lets say a pitcher plays for the Perfectos. The Perfectos win every game they play. Amazing. 162-0 every year. If a pitcher played for this team AND got the decision in each one of his 35 starts it would take him 14.6 years to break Cy Young’s record. Think about that. Fourteen and a half seasons of making everyone of your starts, and getting a decision, and having your team win the game is what it takes to best Cy Young.

    Another, more realistic way, to look at this is you need 25.55 years averaging 20 wins a season to best Cy Young. So just win 20 a year like clockwork from the time you are 20 years old to 45 and half and the record is yours.

    Just some random stuff. Sorry for the hijack.

21. 
    21: Matt S said at 2:37 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Sorry, I give two different win totals for Cy Young. The correct one is 511.

22. 
    22: Justin said at 2:40 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    And while we’re talking 300 wins, here’s something that I find pretty telling…a few years ago, after the 2004 season, I was comparing the Unit and Pedro. Obviously, both had sewn up their HoF cases by then and both were still at or near the top of their game.

    Pedro had 182 wins at age 31 and was one season removed from the most dominant seven seasons of pitching I’d ever seen.

    Johnson had 246 wins, but was 40 and was a season removed from a pretty serious injury.

    At the time, I figured Pedro had pretty damn good odds of reaching 300, but didn’t see Johnson having time on his side enough to do so. If you’d told me one of those guys would reach the plateau, I’d have bet pretty big on it being Pedro.

23. 
    23: Richard Aronson said at 2:43 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    First, the grammar. *Here’s a fun little bit on Halladay. You know last year, he pitched well enough to win the Cy Young … he only finished because Cliff Lee had a stunning year. Well, how’s he pitching this year compared to last? Probably needs the word “second” between finished and because.

    I don’t think Sabathia will last. Almost every 300 winner I can think of was in good to excellent physical shape. Suppose that Sabathia is 50 pounds overweight (it looks like more than that). If he throws 100 pitches a game, 35 starts a year (it will be more, because I’m not counting playoffs, bullpens, spring training, warmups between innings) then he’s throwing 3500 pitches a year. At 50 pounds more, he’s throwing 175,000 extra foot pounds worth of stress on his knees, legs, and lower back. For a pitcher like Greg Maddux, that’s like throwing an extra 9+ starts a year in terms of wear and tear.

    Now I don’t care who you are, that erosion of cartilege and strain on the muscles and ligaments is cumulative. It will lead to arthritis faster. It will wear him out faster. He can carry the weight now, because he’s relatively young, but given how long 300 game winners need to pitch and the 5 man rotations of today, he’ll be throwing long after aging effects hurt him. It happened to (say) Shaquille O’Neal, and Shaq never looked as out of shape to me as Sabathia. So I put his chance of reaching 300 at almost zero unless he loses (I’m guessing) 75-100 pounds.

    As Ryan, Carlton, Koufax, Maddux, Lincecum etc. have demonstrated, it’s not muscle that matters nearly as much as it is mechanics and leg strength. I think Sabathia would be just as strong a pitcher and would last a lot longer if he would treat himself like a professional athlete instead of a professional pitcher. But given his income, I doubt I’d be motivated to change anything, especially through something as unpleasant as dieting.

24. 
    24: Tod said at 2:45 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Look, wins are a terrible way of measuring greatness, but any argument that 300 wins doesn’t mean much because Jon Garland is 194 wins away from achieving it is absurd.

    At least use the Wakefield/Moyer reasoning. Garland is worse than mediocre, and if he hits 200 wins it’ll be a surprise.

25. 
    25: Ted said at 2:47 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Trey: “Mediocrity + longevity on a team that can score some runs will get you there”? I am not intimately familiar with all the 300+ winners, but which ones were mediocre?

    Could a guy like Garland reach 300 wins? Sure. But it would take him nearly 30 seasons, and 30-year careers are rare. Plus his stuff is already deteriorating. He won’t last 20 years in the majors, let alone the 25 or 30 he would need to reach 300 wins.

    This conversation is getting silly. Maybe I read a different post, but I did not see this as a post about how mediocre pitchers could reach 300 wins.

    Only 23 pitchers have 300 or more wins.

    Only another 22 have between 250 and 299 wins.

    65 have between 200 and 249 wins.

    It is exceptionally difficult to reach 300 wins. Luck and longevity are required, but mediocrity is almost certainly not a possibility.

    Moyer is pitching in his 23rd season and he sits at 249 wins. Does anyone think he will reach 300?

    Garland is statistically similar to Moyer through 9 seasons and he has 110 wins. Does anyone really think that with just a bit of luck he has a shot at 300 wins? Because that is absurd.

26. 
    26: Paul White said at 2:54 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    “Also, 3,000 hits is a big deal, and if Damon makes it to 3,000 I think we should consider his candidacy for the Hall. Maybe he isn’t deserving, I have never really thought about it, but 3,000 hits is compelling.”

    I agree it’s a big deal, but it shouldn’t be so big a deal that it overshadows the fact that it can be achieved by a really durable guy who’s not much above average as a hitter, like Damon or Anderson. Nice achievement if it happens, but nothing Hall-worthy, in my view, given their overall careers.

27. 
    27: ceolaf said at 3:07 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Sabbathia actually should be listed as the active leader in wins through age 28. He’s got more wins than anyone age 28 or younger, and it’s not like he’s going to lose wins before he turns 29.

    I know, not that Joe’s point. But we should give him credit, nonetheless.

28. 
    28: tarhoosier said at 3:17 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Edgar Renteria has 2100+ hits and is several years younger than Damon or Anderson. Has he a shot at 3000?

29. 
    29: Ryan said at 5:15 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    I think the point about Garland and others is that it’s nearly impossible to predict who will get to 300. To reach 300 Garland would have to have some sort of rebirth later in his career, but that’s the point. If he does, he may be a HoF pitcher after all, even though he doesn’t look like one now. Unit hadn’t broken 100 by 31, so who knows what kind of late career a guy has.

30. 
    30: Ted said at 6:29 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Ryan: Yeah, you might be right about Joe’s post. But now I am looking at the career stats for these guys, and I think Joe is hiding the ball a bit on this one. Of the guys I have looked at, all had established themselves as good-to-dominant pitchers before they turned 30. In fact, the career arc is looking like this: get to the majors, spend a few years figuring things out, turn 25 and start dominating. There are exceptions. Warren Spahn got a cup of coffee in 1942 and then did not return until 1946 when he was immediately good at age 25. Niekro did not make it to the majors until he was 25 and was not a starter until he was 28 when he immediately started dominating. Seaver was dominant from word one at age 22.

    Okay, I just finished looking at all of these guys. A lot of them did not get started until they were 24 or 25, but ALL of them were established and effective starters who were winning a good deal of games by the time they were 25 or 26, The Unit included. It isn’t as though they became different pitchers after age 30, it is that they were already great and somehow continued to dominate after age 30.

    Garland is nothing like these guys. He has had only two years when he was significantly better than league average, one being his year-25 season, and for the past four seasons has been exactly the guy everyone thinks he is: slightly better than league average. Unlike every single 300-game winner, Garland shows absolutely no signs of dominanating into his 30s. Yeah, sure, he might hang around and pitch like a Jamie Moyer for another decade, but there is no way he gets to 300 wins.

    If anything, looking at these stats have convinced me even more that 300 wins is exceptional. Guys can make it to 250 by hanging around and being slightly better than league average for 23 years. But they won’t make it to 300 doing that unless they stay in for 27 years, and if they do stick around that long, then maybe they do deserve a spot in the Hall.

    No, I think Joe hid the ball a bit. It isn’t as thought there were not signs that these guys might stick around and keep punishing batters into their 40s. All of these guys were great pitchers before age 30, all of them. And all of these guys continued being excellent pitchers for 20 to 25 years. Maybe it is a crap shoot who gets to 300, but looking at their stats, it sure doesn’t seem like any of them were “undeserving” of their election into the Hall.

31. 
    31: McKingford said at 6:31 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    I think the logical fallacy people are making about Garland is to project his current performance 10+ years down the line. It is not absurd for a pitcher to rack up 300 wins by pitching a number of years at league-average. It *is* absurd to take a league-average pitcher at age 28 and expect him to *remain* at league-average for 15 more years.

    Look at it another way. When Randy Johnson was 30, nobody thought he was going to get 300 wins. But it sure as hell wasn’t because people thought he was average, it’s because people thought he just started too late, and nobody thought he (or anyone, really) would have a career that would see him still be a premier player at age 45.

    Don Sutton is unquestionably the most “average” pitcher to get 300 wins. But he wasn’t average at age 28, he was very, very good. Instead, he was average over the course of his career [and let's be clear here that when we talk about "average", Sutton *still* had a lifetime ERA+ of 108, which is actually quite better than Garland's 104].

    IOW, you can’t take a league-average pitcher at age 28 and just bank on him performing at the same level until age 43, because there is an inevitable dropoff* in performance with age. That dropoff still lets you pitch well enough to earn wins into your 40s when you started from the elevated baseline of a Randy Johnson. But not Jon Garland.

    *Although there have been a handful of players who have defied this (c.f. Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Barry Bonds); but a) those players were always exceptional players (and Jon Garland has never been), and b) in light of what we now know, we can never be sure that steroids don’t account for the absence of natural dropoff in performance.

32. 
    32: McKingford said at 6:45 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    I think Ted’s post makes my point a little clearer. Everyone who got to 300 wins was thought of as having potential HOF talent by the time they were 30. In Jon Garland *best* season, he struck out 115 (!!!) batters. Dude, that’s it. At that rate he won’t be breaking glass in another couple years. It’s downhill from 115 Ks at age 25, which doesn’t leave much slack before things start getting pretty bad for him. The only way for him to break that trend is to pull a Wakefield and develop a knuckle ball.

    ~

    How great a story would it be if Dontrelle Willis could be a big contributor to the Tigers this year?

    As a Tiger fan, I can say it would be a great story. But as of now, the Tigers are paying him $29,000,000 (areyoufuckingkiddingme!?) for 2008-9, and all they have to show for it is one quality start…

33. 
    33: Kyle Richardson said at 6:53 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Forget Garland, Bert Blyleven is the prime example of mediocrity + longevity = solid career…

    Up here in Fargo (and all of Minnesota) there’s a strong push for Bert “Be Home” Blyleven in the HoF… But, do the career numbers he put up mean that he’s a Hall of Famer? I don’t think so because he was never the best pitcher in baseball during any part of his career…

    He was consistantly good, but never dominating… He was never the kind of pitcher you felt you had to buy a ticket to see, even if he did have one of the best curveballs in big league history…

    Back to the Hall of Fame–what makes a Hall of Famer? All the sabermetrics in the world can’t provide the answer to that question as the rules currently sit…

    My definition is VERY loosely defined by a few factors: 1) Were they among the best players in baseball at any point in their careers? 2) Were they the type of player you’d tell your grandkids you saw? 3) Did they maintain a high level for a prolonged period…

    Essentially, it’s all completely subjective…

    Does Bert Blyleven fall into any of those categories? No… Was he consistantly good? Yes… Ever great? No…

    Ironically, up where I live there’s a huge push for Roger Maris, too… Someone who was borderline great for a short period, a great all-around player who had a historic season (and won the AL MVP the year BEFORE he hit 61)…

    Completely different arguments for both, and to allow either in would dilute the qualifications even more than they currently are…

    Just my two cents…

34. 
    34: McKingford said at 7:11 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    I see that Kyle must be new here…

35. 
    35: McKingford said at 7:17 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Sorry to follow up, but this kind of burns me…

    Bert Blyleven is the prime example of mediocrity + longevity
    …

    Was he consistantly [sic] good? Yes…

    Dude, if he was good then he wasn’t mediocre.

36. 
    36: Kyle Richardson said at 7:46 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    McKingford… Sorry I burned you…

    Point being–is Blyleven a Hall of Famer? Was he ever a “great” worthy of enshrinement??

    Sorry, dude… Neither “good”, nor “mediocre” make the Hall of Fame in my book… Which was the point…

    Your thoughts on Blyleven being a Hall of Famer would add more to the conversation than pulling out a segment of my comment and ripping it…

    Dude…

37. 
    37: yg bluig said at 8:15 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    I love Tim Wakefield, he is a class act guy, through and through, but even I think he has no chance to win 300 games. No chance. None. So the question of does he make the HOF if he wins 300 games is so moot its laughable.
    He turns 43 in August and has 183 wins. Using his average wins of 13 a year( a generous assumption; in the last 3 years he has won 7, 17, and 10 games), he would need nine years to reach 300. That would make him 52 years old. Good luck with that. When Niekro was 43 years old, he had roughly 250 wins.
    Wake needs 9 wins to pass Clemens and Cy Young’s team record of 192 wins. That’s his big target

38. 
    38: McKingford said at 8:24 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    #36: I’d give you my thoughts about Blyleven and the HOF, but the 99% of readers who didn’t show up in the last 5 minutes might be a little tired of the discussion, seeing as how Blyleven and the HOF is probably the singular most frequently argued point by Joe on this blog…check the archives.

39. 
    39: Ted said at 8:31 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Thank you McKingford, I have been struggling to say just that.

    Here is my beef with Joe’s post: it makes it seem almost reasonable to say something like this, “well, The Unit didn’t win that many games before he turned 30, and neither did Niekro or Spahn or all these other guys, so, yeah, maybe a guy like Moyer or Garland could reach 300.” Flashback to Trey who thinks that mediocrity + longevity and run support can get a guy to 300 wins.

    But there was a massive difference between Randy Johnson and Tom Seaver and Warren Spahn and Greg Maddux when they were 25-30 (enter Joe’s “supposed prime” comment) and the Jon Garlands and Jamie Moyers of the world when they were 25-30.

    There is no way Garland reaches 300. His statistical clone, Moyer, defied the odds and remained slightly better than league average through his 40s, and he is still 50 wins shy.

    As it turns out, 300 wins does reveal something about the guy who gets there: He was really really good for a large stretch of his career and managed to remain better than good into the twilight of his career. In short, he was amazing, he was a stud, he was a Hall of Famer.

    And it turns out that using 250 wins as a benchmark just doesn’t give us the same consistent measure in talent.

    So maybe there is something to this 300-win mystique, maybe it isn’t another silly “old-school” baseball statistic that obscures baseball analysis more than it illuminates greatness.

40. 
    40: Brian said at 8:44 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    I don’t particularly like Halladay, because he pitches in the division, but I love watching him pitch, because I love baseball.

41. 
    41: Bucky said at 8:46 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Kyle, Bert is exactly the kind of player you tell young’uns about–players who faced his curve still talk about it decades later.
    Not great? Okay, if you have to be the best pitcher in the game to be in the Hall, we have to cut a lot of guys.

    But if we don’t use an absurd standard, he was 2nd in
    ERA twice, 3rd once, 4th twice, top 10 ten times. He was the leader in strikeouts once, 2nd three times, top 10 fifteen times, #5 career. 9th of all time in career shut-outs, 5 and 1 in the play-offs with two rings, 8 of his top 10 similarity score guys in the Hall.

    None of those do it for you?

42. 
    42: ajnrules said at 11:44 pm on May 21st, 2009:

    Poor Jon Garland, being the punching bag in this debate. His career ERA+ is actually about the same as Jack Morris, who is 46 wins away from 300, and has considerable support for the Hall of Fame.

43. 
    43: Ted said at 12:13 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    So I looked into this some more.

    As a group, the 300-win club needed an average of only 16 seasons to reach 300 wins. Only seven of the group needed 20 or more seasons to reach the plateau, and 11 were able to do it in 15 or fewer seasons. From that alone it doesn’t appear as though a lot of mediocre pitchers are hanging around and stumbling into 300 wins.

    But there is more.

    Counting only seasons when these 23 guys were both healthy and starting for the entire year, they collectively pitched 369 seasons.

    Of those, they amassed 319 seasons with an ERA+ of 100 or better. So as a group they were at least league average 86% of their healthy/full years. That is good, I think, and probably excellent. And it only gets better.

    They pitched 213 seasons with a 120 ERA+ or better, good for 57%. For more than half of their healthy years, then, this group of 23 pitchers was quite a bit better than league average.

    Jump a bit more to a 130 ERA+: 154 seasons, or 42%. Another stunning number. 42%!

    140 ERA+: 118 season, or 32%.

    Impressed yet? This next one is absolutely amazing.

    150 ERA+: 90 seasons, or 24%. To put this in context, there have only been 478 seasons of an ERA+ of 150 or better, and the 300-club has 19% of them. Nearly a quarter of their starts were exceptional/great/tremendous/insert superlative!

    And finally:

    200 ERA+: 16 seasons, or 4%. There have only been 35 seasons of 200 or better ERA+, and these 23 guys account for 46% of them.

    So again, it doesn’t seem as though these guys are mediocrities who happened to luck into 300 wins by virtue of hanging around long enough and getting decent run support.

    Maybe victories typically are a lousy way to rank pitchers, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is something special about the pitchers who attain 300 wins. Historically, winning 300 games tells us something about the pitcher, and crapping on the 300-win plateau because wins are not particularly valuable in determining a pitcher’s effectiveness from season to season is just wrong — it takes a good idea (using statistics other than wins to evaluate a pitcher) and reduces it to an absurdity.

44. 
    44: jaymarkm said at 12:48 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    so say you’re 39 years old, you have 270 wins, and you just came off your first (!) 20-win season. you haven’t had a losing season in 8 years (and only one in your career). you’re pitching for one of the elite teams, and they’d likely welcome you back, and if they didn’t, plenty of other teams would throw millions of dollars your way. you’ve been a very good pitcher for a long time (and pitched your whole career in arguably the toughest division in baseball), but never been put in the same breath as “the elite”…the pedros, the madduxes, the johnsons, etc. there is a high probability that you could win another 30 games and force your way into that elite. so what do you do? you retire, to spend time with your family.

    i’m sure everyone figured out (after reading the first sentence) that “you’re” mike mussina, the guy that I think is one of the most interesting HOF candidates. (and to digress, i think that schilling vs. mussina is about the most interesting comparison…a guy who inspires passion, memories of the bloody sock, a yankee-killer, versus a guy who is best remembered for…his funky motion when pitching from the stretch?…but won 70 more games.) there are plenty of pitchers that had more electric stuff, ones with superior careers (e.g., pedro), inferior ones (e.g., gooden), and just plain bizarre ones (e.g., kevin brown). mussina is the guy that would have been the rare 300-game winner that would have only cracked a “top 10 pitchers” list during a handful of seasons. he’s not much of a sentimental pick but a stat-guy’s “no brainer” pick, the guy that was simply very good/good for a long time and accumulated some very nice career stats. and had he decided to continue along for a few more years he could have probably won 300. so is he a HOFer? should the fact he stopped at 270 vs. picking up 30 more be held strongly against him? i think he’s a HOFer…and that Blyleven’s a HOFer…and I’m generally too nice of a guy when it comes to stuff like that, so good thing I’ll never have a ballot. But I’d be interested in hearing what some of you other folks would vote on Moose if you’d like to take the time to respond.

45. 
    45: jaymarkm said at 1:00 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    ah, forget it…i just ran into joe’s mussina posts in the archive. i’d like the last twenty minutes of my life back, please.

46. 
    46: Jon Morse said at 3:38 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    Ted @43:

    You made an excellent point there, and it leads to something which I think needs hammered home sometimes. We’ve got a generation of fans being indoctrinated into believing that certain stats are “bad” stats, despite the fact that even the people who started trying to express the opinion that certain stats are overrated recognize their utility.

    I think the big thing that gets missed by the average fan who hears one side or the other of a given argument about a stat is that the stat crowd (at least the “original” stat crowd) never said certain stats were meaningless; they said they were meaningless as a predictive tool. A guy wins 20 games one year, that doesn’t tell us anything about what he’ll do next season, because there is absolutely nothing inherent in a pitcher’s performance which leads to wins.* But if a guy wins 20 games five years in a row, we know he’s a hell of a pitcher. Even the argument that wins are a “stupid” statistic due to their definition and the vagaries of run support is only a viable argument in small sample sizes; run support eventually evens out over the course of a long career.

    * – Different from, say, strikeouts or home runs; those actually tell us something about the player’s skill set.

    Same sort of thing is true with batting average; a guy who hits .370 one year had a nice season but so what? A guy hits .340 for his career? Okay, that’s something. Even RBI would be relevant over a long career, except of course we don’t have some nifty round-number milestone for players to aim at.

    I just get really tired of people going too far over to the hardcore sabermetric side of the fence and disregarding a pitcher’s career win total as meaningless. Is it meaningless if a pitcher didn’t get to 300, or 250, or 200? Not at all. There are HOF-quality pitchers who have low win totals (Koufax, Pedro, etc.) But you get to 300 career wins, or 3000 strikeouts, or 3000 hits… look, it’s all well and good to say you can play for a long time and only be mediocre and accomplish these things, but that misses a very salient point: if you’re only mediocre, it’s hard to get the chance to stick around long enough.

47. 
    47: Joe said at 6:57 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    Joba might win 300. But if he does, it would be a waste. 400 saves is so much more valuable.

48. 
    48: Chris said at 7:30 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    Just a quick correction to yg bluig’s comment about Wakefield. Wake has 183 career wins, but the first 14 of those were with the Pirates. He has 169 wins as a member of the Red Sox, so needs 23 more to equal the team record and 24 to set a new one.

49. 
    49: Michael (in NYC) said at 7:30 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    jaymarkm @ 45 (& 44):

    I think Mussina retired because he didn’t want to exercise or be told how much candy he could have anymore!

    But yes. And FWIW, I’d vote for him if I had a vote.

    Glad you found the older posts in the archive, as Joe gave an intelligent and sensitive (well, duh, I guess) treatment to the whole story.

50. 
    50: Ted said at 8:32 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    I think Mussina is Hall of Fame worthy without the 300 wins, and I think that if he had won 300 he would have improved the class of 300 winners, just like The Unit will improve them.

    I should add, to be fair, that not all of the 300 win guys were above average for an entire career. In fact three seemed just better than ordinary for their careers: Pud Calvin (how appropriate), Don Sutton and Early Wynn.

    Pud Calvin is probably the closest thing to a guy who lucked into 300 wins, and he is 5th on the all-time win list. He was generally around league average, and rarely amazing, but he racked up wins at a ridiculous pace, reaching 300 in 11 seasons.

    Of the modern era pitchers, Don Sutton and Early Wynn both stand out as being not amazing throughout their entire careers. Sutton did manage three seasons of 140 or better ERA+ ball, though, and he had two above 150. His problem was consistency: only 14 of his 21 healthy seasons were at or above 100. So while Roughly 25% of his 21 seasons were at 120 or better, more than 25% of his seasons were below 100. Unlike most of the guys on the list, Sutton had some major down time in his career.

    Early Wynn was more like Calvin, consistently good but rarely amazing. But he did manage four seasons above 130 and two above 140. Rarely being dominant is probably why it took him 23 seasons to reach 300, second longest behind Nolan Ryan, who is himself an interesting candidate among the 300 winners.

51. 
    51: Geoffrey said at 8:58 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    CC could be a very interesting case. If he manages to average around 14-16 wins a season for the length of his current contract then he would be around the 220 mark at age 34/35. I think he has a great chance to be in that position considering that playing for the Yankees he should get decent run support. The question then is how he ages and if he has the motivation to do it.

    Doc and Buehrle seem like good bets as of right now. I think Doc could be at the start of a 4-5 year span of total dominance.

52. 
    52: Kris M said at 10:05 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    Ted @50 – good commentary; Joe – great post on this one!

    Of the Potentials mentioned above, i like Roy Halladay. He’s one of the smarter pitchers and he’s Right-handed. But i would not discount Buehrle or Sabathia, barring serious injury.

    Some of those real great ones, though had high winning Pct. So the Mussina HOF campaign has another bright spot – Winning %. Of all the 300 winners of recent vintage (since ‘40) – most have had high win %. W/O checking – the worst were Neikro, Ryan & Sutton & Wynn.

    I like Bert Blyleven. Yes he had almost 5000 innings pitched. Yes he had a hellacious curve (12 to 6). Normally, i would say he doesn’t belong BUThe has one stat – 60 shutouts, which is in the top 10. To me, for a starter to gain a shutout (especially when a bullpenner is needed to close it) is EXTREMELY difficult.
    So… he might get a Hall pass from me…. possibly.

53. 
    53: Brent said at 11:08 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    Garrett @2

    I would have to finish off your Top 10 lefty list with both Dead Ball Era A’s, Plank and Waddell. Plank had more career value and Waddell is more of a Koufax peak value pick.

    Hal Newhouser would have to be a consideration too.

54. 
    54: Trey said at 11:25 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    Career stats thru age 28:

    Pitcher A: 106-89, 104 ERA+, 1.60 K/BB
    Pitcher B: 72-87, 92 ERA+, 0.84 K/BB

    If you’re reading this, you probably guessed that Pitcher A is Garland. Pitcher B is Early Wynn, Hall of Famer, 300-game winner.* I’d bet most baseball fans in 1949 would have said he was too mediocre, wouldn’t last long enough, etc. Again I don’t think Garland will even come close, but this shows how our perception of a player changes over the years.

55. 
    55: Matt said at 11:42 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    It looks like there may be some interesting stories to be found in Early Wynn’s career. He really turned it around after a trade to Cleveland in 1949. Then he was released by the White Sox after a 7-15 season in ‘62 left him sitting at 299. He went unsigned until the Indians picked him back up in June, and then he won his 300th (and final) game by holding the Kansas City A’s to 4 runs in 5 innings. One opposing batter said of his performance “his fastball, if it reached 80, that was stretching it.” I guess 300 was a big deal, even then.

56. 
    56: Brent said at 11:49 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    Kris M:

    Interesting discussion of winning percentage:

    Here is the rank of 300 game winners (excluding the 19th century guys, because it is ridiculous to compare them to everyone else) by winning %:

    Grove .680
    Mathewson .665
    Clemens .658
    Alexander .642
    Nichols .634
    Plank .627
    Young .618
    Maddux .610
    Seaver .603
    Glavine .600
    Johnson .599
    Spahn .597
    Carlton .574
    Sutton .559
    Wynn .551
    Perry .542
    Niekro .537
    Ryan .526

    (left off the list were Galvan, Keefe, Clarkson, Radbourn and Welch because of their 19th centuryness)

57. 
    57: Don said at 11:51 am on May 22nd, 2009:

    Joe said:
    Overall (with 2009 projection)
    2008: 20-11, 2.78 ERA, 1.053 WHIP, 206 Ks, 39 walks.
    2009: 30-4, 2.78 ERA, 1.044 WHIP, 215 Ks, 30 walks.

    That, friends, is consistency

    That, friends, is why Toronto fans think Roy Halladay is actually part-Terminator, sent from the future to show us all how it’s really done…

    Great write-up here about how, much like Greinke, Halladay had to completely re-invent himself:
    http://mopupduty.com/index.php/a-story-forgotten-halladays-reinvention/

    I would absolutely love to see that big 30 wins on the board this year, but have my doubts as to whether the rest of the team can hang in there to do it for him.

58. 
    58: Brent said at 12:05 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    Trey:

    Garland will have to reinvent himself as a pitcher as Wynn did in 1950 to do that. Look at Wynn’s stats and tell me if one particular category (and not in the wins and losses columns) doesn’t just jump off the page at you as a big change in 1950, which not coincidentally is when he became a great pitcher.

    It is really easy to spot, because that column goes from a two digit number every year to a 3 digit number every year.

    So, whether it was because he developed a new pitch or developed 5 mph on his fastball, it is clear that the turnaround in Wynn’s career is because something basic about him changed, to the point that he doubled his yearly K amount.

    So, if you are telling me that Garland is going to do that, then sure I am on board with him becoming the next Early Wynn. But since it is nearly unprecendented for a pitcher to do what Wynn did and it has not been repeated since, I doubt that Jon with no H is going to do it.

59. 
    59: Blue said at 12:48 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    I’m too lazt to do it right now, but my suspicion is that the “mid career renaissance” is also a product of “Veteran pitcher goes to competititive team.” If RJ isn’t a Yankee during his 40s, no way does he get to 300, for example.

60. 
    60: McKingford said at 2:08 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    Poor Jon Garland, being the punching bag in this debate. His career ERA+ is actually about the same as Jack Morris, who is 46 wins away from 300, and has considerable support for the Hall of Fame.

    Two points:

    1. Jon Garland’s ERA+, after his age 28 season, is worse (albeit slightly) than Jerk Morris’. But Morris’ ERA+ was considerably better after his age 28 season than it was at the end of his career, which again proves the point I’ve tried to make.

    2. Even so, Morris still ended up a couple time zones away from 300.

    As for the HOF, while Morris certainly has support for induction, he isn’t *worthy* of that support.

61. 
    61: The_Slasher14 said at 2:30 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    Blyleven was never thought of a the best pitcher of his time, but neither were Plank, Glavine, Spahn, Sutton, Wynn, Perry, Niekro, and Ryan. 300 wins is an awesome number but it’s about longevity, not quality, and Blyleven had the bad luck to fall a hair shorter of that than Early Wynn, who staggered to the line and almost immediately retired. Wynn, for much of his career, wasn’t even the best pitcher on his TEAM. He’s in the Hall because he was a major force on the hill for a very long time. If that’s the standard, Blyleven belongs, too.

62. 
    62: Ted said at 2:36 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    Trey:

    I agree with Brent. Wynn is the one example of a guy who had not established himself as dominant early in his career and then went on to greatness in his 30s en route to 300 wins. But Wynn is not an example of how perceptions about pitchers change over time. He became a different pitcher, and his peripherals show it. Wynn had six excellent seasons in his 30s, and he had three borderline amazing seasons. Reaching 300 wins was not the result of hanging around, being mediocre and getting run support; he fundamentally changed his pitching profile (and I don’t know enough about him to say with certainty what that change entailed), and he enjoyed great success as an older pitcher.

    No, a better example of what you are referring to is Jamie Moyer. He is a guy who has stuck in the majors, able to throw slightly better than league average ball for a silly amount of time, and he has racked up a good deal of wins because of it. But Moyer is still a long way from 300, and that is likely where a guy like Garland can expect to be in 10 years unless he manifests some semblance of greatness like Wynn was able to do in his 30s.

63. 
    63: elon said at 3:13 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    I would place my money on Andy P. He seems long odds.

    If Andy P continues to take less base money while earning innings he has a great shot.

    Barring injury, I think he has the marathon milestone make up. First, he may not look it but he is country tough. Steroid jokes aside. Second, he usually pitches well through adversity. And for you youngsters out there – aging is adversity.

    Due to his toughness I think Andy P is serviceable until 40. My guess – 12-14 wins per year. I suppose the rest is professionalism and willpower.

64. 
    64: Garrett KBwsb said at 3:32 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    I wonder when we’ll stop considering Cy Young’s win record a valid record? He started racking up absurdly high seasonal win totals back when the mound was only 55 feet from home plate. You’re not talking about a “different game,” you’re talking about a different sport altogether.

    Can you imagine what Randy Johnson’s 98MPH mid-career heater would look like coming from 5 and a half feet closer to the batter? It’s absurd.

    Cy was a truly great pitcher, but he complied his total against vastly inferior competition, in a drastically different environment.
    I consider Cy’s 511 wins to be similar in validity to Old Hoss Radbourn’s “record” of 73 complete games in a season. It’s not reality.

65. 
    65: Garrett KBwsb said at 3:33 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    Compiled.

66. 
    66: brian said at 4:20 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    Here’s an interesting list of where the last four 300 game winners (Unit included) on the day Nolan Ryan won #300:

    Glavine was 23 years old with a career record of 29-35 and a 4.23 ERA
    Maddux (24) was 52-47, 3.81
    Johnson (26) was 19-20, 4.12
    Clemens (27) was 109-50, 2.96

67. 
    67: Mike said at 4:54 pm on May 22nd, 2009:

    Actually if Wakefield pitches a few more years he could lead the Red Sox in almost every pitching category. He’s already their all-time leader in losses and walks (before you laugh, the #2 guys in those categories are Cy Young and Roger Clemens.) He’s second in appearances (needs about 120 more to catch Bob Stanley); second in games started (needs ten more to pass Clemens); third in total innings pitched (should pass both Young and Clemens this year); third in wins (needs 24 more to pass Clemens and Young); and second in strikeouts (he’s about 700 behind Clemens so it’s not very likely he’ll reach first place, but he’s still got more K’s for the Sox than Pedro Martinez or Luis Tiant, which is pretty amazing.)

68. 
    68: ajnrules said at 1:29 am on May 23rd, 2009:

    Good list, brian. It shows exactly how hard it is to predict 300, since I’m sure nobody was thinking 300 for Maddux, Glavine, or Johnson back on July 31, 1990. However, Glavine is actually about half a month older than Maddux, so he’d be 24 in 1990 as well, which makes it seem even more unlikely that he’d get to 300.

69. 
    69: Cullen said at 8:34 pm on May 23rd, 2009:

    It’s an interesting breakdown, but does anyone else think that Innings Pitched would probably more interesting to break down than actual age. Buehrle at 30, having been around for almost a decade of 200 innings per year at this point, isn’t the same as another pitcher at 30 who’s been injury plagued or got called up when they were 24.

70. 
    70: jaymarkm said at 3:38 pm on May 25th, 2009:

    Wins can obviously be a really stupid way to evaluate a career (or a season). Yeah, Jamie Moyer will probably end up with more wins than Pedro (and Tim Wakefield might, too!).

    Here are 2 ridiculous seasons to consider, courtesy of the greatest pitcher of my generation. (Note: I wrote this fast and just eyeballed a couple web pages, so apologies for any errors on my part.)

    Season one: 1997, with Montreal. He goes 17-9 (not bad, but not setting the world on fire). Then it gets silly: 1.90 ERA (219 ERA+), leads the league with 13 complete games, throws four shutouts, strikes out 305 (11.4 per 9, and 4.6 for every walk), 0.932 WHIP. And if that’s not silly enough, he gives up 5.9 hits per 9 innings.

    Season two: 2000, with the Sox. He goes 18-6…again, pretty darn good, but doesn’t justify what follows: 1.74 ERA (291 ERA+), another four shutouts, 291 K (11.8 per 9, 8.9 per walk, and he walked 1.3 per 9…what?!?!), and a positively stupid 0.737 WHIP. And since he’s sick of giving up so many hits per nine, that dropped to 5.3.

    So those two years, he went 35-15, which is pretty fantastic.

    But in 1997, he lost a game where he went 8 and gave up 2 runs. Another where he threw a complete game five-hitter and lost 2-1. Another where he went seven, gave up 2 runs and the Expos got shut out. Another where he gave up a single run in seven, Expos got shut out. And another where he went 8, gave up two earned, lost 3-1. Then you have no-decisions. He threw 3 games where he went at least 6, gave up 2 or less earned, and got nothin’ for his troubles. In 31 starts, he only had five games where he gave up 4 or more earned runs (and never gave up more than five) and he didn’t win any of those games. His ERA never rose above 1.92–ever. In 31 starts, he had exactly 5 games where he didn’t throw seven or more innings. He had one (!) game where he didn’t throw at least six.

    Despite all that, the Expos only went 19-12 when he started. Because they weren’t all that good…they were 78-84 (59-76 when he didn’t start). So you could easily make a case that he deserved to win around 25 games, and he should have easily won 21 or 22. But that’s what you get for playing for a crap team.

    In 2000, he started 29 games. He gave up six earned runs one time…and four earned runs another time. And other than that, he never gave up more than 3 (and in a ridiculous 13 starts–nearly half–he pitched at least 6 innings and gave up 0 or 1 earned run). His ERA in his nine losses? 2.44. He lost a 1-0 game and three 2-1 games. His ERA for the year never topped 1.78.

    The Sox “only” went 85-77 that year (21-8 in games Pedro started, 64-69 in ones he didn’t). Pedro probably “should” have gone around 23-3 that year.

    Seriously, so what if he “should” have won 10 more games? What does that matter in terms of how well he pitched? It doesn’t, which is why those were more than 2 Cy Young years; they are on the short list of the greatest years that any pitcher has ever had.

    (Note that these two years don’t even take into account his most “unfair” year, 2003. He started 29 games, had a 2.22 ERA (210 ERA+)…and went 14-4. I counted 21 starts where he allowed two earned runs or less with at least 5 IP. And he finished third in the Cy Young that year, to Halladay (won 22, 3.25 ERA) and Loaiza (won 21, 2.90 ERA. Those two guys were great, and Halladay pitched 80 more innings, so I’m not saying Pedro got completely ripped off, but if he wins 20 let’s just say he gets more than 0 first-place Cy votes.)

    Brad Radke did win 20 in 1997…with a 3.87 ERA. And David Wells won 20 in 2000…with a 4.11 ERA, and so did Tim Hudson, with a 4.14 ERA. “20 wins” is a magic number, but if anyone tries to argue that Radke or Wells or Hudson had better years than Pedro since they won 20, they’re a complete and utter idiot. And really, nobody would say that.

    Likewise, there are a bunch of 300 game winners…but there’s only one Pedro.

    (And it’s time for yet another silent prayer that Pedro never gets implicated with ‘roids.)

71. 
    71: David in NYC said at 2:26 pm on May 26th, 2009:

    Ted #50 –

    That’s James Francis “Pud” Galvin (with a “G”), not Pud Calvin (like Hobbes’ best friend).

72. 72: Weekend link dump for May 31 – Off the Kuff said at 6:47 pm on May 31st, 2009:

    [...] How to win 300 games. [...]

73. 
    73: Paul Proia said at 7:39 pm on June 3rd, 2009:

    If Barry Zito gets traded to the Cards, he’s got to be considered. High win count, durable, and (at least until he got the contract) above average pitcher.

    Now that I have that off my chest… CC’s advantage is (a) head start and (b) team. He could reel off seven or eight years of 18 wins or so and suddenly he’s 35 sitting at 250 wins knowing that if he keeps it together for five more years it’s not 300, but a shot at 350 or so before it’s over.

    I buy the “he has to lose weight” argument, but he has the right situation. Jake Peavy, however, does not.

74. 
    74: kl said at 5:05 pm on June 4th, 2009:

    The argument for Pedro could be made for Halladay as well. When he won 17 in 2007, he could have easily won 20, if the pen hadn’t blown leads. The same last year, when he was arguably better than Cliff Lee… He should have been around 24 wins.

    In fact, I’ve noticed a bit of a pattern with him. When the bullpen blows a couple of his leads, he tends to pitch a complete game (or rack up a very high pitch count), win or loss, the next time out. With Halladay pitching *even better* the time after a complete game. Seriously. Look it up, he’s 12-1 in his next start after throwing 120+ pitches. This speaks volumes about his durability and longevity potential. One also needs to consider how he altered himself from a mid-power pitcher/groundballer to a full-out groundballer to more of a strikeout pitcher. When batters seem to figure him out, he re-invents himself.

    I also think he’s on year two of a five or six year stretch of dominant, league best performance. If he takes on a Wynn/Johnson/Moyer trajectory after this of steady 100 ERA+ performances…

    At the end of Age 32 season: 140 (9-1 currently)… If he wins 12 more… 152
    Age 33 season: 19 more, 171
    Age 34 season: 19 more, 190
    Age 35 season: 19 more, 209
    Age 36 season: 17 more, 226
    Age 37 season: 16 more, 242
    Age 38 season: 15 more, 257
    Age 39 season: 14 more, 271
    Age 40 season: 13 more, 284
    Age 41 season: 12 more, 296
    Age 42 season: 10 more, 306

    If he peters off quickly:

    At the end of Age 32 season: 140 (9-1 currently)… If he wins 10 more… 150
    Age 33 season: 17 more, 167
    Age 34 season: 17 more, 184
    Age 35 season: 17 more, 201
    Age 36 season: 15 more, 216
    Age 37 season: 14 more, 230
    Age 38 season: 12 more, 242
    Age 39 season: 10 more, 252
    Age 40 season: 10 more, 262
    Age 41 season: 10 more, 272
    Age 42 season: 10 more, 282

    He ends up in the Blyleven category, well shy of 300, but if you consider his 2002-2004 and 2007-current stretches as arguably the game’s top pitcher (and without question, top three or four), it gets a little more interesting. He won’t have Bert’s K’s or GC/SO, however.

    He’s someone that needs to win 300 to get an automatic Hall invite.

75. 
    75: shelly said at 9:27 am on June 5th, 2009:

    your article is great,it is my need

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