300 Game Winners

I didn't talk about this yet today because I figured I have already written about it here. Alas, I have nothing better to do.

First off congratulations to Randy Johnson, 300 wins is quite an accomplishment. Randy Johnson's career has and will continue to be overshadowed by Clemens, Maddux, and Pedro, even though career wise he's significantly better than Pedro (91.8 WAR compared to 75.2). Randy Johnson is actually closer to Maddux and Clemens than he is to Pedro.

From BaseballProjection.com career WAR list from 1953-2008:

Rank	Pitcher	Wins Above Replacement
1	Clemens, Roger	128.3
2	Seaver, Tom	105.4
3	Niekro, Phil	96.8
4	Maddux, Greg	96.7
5	Perry, Gaylord	96.3
6	Johnson, Randy	91.8
7	Blyleven, Bert	90.3
8	Gibson, Bob	85.5
9	Ryan, Nolan	84.8
10	Carlton, Steve	84.4
11	Jenkins, Fergie	81.4
12	Martinez, Pedro	75.2
13	Mussina, Mike	74.8
14	Sutton, Don	70.8
15	Schilling, Curt	69.8
16	Glavine, Tom	67.2
17	Reuschel, Rick	66.3
18	Drysdale, Don	65.6
19	Brown, Kevin	64.9
20	Smoltz, John	64.8

As you can see it's not even out of the question for Johnson to pass Maddux on this list being as he's still pitching and as recent as last year posted a 3.8 WAR. That's not to say Randy Johnson is definitevly better than Greg Maddux because he pitched until he was 45/46, but it means that Randy Johnson should be considered on par with Maddux and Clemens, rather than be left on the outside.

Back to 300 wins. For a long time now we've been hearing how Randy Johnson may be the last 300 game winner, and that is just preposterous. There have been 4 pitchers of the steroid, 5 man rotation, relief specialists era to win 300 games, I don't see why they will be the last. Granted they happen to be some of the most talented pitcher to ever stand on the mound (Clemens, Maddux, Johnson, Glavine), but they won't be the last.

One thing you will come across a lot now is seeing how current pitchers win totals stack up compared to the big 4, but comparing Roy Halladay's wins to Greg Maddux at the same age and conclude he's too far back is foolish. Similarly, comparing Roy Oswalt's to Randy Johnson and saying he is ahead of that pace is meaningless too. Nobody can predict how long a pitcher's career will be. When Randy Johnson was 30 years old, I don't think anyone was expecting him to pitch until he was 45 years old. You don't win 300 games by getting to 150 wins the quickest, you get there by staying effective in your 40s. So we can look at each of the suspects and say it's unlikely that they will pitch that long, but as a group you could at least expect one pitcher to, and in turn have a shot at 300.

In my last post about this I talked about the Hardball Times preview where they predict milestones such as 300 game winners. I'll repost their top 6 here for 300 wins:

• Andy Pettitte-14.4% predicts 250 wins
  
• C.C. Sabathia-10.3% predicts 195 wins
• Roy Halladay- 7.8% predicts 192 wins
  
• Brandon Webb -7.5% predicts 167 wins
• Roy Oswalt-7.5% predicts190 wins
• Chad Billingsly- 6.6% predicts 135 wins
  

That doesn't even include Johan Santana who's move to the NL and Metco could do wonders to his career or Mark Buehrle who just seems like he could pitch this way forever. The point here is while you may hear claims that Johnson will be the last 300 game winner there is even a projection system (that's admittedly pessimistic by its creator) that gives 2 current pitchers a greater than 10% chance to get 300 wins.

It's ok to say noone will break DiMaggio's 56 game hit streak, or that no pitcher will get more wins than Cy Young, but to say that nobody will get 300 wins after 24 players have is just stupid.