19to21: August 10, 2007

300 Game Winners Extinct? Not So Fast...

John Shiffert

19 to 21

No, that’s not how many 300 game winners there have been in baseball, it’s,

Baseball, then and now...

News Item: August 6, 1917 – Eddie Plank makes his final major league appearance.

Tom Glavine’s 300th win this past weekend has been celebrated baseball-wide for two reasons other than the obvious. One – he is the fifth left-hander to reach the 300 win mark. Two – he may be the last 300 game winner (with the possible exception of Randy Johnson). Those have been the two primary add-ons that every commentator has added on to Glavine’s feat. However, only one is a legitimate cause to further celebrate the former Massachusetts ice hockey star’s 300 wins… not that a 300th win really needs any added celebration. After all, within the context of baseball since 1876 – a total of almost 132 seasons – only 23 individuals (close to one every six years) have reached that rightfully-exalted mark. Even if you go back to the dawn of organized baseball, the formation of the National Association of Base Ball Players in 1858 – thus adding in 18 years, and including the five years of the first professional league, the National Association of Professional Baseball Players – you still only pick up maybe three more 300 game winners, those being (in chronological order) Dick McBride, Al Spalding and Bobby Mathews. In other words, another three over 18 years, or one every six years. This may well be just a statistical fluke, but it is interesting to note that, despite the vast changes pitching a baseball has undergone since 1858, the proportion of 300 winners over time has remained essentially constant over that time. Yes, there have been some long gaps without a 300 game winner being crowned – when Warren Spahn hit 300 in 1961, it had been 20 years since Lefty Grove just barely made it to 300 – still, in almost 150 years, the average has been pretty much one every six years.

You then have to wonder about the musings that Glavine (and maybe Johnson) are the last of a dying breed of 300 game winners. Let’s return to 1963 when, memory seems to serve, that there might have been some speculation that 300 game winners were about to become extinct. At the very least, there should have been speculation. Early Wynn had just staggered across the line, much in the same fashion that Grove, pitching at the advanced age of 41 with nothing much but guile and a hard-hitting Red Sox team behind him, had done 22 years earlier. It looked at the time like Wynn had accomplished a well-nigh impossible task, even though Spahn had blown through the 300 game barrier back in 1961, and looked like he might be on his way to 400 wins. (Spahnie went 23-7 in 1963 and ended the year with 350 wins.) But, when the 1964 season opened, Wynn had retired, and there were exactly two, 200-game winners still plying their trade in the majors, and they were both 37 years old.

The only good prospect for 300 wins as 1964 dawned was Robin Roberts, who turned 37 at the end of the 1963 season, and who had just won 14 games for the Orioles in his second year in the American League. At the start of 1964, Robbie had won 258 games and was, in his own mind, aiming for 350 wins, not 300. However, arm problems limited Roberts to a 5-8 record and a 4.82 ERA in 1966, and Bob Carpenter wouldn’t give him a chance in 1967, even though the Phillies needed pitching and he spent the first half of the year dominating the Eastern League at Reading. Thus did the career of the great right-hander end with 286 wins. The other 200 game winner active in 1964 was Billy Pierce. He had 208 wins at the end of 1963, but only three more ahead of him, despite the fact that he went 3-0 with a 2.20 ERA pitching in relief for the Giants in 1964. And that was it. In fact, there were only four other pitchers active in 1964 who even had 150 career wins…

Name (Age) Wins

Whitey Ford (35) 199

Lou Burdette (37) 182

Bob Friend (33) 170

Curt Simmons (34) 156

There were also another 13 pitchers (e.g., Bob Buhl, Jim Bunning, Larry Jackson, Johnny Podres, Jack Sanford) with between 100 and 150 Ws. We won’t show the whole list, but suffice it to say that none of them reached 300 wins, either. None of the pitchers active in 1964 with between 100 and 258 wins ever made it to 300 wins. Not even Whitey Ford, who was one short of 200, still just 35, and pitching for the best team in baseball. Ford didn’t even get close, since the Yankees, and Whitey, stopped winning after 1964 in what was partly a cause-and-effect relationship based on the health of Whitey’s left arm.

Does that mean that we should indeed speculate in 2007 that 300 game winners are dying out? (Assuming the Big Unit doesn’t come back from his latest back surgery.) Not by a long shot. Although Dayn Perry has written an informative Internet article using Bill James’ Favorite Toy metric to support his speculation that Glavine might be the last 300 game winner (or at least it will be a long, long time before there’s another), you have to remember that the Favorite Toy is a predictive model that is only as good as the numbers that are fed into it. Thus, Perry – quite accurately – notes that using the Favorite Toy with current pitchers, Carlos Zambrano has the best chance of reaching 300 wins – a 19.8 percent chance. C.C. Sabathia is next with a 14 percent chance, followed by Johan Santana at 9.8 percent, and no one else over 8 percent (Josh Beckett). Those aren’t especially good odds for more 300 game winners, at least not among current pitchers.

However, history may well tell us otherwise. Going back to the 1964 season again, despite the fact that none of the top pitchers that year reached 300, there were two active major league pitchers who did – two pitchers who were just starting their careers. When the 1964 season ended, 26 year-old Gaylord Perry was 16-18 for his career (which had started in 1962). And 25 year-old Phil Niekro had pitched in 10 games without a decision for the Milwaukee Braves. While anyone who might have predicted at the end of 1964 that either hurler would win 300 games would have been locked up for his own safety, the fact is that Niekro pitched until he was 48 and won 318 games and Perry pitched until he was 45 and won 314 games. For that matter, there were two other pitchers active in 1964 who would come very close to 300 wins. Twenty-one year-old Tommy John had two wins on his way to 288 and 25 year old Jim Kaat had 55 on his way to 283. As you may also recall, they both pitched forever as well – Kaat until he was 44 and John until he was 46.

The conclusion should be clear – you can’t always tell a 300 game winner in the early stages of his career. In fact, if you were to judge just Perry, Niekro, John and Kaat based on their accomplishments through the end of the 1964 season, Kaat would be voted by far the best bet to make 300 wins… and he ended up winning fewer games than the other three. Although the Favorite Toy is a great toy for estimating a player’s chances of reaching a specific goal, in the case of predicting 300 game winners, you might do better looking at the characteristics of those 23 pitchers who have made it that far, the most obvious being that they pitched forever and they were generally right-handed. Recognizing that conditions were hugely different in the 19th Century, here’s the list of 20th Century 300 game winners with their age upon completion of their major league careers, and their total innings pitched…

Name (Age) IP

Walter Johnson (39+) 5915

Grover Alexander (43) 5190

Christy Mathewson (36) 4781

Warren Spahn (44) 5244

Roger Clemens (45) 4884

Greg Maddux (41) 4753

Steve Carlton (43) 5217

Eddie Plank (41+) 4496

Nolan Ryan (46) 5386

Don Sutton (43) 5282

Phil Niekro (48) 5404

Gaylord Perry (45) 5350

Tom Seaver (41+) 4783

Tom Glavine (41) 4294

Lefty Grove (41) 3941

Early Wynn (43) 4564

Note: Johnson was just short of his 40th birthday in his last major league appearance. Plank and Seaver were just short of their respective 42nd birthdays. Spahn, Carlton, Plank, Grove and now Glavine are the lefties.

Only Grove, who picked up a lot of wins in relief for Connie Mack, and Glavine, who benefited from a lot of relief, are outside of the top 30 in career innings pitched. And all except Mathewson – who deserves more credit for his 373 wins before his 37th birthday than he is sometimes given -- were considered ancient when they retired. Which leads to the question, should we not redefine “ancient” for pitchers? After all, three of the guys on this list are still pitching, and they only make up about a quarter of the 40-something hurlers still taking regular turns on the mound. While the Favorite Toy, the five-man rotation, the multi-headed bullpen and various other factors may seem to predicate against 300 game winners in the future, it might be wise to hold up before predicting the demise of that legendary beast. Good pitchers are able to extend their productive careers well into their 40s in the 2000s. And there are always a lot of talented, strong, young right-handed pitchers coming up who, with the training regimens first popularized a generation ago by Carlton and Ryan, might be durable enough to pitch productively well into their 40s, and thus go where Tom Glavine (one of only five lefties – the real exclamation to his 300 wins) has gone.

- John Shiffert