Will Glavine be the last to win 300?

Originally posted by myteamtrulystinks
I know felix hernandez is talented and young but he has 7 wins this year after winning 12 games in 31 starts last year. He was on the DL this year. Just seems very premature to pick him. I'd like to see him go over 14.5 wins once in his career before we start projecting him out.

I wasn't picking him, an earlier poster had. I was merely pointing out the enormity of the task for him

Managers are definitely more obsessed than ever with pitch counts and "matchups" ...

Even in Glavine's prior attempt at #300 (against the Brewers), he pitches six innings, and gives up one hit... then, he gives up a lead off single to start the 7th, and he's gone.... that was the last batter he faced. It's getting ridiculous. Six innings, one run, two hits, and his night was over (Mets led 2-1 at the time he was yanked).

Mussina has an outside shot, he's around where Glavine was at 38 y/o... but Glavine was getting 33 to 36 starts a year for quite a while, while now, a starter is lucky to get 30 or 31... Also, Glavine's never really been injured, he's been incredibly durable.

Pedro has durbability issues, and he's not getting any younger either.

Here's a question for the lot of you folks who think there won't be another:

How many wins did Warren Spahn have by the time he was 30 years old and how many did he finish with?

Originally posted by darvlay
Here's a question for the lot of you folks who think there won't be another:

How many wins did Warren Spahn have by the time he was 30 years old and how many did he finish with?

By using Warren Spahn as your example, you defeat your own argument.

*Spahn was in a four man rotation, starting as many as 40 games a year.
*He had 382 complete games in his career. Roy Halladay leads all of MLB this year with 4. Roger Clemens leads all active players with 118.
*Between 1947 and 1963 he pitched 257 innings or more each year. No pitcher has logged that many innings in a season since 2003.
*Spahn won 20+ games in a season 13 times. Last year there were no 20 game winners.

While there may be other 300 game winners, it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't any more.

Originally posted by rwingett
By using Warren Spahn as your example, you defeat your own argument.

*Spahn was in a four man rotation, starting as many as 40 games a year.
*He had 382 complete games in his career. Roy Halladay leads all of MLB this year with 4. Roger Clemens leads all active players with 118.
*Between 1947 and 1963 he pitched 257 innings or more each year. No pitc ...[text shortened]...
While there may be other 300 game winners, it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't any more.

While the game has certainly changed, my main point is that pitchers with longevity still perform into their forties and many don't hit their stride until their early thirties. Pitchers are a wily bunch and to say that no pitcher will ever have 300 wins again is extremely short-sighted, in my opinion. There may not be as many in the future but there will definitely be others.

The point is definitely taken though, Wingett.

There has been only 6 twenty game winners since 2004. In 1969 there were 15 twenty game winners in MLB. Hell, the '71 Orioles had 4 on their starting staff. I think to win 300 in a career, you'd almost have to be a 20 game winner once in a while. The game is changing and if (and it's a big if ) Randy Johnson doesn't win 300 we may have to wait 10 to fifteen years to see another, if at all.

Seems that, if a young pitcher were to come up today and hope to win 300, he'd have to:

1) Start off strong in his early 20s
2) Play for outstanding teams for a long period of time (15-20 years)
3) Stay healthy

A pitcher misses enough starts by being in a 5 man rotation, without being hurt a bunch of times on top of that.

We'll DEFINITELY never see anyone do what Spahn did, not winning his first major league game until he was 25...just incredible

Originally posted by TheBloop
Seems that, if a young pitcher were to come up today and hope to win 300, he'd have to:

1) Start off strong in his early 20s
2) Play for outstanding teams for a long period of time (15-20 years)
3) Stay healthy

A pitcher misses enough starts by being in a 5 man rotation, without being hurt a bunch of times on top of that.

We'll DEFINITELY never ...[text shortened]... e do what Spahn did, not winning his first major league game until he was 25...just incredible

While the 5 man rotation certainly doesn't help, I don't think it's the biggest issue. With a 5 man rotation versus a 4 man rotation the starter will lose roughly 10 starts. You're right about the health issue.

Before free agency, when clubs owned the players, if a pitcher was hurt with a minor ailment they were told to pitch through it or go back to milking cows or mining coal! Nowadays a blister on their finger gets them 1 or 2 starts off, if not a trip to the DL. Clubs just have too much money invested in them and want to protect the investment

Originally posted by Chaswray
While the 5 man rotation certainly doesn't help, I don't think it's the biggest issue. With a 5 man rotation versus a 4 man rotation the starter will lose roughly 10 starts. You're right about the health issue.

Before free agency, when clubs owned the players, if a pitcher was hurt with a minor ailment they were told to pitch through it or go back to mil ...[text shortened]... o the DL. Clubs just have too much money invested in them and want to protect the investment

True, but I only meant that losing the 10 starts in a 5 man rotation adds up after 15 or 20 years. If we're looking at potentially missing 150 to 200 starts over a long career, that's the difference between a 300 game winner and a 240 game winner.

But yeah, it used to be that a pitcher who was hurt was told to go out there anyway... even in the case of Sandy Koufax... the Dodgers basically said "Look, we need you to go out and give us 9 innings every 4th (or whatever) day... we need to know if you can do that... if you can, great, if not, then the team needs to move on...we'd love to have you on the club, but we don't need you if you're only going to give us 6 innings".

But you're right, today's teams have way too much money invested in these guys. That's one of the reasons they've become obsessed with pitch counts... it used be the case that the opposing hitters would decide if you stayed in the game or not...now, it's strictly pitch counts, with rare exceptions, almost with no regard to how the game is actually playing out.