Corcoran: With 300 wins likely out of reach, what should be the next pitching milestone?
From Cliff Corcoran at The Athletic on August 24, 2018:
Two of the best pitchers in baseball reached career milestones last weekend. Clayton Kershaw earned his 150th win with a dominant outing in Seattle, and Justin Verlander picked up his 200th win with an offense-assisted 9-4 victory in Oakland. However, in this age of #killthewin, with the 300-game winner presumed extinct, it is difficult to know what to make of those milestones. Should career wins totals be disregarded as completely as single-season won-loss records? If not, with 300 wins out of reach of a generation of pitchers, what milestone is most meaningful?
When I list the in-season statistics for the Cy Young award contenders in my monthly Awards Watch column, wins and losses are not among them, and there have been very few complaints about their absence. The stats that I do list are almost entirely rate stats, which are preferable in such analyses because they, by their very nature, contain a level of context that cumulative stats don’t. However, they still require the additional context of playing time to determine just how meaningful they are.
Read the full article here (subscription required): https://theathletic.com/486198/2018/08/23/with-300-wins-likely-out-of-reach-what-should-be-the-next-meaningful-pitching-milestone/
Originally published: August 24, 2018. Last Updated: August 24, 2018.