300-Game Winners: A Vanishing Breed?

Now that Greg Maddux has won his 300th game, an obvious question arises. Will any other major league player reach that exalted level of pitching proficiency?

There is, of course, no conclusive answer. But the question is one of particular interest as baseball continues to undergo changes while it moves deeper into the 21st century.

To make a quick judgment, it appears highly unlikely that baseball will ever have another 300-game winner. The breed seems ready to disappear into the archives, joining other virtually extinct phases of the game such as the complete game, skillful bunters, and Sunday doubleheaders.

No part of baseball has been more subjected to substantial changes in the game than what takes place on the pitching mound. Sure, a strike is still a strike, and it takes three of them to record an out. It’s not the process of delivering a baseball to home plate that has really changed. It’s the combination of factors involving the business of pitching that is different. The whole system has changed considerably in recent decades, and those alterations have a strong bearing on the existence of future 300-game winners.

Equally significant, during the 2004 season after the masterful Maddux became just the 22d pitcher to win 300 games, there appeared to be no other potential 300-game winners in sight. In fact, at present there are only five active 200- game winners—Tom Glavine, Randy Johnson, David Wells, Mike Mussina, and Kevin Brown—in the majors. Each is a long way off from 300 wins (Glavine ended the season with 262 while Johnson had 246, Wells 212, Mussina 211, and Brown 207). And with Mussina the baby of the bunch at age 36, time is running out on all of them. On opening day 2005, Johnson and Wells will be 41, Brown 40, and Glavine 39.

Of the other top pitchers who are currently active, only four others have more than 175 wins, and all are up in years except Pedro Martinez. But neither Martinez (182 wins), Jamie Moyer (192), Curt Schilling (184), Kenny Rogers (176), nor any other high-level hurler will even have a chance to reach 300 unless he decides to continue pitching well into his 40s.

That’s unlikely, said Don Sutton, the 19th pitcher to win 300 games. “Today’s pitchers are not willing to make the sacrifice,” Sutton claimed. “It’s (winning 300) not important to them. They don’t want to stick around until they’re 40. They make millions of dollars, and they can retire at 35, so why keep pitching? Why spend from mid-February to October away from home much of the time if you already have millions in the bank?”

Long before the 38-year-old Maddux and, the season before him, Roger Clemens, 39, each won their 300th games, age was often a critical factor. Nolan Ryan, the last 300-game winner before Clemens, had to toil until he was 43 before entering the pitchers’ Valhalla in 1990. And before that Warren Spahn and Tom Seaver were 40, Lefty Grove and Sutton were 41, Early Wynn and Gaylord Perry were 43, and Phil Niekro was 46.

But there’s more to winning 300 games than longevity. Obviously, the feat demands extraordinary skill. It requires diligence, perseverance, innovation, and strength. A pitcher can have no long interruptions in his career. He needs to stay healthy, focused, and competitive. He needs a lot of breaks to go his way. It also helps to play with good teams, although that’s not always been mandatory.

A pitcher has to be good like Cy Young and win 20 or more games 14 years in a row. Or like Kid Nichols and win 30 or more games in seven different seasons. Or Mickey Welch and complete the first 105 games he started. He has to be like Grover Cleveland Alexander and fire 16 shutouts in one year, or Lefty Grove and lead the league in earned run average nine times, or Sutton and never miss a start in 23 seasons, or Ryan and toss seven no-hitters and 12 one-hitters.

There’s no room for mediocrity. Only the best pitchers with the strongest arms and the toughest minds are candidates for this select circle. And even some who fit that description—Hall of Famers such as Carl Hubbell, Bob Feller, Bob Gibson, Ted Lyons, Robin Roberts, Juan Marichal, Jim Palmer, and Sandy Koufax, to name a few—still didn’t make it, although in some cases there were extenuating circumstances such as injuries, military service, early retirement, or playing for weak teams.

“You have to start young, win early, and get at least 600 starts,” said Maddux, who had to win 15 or more games 17 consecutive years and pitch into his 19th big league season to reach 300. Maddux admitted that he thinks 300-game winners are a dying breed.

But even if a pitcher possesses all of the admirable qualities necessary to be a 300-game winner, that’s no longer enough. The grand old game itself has imposed its own limitations, which collectively extinguish the chances future pitchers have of reaching the pinnacle of success in their craft.

The two-man starting staffs of Old Hoss Radbourn’s day yielded to four-man rotations, which have now been replaced by five-man rotations. Instead of pitching every other day or even every fourth day, pitchers now work every fifth or sixth day. Automatically, that reduces a pitcher’s number of starts—and decisions.

As a group, starting pitchers are also getting fewer wins because they complete fewer games and thus are not around to get the decision. While once Walter Johnson annually completed upward of 30 games a season—and a complete game was treated as a badge of honor—it is the rare pitcher today who breaks double figures in that category in a single season. As recently as 1972, Steve Carlton completed 30 games, but today entire pitching staffs don’t even come close to reaching that total. (The league leaders in complete games in 2004 were the Oakland Athletics in the American League and the Montreal Expos in the National League with 10 and 11, respectively.)

Today’s chuckers are also on pitch counts. And fewer pitches translate into fewer decisions. While the hurlers of yesteryear often exceeded 200 tosses in a game—Spahn once confided to me that he frequently reached that number and occasionally went well above it (although he never had a sore arm)—it is considered a good day’s work now if a moundsman makes it to 100. In fact, if a pitcher nowadays manages to last six innings, he is celebrated for his “quality” effort.

The six-inning starter is the offspring of the heavily stocked modern bullpen with its closers, setup men, one-batter specialists, long relievers, and whoever else can find a spot on the bloated pitching brigades of today. As valuable as they have become, relief pitchers have generally reduced the numbers of wins (and losses) that starters used to accumulate.

There are still other changes that work against starting pitchers. To some extent, pitching has always been the sacrificial lamb of baseball. Although good hurlers usually find ways to overcome obstacles placed before them, often over the years when they became too effective, legislation was passed to knock them down a peg.

Their mounds were moved back (from 45 feet to 50 feet) and then in 1893 back again (to 60’ 6”). The spitball and the use of other foreign substances were outlawed. And knock- down or brushback pitches were for all practical purposes removed from a hurler’s arsenal. Indeed, rare is the pitcher who even throws inside anymore. And even if he does, many batters are cloaked in so much armor that it doesn’t matter if one gets hit by a pitch every now and then.

At some point toward the later part of the 20th century, the powers that run baseball decided that fans come to ballparks to see hitters, not pitchers. A high-scoring game with lots of hit- ting, they theorized, has more appeal than a well-pitched, low- scoring game. Fans want to see home runs, it was concluded, and the more that are hit, the more they like it. Better to give fans a messy 11-9 slugfest than a well-played 2-1 pitchers’ duel.

To ensure this assumption, a number of changes that gave hitters an advantage were instituted. First came the designated hitter in the American League. Pitching mounds were lowered. Strike zones were reduced. Livelier balls were put into play. And smaller ballparks with outfield fences almost close enough for a little leaguer to reach were built. Combining with these restraints on the fine art of pitching were inconsistent—and often atrocious—umpiring, catchers with so little experience that they didn’t have a clue about calling games, nonchalant fielders, and bulked-up (steroid-enhanced?) hitters with bats (presumably not corked ones) that were so light that they could be swung only a little slower than the speed of sound.

The net effect was that hitting proliferated, resulting mostly in more home runs and ultimately higher scores. In 1950, for instance, 16 major league teams playing 154-game schedules averaged 92 home runs and 721 runs for the season. By 2004, with 30 teams each playing 162 games, the average was 181 homers and 775 runs per team.

The numbers of hitters reaching 500 career home runs or 3,000 career hits will become increasingly abundant, in the process it will render such feats increasingly less noteworthy. But the most significant career milestone for pitchers will take the opposite path.

This, of course, is not the first time that the 300-game winner has been consigned to extinction. In the 36 seasons between 1888 and 1924, 11 pitchers reached that exalted level. But after Alexander won his 300th in 1924, it appeared that the species had vanished. Seventeen years elapsed before the next pitcher (Grove) won his 300th. Then 20 more years passed before another 300-game winner (Spahn) arrived in 1961. Soon afterward, there was a 19-year gap between the 300th wins of Wynn in 1963 and Perry in 1982.

Perry led a parade of six 300-game winners over a nine- year period. But after Ryan became the 20th hurler to reach the magic mark in 1990, the feat wasn’t accomplished again until Clemens did it in 2003. Meanwhile, such redoubtable hurlers as Tommy John (288), Bert Blyleven (287), Ferguson Jenkins (284), and Jim Kaat (283) fell just short.

Mel Stottlemyre, the astute pitching coach of the New York Yankees, and a 164-game winner during an 11-year career, allows for the slim possibility of there being another 300-game winner. But he leans more toward the likelihood that the breed has vanished forever.

“It will become harder and harder to win 300,” he said. “Pitching has become tougher and more demanding, and it’s harder to throw consistently for as long a period as it would take to win 300 games. It would take a tremendous amount of dedication to do it. You have to have a long career, and be successful every year, stay in condition all year, and stay away from injuries. I’m not sure there will be any more 300-game winners, but then again, you never know. Someone may pop up in the future with the dedication and pride that it takes to win that many games.”

Although the deck seems clearly stacked against future 300-game winners, some others still have hope. One is Texas Rangers pitching coach Orel Hershiser, who won 204 games during a fine 17-year big-league career.

He said that there will be more than a few future 300-game winners, “for sure.” How so?

“I think athletes in general always continue to progress,” he said. “Just because pitching is getting really hard, it doesn’t mean someone can’t do it. I also don’t think people retire because they have enough money. Actually, money might be an incentive for staying around longer.

“Another thing to consider,” he added, “is that a lot of young pitchers are getting an earlier start. They’re pitching in the major leagues when they’re 20 or 21, whereas 20 or 30 years ago, they might still be in the minors for another four or five years. So they have more years to pitch and to win games.”

They also have on their side highly advanced training facilities and procedures, plus the many gains made by medical science that treat injuries and prolong careers. But when put together, the many factors that conspire to decrease pitchers’ effectiveness and their number of wins is likely to extract a price too heavy to overcome.

It’s obvious, therefore, that unless there is the unlikely possibility that some unknown superman is lurking in the shadows, one of baseball’s rarest and most treasured achievements will soon become extinct. And the number of baseball’s 300-game winners will be frozen forever at 22.