Of Course, Someone Else Will Win 300 Games
First, Randy Johnson absolutely will not be the last pitcher ever to win 300 games. That being said, it is getting relatively harder to do it.
Pitch counting and limits on how many pitches starters throw is a small part of it. However, a much bigger factor is that the on-going trend of using more pitchers on the roster and more pitchers per game, that has been going on essentially since the dawn of professional league baseball, is continuing and shows little sign of leveling off in the immediate future.
In the National League’s first season in 1876, St. Louis’ George “Grin” Bradley recorded all his team’s decisions, and two other franchises had pitchers who recorded all but one of their teams’ decisions.
As the professional game grew and prospered and the length of the season schedule increased, teams began to use two, then three starters, gradually developing rotations by the end of the century.
Starters were still expected to complete what they started. However, by the end of the century, it was increasingly common in big games to pull a starter who obviously didn’t have it, and bring in someone else.
By the first two decades of the 20th century, what many teams did was make their top ace serve double-duty, pitching his own starts and coming in to save big game when another starter faltered.
For example, Chicago Cubs Ace and HOFer Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown (he really was missing part of a finger on his pitching hand, which helped him develop a great breaking pitch), when statisticians went back and calculated saves once that stat started to be recorded, led the NL in saves four years in a row from 1908 through 1911, going a combined 12-7 with 32 saves in relief, while winning 90 games as a starter over those four seasons.
Like Brown in 1909, Christy Matthewson (1908), Big Ed Walsh (1908) and Carl Mays (1921) all had seasons in which they led their leagues in wins and saves in the same season. In fact, Ed Walsh led the AL in saves 5 times in six seasons, before his arm gave out.
Major league baseball’s first real relief specialist was Firpo Marberry of the Washington Senators from 1924 to 1932. He was a closer and spot starter, who generally made between 10 to 25 starts a year and saved between 11 and 22 games five times during the period, easily leading the AL in each of those years.
The Nats had their greatest period of success during Marberry’s tenure with the team, winning the AL pennant in 1924 and 1925 and their first and only World Series Championship the first of those years.
Even when the Nats traded Marberry to the Tigers before the 1933 season (who promptly made Marberry a full-time starter again), the Nats, at least, had been convinced of the value of having a relief ace.
They obtained Jack Russell, a former mediocre starter, that off-season and made him their relief specialist. Russell went 11-4 in relief and led the AL with 13 saves, and the Senators won their last pennant ever.
Despite the success that the Senators had had over a ten year period using a relief specialist, baseball is an extremely conservative institution. Part of the reason, I think, is that relief pitchers are by nature much more inconsistent than starters.
Very few teams had a pitcher like Marberry capable of putting up great numbers as a reliever every year.
Also, teams that had pitchers like Marberry generally felt that their value was greater as starters, so relievers were usually only second-rate pitchers or old-timers who didn’t have enough left to be great starters anymore. This tended to increase reliever inconsistency from year to year.
Because the idea of the closer didn’t yet exist, teams generally did not consider the idea that a pitcher with one or two great pitches, but not enough other pitches to go through the lineup more than twice, would have more success pitching in relief.
The next big turning point was in the 1940s when the Yankees and the Dodgers had great success with relief aces.
In 1942, 1946 and 1947 (he was in the military the other years), Hugh Casey had three fantastic seasons as the Dodgers’ closer. He went a combined 27-10 in relief with 36 saves, leading the NL in relief wins and saves twice each.
Joe Page of the Yankees was even better. Between 1947 and 1950, he went a combined 37-30 in relief with 73 saves. Casey and Page both had great sucess in the World Series. Casey won two games in relief and picking up a save in the 1947 series (all of the Dodgers’ wins in that series), and Page earned a relief win and save in each of the 1947 and 1949 series.
Quickly other teams began to follow suit and have great success using relief specialists like Satchel Paige for the Indians and Browns in the late ’40s and early ’50s; Jim Konstanty who went 16-7, all in relief, with 22 saves for the 1950 Philadelphia Whiz Kids; and rookies Joe Black and Hoyt Wilhelm of the 1952 Dodgers and Giants, respectively, who went a combined 29-6 in relief with 26 saves.
Black and Wilhelm pitched almost300 innings in relief that year between them, with Black winning the Rookie of the Year Award and Wilhelm leading the NL in ERA.
From that point, there was no looking back, and the trend has continued to be, decade by decade, more and more use of relief pitchers. Top closers are much more consistent now than they were in the 1950’s, ’60s or ’70s because they throw half or less the number of innings each year as their predecessors and now generally pitch only the 9th inning.
And you know what? There are no signs at all that this trend is diminishing. I remember when in about 1989 or 1990 when Tony LaRussa, then the manager of the A’s, publicly apologized to closer Dennis Eckersley for bringing him into a game on the line in the eighth inning, instead of waiting to the ninth.
LaRussa was the first manager I can recall who basically decided that the closer’s job should only be for the ninth inning. Now many closers only pitch the ninth.
The new attention to pitch counts plays into this trend, but even without the attention to pitch counts, there is no reason to be believe that the trend of using more pitchers would flatten out. For example, in the 18 inning game between the D-Backs and the Padres, the two teams used a total of 18 pitchers.
That’s an average of two innings pitched per pitcher. It ultimately cost the Padres a ball game because they had to bring in a back-up middle infielder to pitch in the 18th. However, I don’t think that this will be the last time something like this happens in a long extra-inning game.
While attention to pitch counts may exascerbate this trend, increased attention to pitch counts is also likely to extend pitchers’ careers.
Because starters now pitch only every fifth game and rarely pitch complete games, it’s definitely harder to win 300 than it was in say Christy Matthewson’s time or even Tom Seaver’s time. However, pitchers’ careers are longer than ever, because of less over-use, more money in the game, and better training and nutrition than in times past.
For those of you who have been following the game since the 1980’s, sports writers were writing exactly these kinds of articles about no more 300 game winners when Nolan Ryan won his 300th game on July 31, 1990 and became the last of the six pitchers who started their careers in the 1960’s to do so. I remember these articles clearly.
Obviously, they were all dead wrong. Not only have four pitchers now done it in the last ten years, but Maddux and Clemens won way more than 300.
There have definitely been historical dry spells for 300 game winners. For example from 1925 through 1981, only three pitchers joined the club: Lefty Grove (1941), Warren Spahn (1961) and Early Winn (1963).
However, this is largely a result of the fact that almost an entire generation of pitchers lost two or three years to the Second World War. Bobby Feller, for example, lost nearly four seasons to the War, and finished his career with 266 wins.
By 2040, there will be a 25th member of the 300 Win Club. You can bet on it.
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