On Track For 300

Originally posted on Projo.com
I was having this discussion with a few different people in recent weeks, and so even though I’m sure I’ve seen it written up in one form or another in a few other places, I thought I’d pull together this chart and run it here – it’s truly astounding, when you consider the growing consensus that the 300 game winner may be nearly extinct. Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine both turned 35 last year. Do they have a shot at 300 wins? How do they stack up against past 300 game winners? Well, check out the standings against all the other pitchers to win 300 whose careers started since 1920, plus active candidate Roger Clemens, at the same age (wins after 35 are in parentheses):
Greg Maddux 257 (2) (thru Monday)
Steve Carlton 249 (80)
Tom Seaver 245 (66)
Roger Clemens 233 (49) (thru Monday)
Don Sutton 230 (94)
Tom Glavine 224 (3) (thru Monday)
Lefty Grove 223 (77)
Nolan Ryan 205 (119)
Warren Spahn 203 (160)
Early Wynn 201 (99)
Gaylord Perry 198 (116)
Phil Niekro 131 (187)

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Opening Week 2002 Observations

Originally posted on Projo.com
Can anyone pitch in Coors Field? Well, during the past 3 seasons Pedro hasn’t ventured there – but Randy Johnson has, five times in a stretch when he was one of the best pitchers in the game’s history and the most extreme strikeout pitcher. How did he fare?

PITCHER W L ERA G IP H HR BB K
Johnson 3 2 4.41 5 34.2 40 3 12 47

That’s about as well as you can do it, folks, and even keeping the ball in
the strike zone and in the park and whiffing 12.2 men per 9 innings, he
still had an ERA in the mid-fours. What’s more impressive, given how many
pitches you have to throw there and how late inning leads slip away, is that
Johnson stuck around long enough to get the decision in all 5 starts.
How about a few of the NL’s other elite starters? I took a quick look at
Curt Schilling, Greg Maddux, Kevin Brown, Tom Glavine and Al Leiter; I’ll
leave Johnson on the chart with them, and add in the guys who lived there:

PITCHER W L ERA G IP H HR BB K
Astacio 15 14 6.91 41 251.1 317 56 101 241 Hampton 9 7 6.05 17 105.2 132 15 53 56 Kile 5 5 8.24 17 95 132 22 49 50
Johnson 3 2 4.41 5 34.2 40 3 12 47
Brown 3 2 4.01 5 33.2 38 3 7 23 Schilling 1 0 4.54 5 33.2 44 6 6 28 Maddux 3 0 4.74 3 19.0 28 3 8 10 Leiter 1 1 8.36 2 14 16 3 10 10 Glavine 0 0 2.70 5 13.1 15 1 2 8

Hampton doesn’t look so bad there next to Astacio and Kile. All three are good pitchers. Of course, Todd Helton is left-handed and Larry Walker is known for ducking the tough lefthanders, particularly Johnson, so that may skew the results in favor of Johnson and Glavine, plus Glavine and Leiter may be further away from the average just as a fluke of making just 2 appearances each there. But this isn’t really a scientific study anyway, just a look at how the best have handled the worst conditions, and a reminder of how these pitchers’ records might look if they too had to live with the Coors effect.

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