Conservatives Need More Carrot, Not Just More Stick

electionsconsequences
Conservatives are frustrated: why doesn’t the Republican Party deliver better results for us? Part of the answer, of course, is that the Republican Party only controls so much of the government, but there remains a lot of resistance in GOP leadership to fighting for conservative priorities. Why?
Conservatives have tended to see this as a problem to be solved my making threats: We’ll primary you! We’ll stay home! Not One Cent! We’ll go third party! In terms of asserting the legitimate supremacy of the voters over their elected representatives, these are healthy impulses. But they can never be a complete solution, because all these ideas are rule by the stick, by fear. And anyone who knows anything about managing or motivating people knows that fear alone has limits.
I submit that, if we want small-government conservatives and social conservatives to have real influence in the Republican Party, we need to go beyond the stick and offer the carrot; go beyond punishment and offer rewards. We need to prove to the leadership of the party that if they do what we want them to do, they will be richly rewarded with the things they value – advancement, re-election, fundraising, a growing caucus. Until we can offer those things, we will always be frustrated by the limits of our influence.

Continue reading Conservatives Need More Carrot, Not Just More Stick

Obamacare Can’t Quit The Individual Mandate

The launch of Obamacare’s online insurance exchanges has been such an operational trainwreck that even the White House Press Secretary, the DNC chair and boosters like Ezra Klein have had to acknowledge that it’s been a disaster. Industry observers are mystified. But the technology is just the surface problem; the larger issue is that the entire economics of the insurance sold on the exchanges – always tenuous at best – is threatened by the combination of poor functionality, intrusiveness and sticker shock, leading not only critics like Phil Klein and Megan McArdle but even supporters like Jonathan Chait to argue that the Obama Administration should delay portions of the law to salvage it (more on that here) – a result that would be deeply ironic and humiliating to the Administration, after President Obama just spent a month beating back furious Republican efforts to force delays in the launching of the exchanges and the individual mandate. But suggestions for delaying the mandate without going hat in hand to an irate Republican Congress ignore an important reality: any delay of the individual mandate would risk lawsuits in which the legal positions the Obama Administration took to defend the mandate could come back to handcuff its freedom of action.
How Universal Insurance Is Designed To Work
Let’s recall that the heart of Obamacare is not the exchanges and it’s not the subsidies to help people buy policies they can afford; it’s three rules designed to (1) compel both insurers and individuals to do business with each other, so that everyone gets covered, and (2) do so without bankrupting the insurers or sending the cost of subsidizing policies sky-high. The problem is pooling of risk: if only the sick and the old buy policies, the insurers will have to charge them as much for their policies as it would cost to just pay for their care, which defeats the entire point of insurance. You need some people paying in who are not already making claims, so you need to entice young, healthy people to buy insurance that effectively subsidizes the rest.
The first rule is guaranteed issue: insurers cannot turn away people with pre-existing conditions. This alone drives up the insurers’ costs, which is why healthy people need to be compelled to buy their policies to keep the system solvent.
The second is community rating, which – to simplify – controls the premiums that can be charged by requiring insurers to price policies by looking at the risk of the entire pool rather than just the specific actuarial characteristics (including pre-existing conditions) of the individual. Community rating doesn’t control the premiums of the overall pool, it just shifts and socializes that cost onto young, healthy policyholders.
The third is the individual mandate, which provides compulsion of the individual in the form of what the Supreme Court characterized as a tax. Without the mandate, healthy people may rationally choose not to buy overpriced insurance priced at community-rated premiums, leaving the insurers forced to cover a small, self-selected pool of the sick and the elderly.
Legal Trouble
Hypothetically, let’s say the Administration decided to keep the exchanges open, requiring insurers to keep providing guaranteed-issue policies priced at community-rated terms, but announced that it would delay enforcing the individual mandate. There’s no way the Administration could or would keep the exchanges open otherwise, since the whole economic benefit of the project for people in immediate need of coverage would be gone, and indeed many would simply be denied coverage.
But that would be a disaster for insurers, roped into the guaranteed-issue mandate but unable to compel healthy people to buy the policies that make guaranteed-issue even remotely economically feasible. They would simply hemorrhage money. And because businesses don’t exist to hemorrhage money and the statute doesn’t authorize a suspension of the mandate, some insurer would likely challenge any delay in court.
And that’s where the Administration could be hoist on the petard of its own legal arguments. When Obamacare went to the Supreme Court, one of the issues presented was “severability”: that is, if the Court struck down the individual mandate, would it also strike down the entire statute. The Solicitor General’s brief on behalf of the Administration said no – but argued that if the mandate was struck down, the Court would have to also strike the guaranteed issue and community rating provisions because Congress would not have authorized them without the mandate. The key passages are pretty unambiguous:

The minimum coverage provision [i.e., the individual mandate] is essential to ensuring that the Act’s 2014 guaranteed-issue and community-rating reforms advance Congress’s goals… As Congress expressly found (and as experience in the States confirmed), those provisions would create an adverse selection cascade without a minimum coverage provision, because healthy individuals would defer obtaining insurance until they needed health care, leaving an insurance pool skewed toward the unhealthy.
***
The guaranteed-issue and community rating provisions ensure that all individuals have access to health insurance priced according to community-wide rates, rather than individual risk factors. Congress understood that, in a market governed by those provisions but lacking a minimum coverage provision, healthy individuals have an incentive to stay out until their need for insurance arises while, at the same time, those with the most serious immediate health-care needs have a strong incentive to obtain coverage. Premiums would therefore go up, further impeding entry into the market by those currently without acute medicate needs, risking a “market-wide adverse selection death spiral”…and restricting the availability of affordable health insurance – the opposite of what Congress intended.

Here’s a longer excerpt of the SG’s brief:
[severability.long]
The brief goes on to detail Congress’ “empirical support” from the experience of states that have experimented with community rating and guaranteed issue without a mandate, with bad results.
It’s impossible to predict how the courts would rule on a legal challenge to delaying the mandate without delaying guaranteed issue and community rating. But the Administration’s own legal arguments would provide a powerful argument for insurers that Congress never intended these provisions of the statute to be enforced against them while the mandate was not in effect.

The 400 Win Club And Then Some

I have a new baseball essay over at The Federalist looking at baseball’s winningest pitchers if you combine their Major League, postseason, Minor League, and in some cases Japanese and Negro League wins. I looked at every pitcher who won 150 or more games in the majors plus every known minor league 300 game winner, plus anybody else I ran across who made the list, so it’s possible there’s a few people here and there I missed but unlikely that any of them (aside from people who spent their whole careers in Japan or the Negro Leagues) would crack 300. All numbers are through the 2013 postseason (in which Bartolo Colon went 0-1 and Freddy Garcia pitched without a decision). The charts in the article go down through 250 wins, but since I have extra space here, I’ll run the rest of what I have here:
The 225-249 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1883 1898 Adonis Terry 197 196 3 4 49 22 249 222 0.529 27
1981 2003 David Cone 194 126 8 3 47 40 249 169 0.596 80
1929 1950 Tommy Bridges 194 138 4 1 50 36 248 175 0.586 73
1913 1932 Lee Meadows 188 180 0 2 60 56 248 238 0.510 10
1959 1979 Mickey Lolich 217 191 3 1 27 44 247 236 0.511 11
1995 2013 Roy Halladay 203 105 3 2 41 35 247 142 0.635 105
1913 1928 Urban Shocker 187 117 0 1 60 28 247 146 0.628 101
1889 1901 Amos Rusie* 246 174 246 174 0.586 72
1914 1940 Sad Sam Jones 229 217 0 2 16 10 245 229 0.517 16
1966 1988 Joe Niekro 221 204 0 0 24 17 245 221 0.526 24
1891 1908 Brickyard Kennedy 187 159 0 1 58 49 245 209 0.540 36
1930 1947 Bill Lee (I) 169 157 0 2 76 33 245 192 0.561 53
1930 1951 Harry Gumbert 143 113 0 0 101 84 244 197 0.553 47
1911 1935 Dutch Ruether 137 95 1 1 106 84 244 180 0.575 64
1938 1959 Virgil Trucks (2) 177 135 1 0 65 40 243 175 0.581 68
1884 1895 Bob Caruthers 218 99 7 8 17 16 242 123 0.663 119
1982 2008 Kenny Rogers 219 156 3 3 19 39 241 198 0.549 43
1967 1986 Vida Blue 209 161 1 5 31 18 241 184 0.567 57
1895 1909 Jack Chesbro 198 132 43 34 241 166 0.592 75
1911 1934 Bob Shawkey 195 150 1 3 45 50 241 203 0.543 38
1957 1975 Claude Osteen 196 195 1 2 43 32 240 229 0.512 11
1939 1954 Allie Reynolds 182 107 7 2 51 32 240 141 0.630 99
1912 1930 Jesse Barnes (1) 152 150 2 0 84 58 238 208 0.534 30
1975 1995 Dave Stewart 168 129 10 6 59 46 237 181 0.567 56
1874 1885 Tommy Bond 234 163 2 1 236 164 0.590 72
1877 1889 Will White 229 166 7 13 236 179 0.569 57
1895 1910 Al Orth 204 189 32 19 236 208 0.532 28
1945 1964 Billy Pierce 211 169 1 1 22 19 234 189 0.553 45
1898 1923 Wild Bill Donovan 185 139 1 4 48 23 234 166 0.585 68
1882 1892 Charlie Buffinton* 233 152 0 0 233 152 0.605 81
1965 1979 Catfish Hunter 224 166 9 6 233 172 0.575 61
1997 2013 Tim Hudson 205 111 1 3 27 13 233 127 0.647 106
1928 1947 Lefty Gomez 189 102 6 0 38 30 233 132 0.638 101
1912 1931 Bullet Joe Bush 196 184 2 5 34 21 232 210 0.525 22
1903 1923 Red Ames 183 167 0 1 49 47 232 215 0.519 17
1991 2013 Derek Lowe 176 157 5 7 51 47 232 211 0.524 21
1921 1945 Red Lucas 157 135 75 54 232 189 0.551 43
1909 1925 Fred Toney 139 102 0 0 93 62 232 164 0.586 68
1921 1938 Pat Malone 134 92 0 3 98 113 232 208 0.527 24
1954 1969 Don Drysdale 209 166 3 3 19 16 231 185 0.555 46
1968 1989 Doyle Alexander 194 174 0 5 37 38 231 217 0.516 14
1983 2003 John Burkett 166 136 2 1 63 59 231 196 0.541 35
1986 2005 Kevin Brown 211 144 5 5 14 23 230 172 0.572 58
1907 1921 Hippo Vaughn 178 137 1 2 51 46 230 185 0.554 45
1972 1998 Dennis Eckersley 197 171 1 3 31 16 229 190 0.547 39
1965 1985 Mike Torrez 185 160 2 1 42 46 229 207 0.525 22
1935 1957 Dizzy Trout 170 161 1 2 58 42 229 205 0.528 24
1926 1948 Willis Hudlin 158 156 71 49 229 205 0.528 24
1926 1942 Larry French (*3) 197 171 0 2 31 36 228 209 0.522 19
1994 2013 Bartolo Colon 189 128 2 4 37 14 228 146 0.610 82
1960 1978 Wilbur Wood 164 156 64 46 228 202 0.530 26
1998 2013 CC Sabathia 205 115 9 5 13 13 227 133 0.631 94
1982 2000 Dwight Gooden 194 112 0 4 33 13 227 129 0.638 98
1922 1941 Firpo Marberry 148 88 0 1 78 66 226 155 0.593 71
1902 1920 Ed Walsh 195 126 2 0 28 13 225 139 0.618 86
1928 1945 Lon Warneke (2) 192 121 2 1 31 36 225 158 0.587 67

The 200-224 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1905 1922 Slim Sallee 174 143 1 3 49 32 224 178 0.557 46
1890 1903 Frank Killen 164 131 60 48 224 179 0.556 45
1977 1994 Bob Welch 211 146 3 3 9 6 223 155 0.590 68
1894 1912 Chick Fraser 175 212 48 53 223 265 0.457 -42
1939 1955 Hal Newhouser 207 150 2 1 13 18 222 169 0.568 53
1897 1911 Sam Leever 194 100 0 2 28 22 222 124 0.642 98
1954 1972 Mudcat Grant 145 119 2 1 75 33 222 153 0.592 69
1897 1911 Deacon Phillippe 189 109 3 2 29 30 221 141 0.610 80
1948 1967 Jack Sanford (1) 137 101 1 2 83 74 221 177 0.555 44
1887 1906 Red Ehret 139 167 2 0 79 90 220 257 0.461 -37
1913 1929 Art Nehf 184 120 4 4 31 19 219 143 0.605 76
1922 1937 General Crowder 167 115 1 2 51 38 219 155 0.586 64
1932 1948 Claude Passeau 162 150 1 0 56 41 219 191 0.534 28
1897 1911 Jack Taylor 152 139 67 43 219 182 0.546 37
1911 1927 George Mogridge 132 133 1 0 86 51 219 184 0.543 35
1974 1994 Rick Sutcliffe 171 139 1 1 45 51 217 191 0.532 26
1910 1929 Bill Doak 169 157 48 51 217 208 0.511 9
1931 1950 Rip Sewell 143 97 74 85 217 182 0.544 35
1915 1932 Bill Sherdel 165 146 0 4 51 35 216 185 0.539 31
1910 1942 Clarence Mitchell 125 139 0 0 91 70 216 209 0.508 7
1938 1956 Sal Maglie (2) 119 62 1 2 96 81 216 145 0.598 71
1887 1899 Jack Stivetts 203 132 2 0 9 6 214 138 0.608 76
1982 1998 Jimmy Key 186 117 5 3 23 16 214 136 0.611 78
1961 1975 Dave McNally 184 119 7 4 23 24 214 147 0.593 67
1981 1999 Mark Langston 179 158 0 0 33 22 212 180 0.541 32
1918 1935 Eddie Rommel 171 119 1 0 40 32 212 151 0.584 61
1970 1989 Bob Forsch 168 136 3 4 41 37 212 177 0.545 35
1947 1967 Bob Buhl (2) 166 132 0 1 46 44 212 177 0.545 35
1903 1915 Howie Camnitz 133 106 0 1 79 46 212 153 0.581 59
1938 1958 Bob Lemon (3) 207 128 2 2 2 6 211 136 0.608 75
1950 1966 Bob Friend 197 230 0 2 14 13 211 245 0.463 -34
1961 1974 Mel Stottlemyre 164 139 1 1 46 23 211 163 0.564 48
1997 2013 Roy Oswalt 163 102 5 2 43 28 211 132 0.615 79
1930 1947 Dizzy Dean 150 83 2 2 59 29 211 114 0.649 97
1972 1990 Bob Knepper 146 155 0 1 65 45 211 201 0.512 10
1928 1945 Johnny Allen 142 75 0 0 69 50 211 125 0.628 86
1947 1967 Curt Simmons (1) 193 183 0 1 17 6 210 190 0.525 20
1914 1930 Howard Ehmke (1) 166 166 1 0 43 18 210 184 0.533 26
1946 1961 Don Newcombe (2) 149 90 0 4 61 26 210 120 0.636 90
1942 1961 Mike Garcia (3) 142 97 0 1 68 45 210 143 0.595 67
1957 1973 Milt Pappas 209 164 0 0 0 1 209 165 0.559 44
1901 1917 Doc White 189 156 1 1 19 16 209 173 0.547 36
1924 1936 George Earnshaw 127 93 4 3 78 48 209 144 0.592 65
1973 1993 John Candelaria 177 122 2 2 29 11 208 135 0.606 73
1963 1982 Rick Wise 188 181 2 0 17 20 207 201 0.507 6
1932 1951 Schoolboy Rowe (2) 158 101 2 5 47 20 207 126 0.622 81
1985 2002 Chuck Finley 200 173 1 2 5 2 206 177 0.538 29
1993 2012 Kevin Millwood 169 152 3 3 34 35 206 190 0.520 16
1990 2008 Hideo Nomo 123 109 0 2 83 52 206 163 0.558 43
1886 1897 Silver King* 203 152 2 6 205 158 0.565 47
1929 1950 Bucky Walters 198 160 2 2 5 6 205 168 0.550 37
1973 1992 Mike Flanagan 167 143 3 2 35 16 205 161 0.560 44
1968 1984 Paul Splitorff 166 143 2 0 37 32 205 175 0.539 30
1994 2011 Javier Vazquez 165 160 1 1 39 16 205 177 0.537 28
1976 1998 Danny Darwin 171 182 33 22 204 204 0.500 0
1900 1910 Addie Joss 160 97 44 34 204 131 0.609 73
1919 1939 George Uhle 200 166 0 0 3 4 203 170 0.544 33
1999 2013 Mark Buehrle 186 142 2 1 15 8 203 151 0.573 52
1895 1909 Bill Dinneen 170 177 3 1 30 24 203 202 0.501 1
1995 2013 Freddy Garcia 156 108 6 3 41 30 203 141 0.590 62
1881 1890 Jim Whitney 191 204 11 11 202 215 0.484 -13
1996 2012 Livan Hernandez* 178 177 7 3 16 9 201 189 0.515 12
1978 1998 Dave Stieb 176 137 1 3 24 12 201 152 0.569 49
1971 1989 Ron Guidry 170 91 5 2 26 27 201 120 0.626 81
1900 1914 Earl Moore 163 154 38 29 201 183 0.523 18
1987 2006 Kevin Appier 169 137 0 2 31 25 200 164 0.549 36
1948 1966 Bob Purkey (2) 129 115 0 1 71 51 200 167 0.545 33

Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1909 1920 Tom Seaton 92 65 108 84 200 149 0.573 51

The 150-199 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1923 1945 Guy Bush 176 136 1 1 22 11 199 148 0.573 51
1936 1955 Johnny Sain (3) 139 116 2 2 58 41 199 159 0.556 40
1902 1915 Frank Smith 139 111 60 53 199 164 0.548 35
1947 1965 Harvey Haddix (1) 136 113 2 0 61 33 199 146 0.577 53
1979 1997 Fernando Valenzuela* 173 153 5 1 20 16 198 170 0.538 28
1963 1983 Rudy May 152 156 0 1 46 29 198 186 0.516 12
1979 1999 Tom Candiotti 151 164 0 1 47 40 198 205 0.491 -7
1951 1971 Camilo Pascual 174 170 0 1 23 16 197 187 0.513 10
1977 1994 Bill Gullickson 162 136 1 2 34 24 197 162 0.549 35
1976 1994 Bruce Hurst 145 113 3 2 49 31 197 146 0.574 51
1941 1962 Gerry Staley (3) 134 111 0 1 63 35 197 147 0.573 50
1888 1899 Frank Dwyer 177 151 19 16 196 167 0.540 29
1903 1917 Ed Reulbach* 182 106 2 0 10 5 194 111 0.636 83
1944 1966 Joe Nuxhall 135 117 59 67 194 184 0.513 10
1893 1906 Red Donahue 164 175 28 22 192 197 0.494 -5
1983 1998 Doug Drabek 155 134 2 5 34 25 191 164 0.538 27
1984 2005 Al Leiter 162 132 2 3 26 46 190 181 0.512 9
1885 1896 Ice Box Chamberlain 157 120 2 3 31 28 190 151 0.557 39
1918 1936 Tom Zachary 186 191 3 0 189 191 0.497 -2
1981 1996 Frank Viola 176 150 3 1 10 11 189 162 0.538 27
1999 2013 Barry Zito 165 143 6 3 18 7 189 153 0.553 36
1965 1979 Ken Holtzman 174 150 6 4 8 3 188 157 0.545 31
1971 1989 Rick Rhoden 151 125 0 1 37 34 188 160 0.540 28
1883 1890 Ed Morris 171 122 16 6 187 128 0.594 59
1984 2000 Tim Belcher 146 140 4 2 37 35 187 177 0.514 10
1983 2001 Bret Saberhagen 167 117 2 4 17 10 186 131 0.587 55
1939 1956 Howie Pollet (2) 131 116 0 1 55 16 186 133 0.583 53
1948 1967 Vernon Law (2) 162 147 2 0 21 20 185 167 0.526 18
1933 1949 Mort Cooper 128 75 2 3 54 55 184 133 0.580 51
1891 1901 Nig Cuppy 162 98 0 1 21 14 183 113 0.618 70
1922 1937 Rube Walberg (*1) 155 141 1 1 27 27 183 169 0.520 14
1886 1895 Mark Baldwin* 154 165 29 25 183 190 0.491 -7
1990 2010 Mike Hampton 148 115 2 4 33 25 183 144 0.560 39
1892 1908 Pink Hawley* 167 179 15 15 182 194 0.484 -12
1880 1888 Larry Corcoran* 177 89 3 4 180 93 0.659 87
1991 2006 Brad Radke 148 139 2 3 30 35 180 177 0.504 3
1977 1996 Scott Sanderson 163 143 0 0 16 8 179 151 0.542 28
1991 2007 Aaron Sele 148 112 0 6 31 18 179 136 0.568 43
1951 1969 Johnny Podres 148 116 4 1 26 16 178 133 0.572 45
1926 1941 Bump Hadley 161 165 2 1 14 7 177 173 0.506 4
1994 2013 Chris Carpenter 144 94 10 4 23 41 177 139 0.560 38
1950 1965 Frank Lary (2) 128 116 48 26 176 142 0.553 34
1928 1949 Thornton Lee* 117 124 59 66 176 190 0.481 -14
1882 1890 Guy Hecker* 175 146 175 146 0.545 29
1981 1995 Mike Moore 161 176 4 3 10 9 175 188 0.482 -13
1971 1985 Steve Rogers 158 152 3 1 14 26 175 179 0.494 -4
1964 1979 Jim Lonborg 157 137 2 3 16 12 175 152 0.535 23
1969 1986 Jim Slaton 151 158 1 0 23 8 175 166 0.513 9
1889 1903 Sadie McMahon* 173 127 1 0 174 127 0.578 47
1875 1889 George Bradley* 171 151 3 3 174 154 0.530 20
1938 1954 Preacher Roe 127 84 2 1 44 39 173 124 0.582 49
1889 1902 Jouett Meekin 152 133 20 24 172 157 0.523 15
1941 1955 Vic Raschi (3) 132 66 5 3 33 30 170 99 0.632 71
1955 1966 Sandy Koufax 165 87 4 3 169 90 0.653 79
1989 2002 Andy Benes 155 139 1 1 12 6 168 146 0.535 22
1884 1896 Dave Foutz? 147 66 3 6 18 4 168 76 0.689 92
1877 1894 Monte Ward* 164 103 0 0 164 103 0.614 61
1931 1946 Hal Schumaker (3) 158 121 2 2 4 2 164 125 0.567 39
1971 1985 Burt Hooton 151 136 6 3 7 4 164 143 0.534 21
1906 1920 Jack Coombs 158 110 5 0 163 110 0.597 53
1932 1955 Spud Chandler* (2) 109 43 2 2 47 41 158 86 0.648 72

Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1997 2013 Hiroki Kuroda 68 70 2 2 103 89 173 161 0.518 12
1999 2013 Daisuke Matsuzaka 53 40 3 1 117 74 173 115 0.601 58

The Rest

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1871 1876 Dick McBride 149 78 149 78 0.656 71
1872 1877 Candy Cummings* 145 94 1 7 146 101 0.591 45
1914 1935 Babe Ruth 94 46 3 0 22 9 119 55 0.684 64

WINFILES II

The 350-399 Win Club
Let’s move a little more quickly through the rest of the list, stopping to highlight a few things along the way.

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1899 1916 Christy Mathewson 373 188 5 5 20 15 398 208 0.657 190
1983 2007 Roger Clemens 354 184 12 8 13 6 379 198 0.657 181
1874 1894 Pud Galvin* 365 310 12 6 377 316 0.544 61
1958 1983 Gaylord Perry 314 265 1 1 55 46 370 312 0.543 58
1937 1963 Early Wynn (1) 300 244 1 2 66 55 367 301 0.549 66
1882 1894 John Clarkson* 328 178 2 5 34 9 364 192 0.655 172
1959 1987 Phil Niekro (1) 318 274 0 1 43 25 361 300 0.546 61
1964 1988 Steve Carlton 329 244 6 6 24 11 359 261 0.579 98
1912 1935 Burleigh Grimes 270 212 3 4 86 57 359 273 0.568 86
1965 1988 Don Sutton 324 256 6 4 24 9 354 269 0.568 85
1879 1893 Tim Keefe* 342 225 4 3 7 9 353 237 0.598 116
1984 2009 Tom Glavine 305 203 14 16 31 33 350 252 0.581 98

In the 350-399 win range, we encounter the question of “cheating,” as the 350-win club includes two known steroid users and three known spitballers. Besides Roger Clemens, the other “steroid” user is Hall of Famer Pud Galvin, who experimented briefly with a testosterone elixir (probably an ineffectual patent medicine), drinking it openly on the field as it was not illegal at the time. Galvin was just a slightly above-average pitcher but a ridiculous workhorse even for his day, averaging 495 innings a year for a decade from age 22-31; he died at 45 from stomach inflammation. The spitball story is a similar one: Burleigh Grimes was one of the men “grandfathered” and thus allowed to throw a legal spitball in the 1920s, whereas Gaylord Perry and Don Sutton were both famous and illegal defacers of the ball. I mentioned the study of High Quality Starts: the only two pitchers to make 300 of them since 1920 are Sutton (310) and Clemens (308).
Sutton was sort of the poor man’s Spahn: his season ERAs and other stats were rarely eye-popping, but he started 27 games and pitcher 207 innings in 1968, 23 games in the strike-shortened 1981, but otherwise started at least 31 games in each of the other 20 seasons between 1966 and 1987. His second season, 1967, was his only really poor year, although a number of others were more modestly subpar. His only real injury was while bunting in September 1980. Ask any manager how valuable it is to have a guy you can just pencil in the rotation and leave him there for 22 years.
Perry was 32 years old when the Giants traded him for Sam McDowell, who was four years younger, in December 1971. Perry won 180 more games, McDowell won 19. It’s hard today to believe the workloads that Perry carried within living memory: he averaged 321 innings, 39 starts and 25 complete games a year from age 30-36, 1969-75, the last three of those against lineups that used the DH. Yet he stayed healthy enough to win the Cy Young at 39 and pitch until he was 44.
I had always just assumed that Phil Niekro‘s late start in the majors was wholly due to learning the knuckleball, but he missed his age-24 season in the military in 1963. In 1982, at age 43, Niekro threw a 2-hit shutout against the Giants (with whom the Braves entered the game tied for second place) on September 27, then came back and threw a 3-hit, no-walk shutout on 3 days’ rest against the Padres; they were his only two shutouts of the year, and gave Joe Torre’s Braves the division by one game over the Dodgers.
Christy Mathewson, who shares the NL career win record with Alexander, also shares having his life ruined by World War I; Mathewson inhaled poison gas during a training exercise, wrecking his lungs. He was already at the end of his playing career (he had hit the wall after age 33), but the illness ended his managing career and he would be dead of tuberculosis by age 45. Mathewson, who threw straight overhand with tremendous control and the very occasional deployment of his devastating “fadeaway” (a precursor to the screwball) was a preposterous 303-120 with a 1.91 ERA from 1903-1913, age 22-32, and at the peak of the Giants-Cubs rivalry in 1908-09, he went 62-17 with a 1.31 ERA while Three Finger Brown, the Cubs’ ace, went 56-18 with a 1.39 ERA. In the 1905 World Series, Matty would throw three shutouts in six days; in the 1919 World Series, recuperating in the press box, he was one of the few men willing to question whether the Series was on the level.
Tom Glavine should skate into the Hall on the strength of 305 wins, five 20-win seasons and leading the National League in starts six times. As a Mets fan I don’t recall him as fondly as many Braves fans do, especially given his role in the 2007 season-ending collapse (he gave up seven runs and retired just one batter in the first inning of Game 162; the Mets had entered the final day tied for first), but Glavine in his one postseason trip for the Mets in 2006 was 2-1 with a 1.59 ERA.
Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1928 1953 Tony Freitas (3) 25 33 348 243 373 276 0.575 97
1927 1952 William Thomas 368 335 368 335 0.523 33
1926 1953 Dick Barrett 35 58 317 251 352 309 0.533 43

I’m listing separately the pitchers who won less than half their games in the majors. Thomas, the winningest minor league pitcher ever, was a wandering control pitcher in the low minors in a hitters’ era; he was 244-258 with a career ERA around 3.53 through age 38 before he started rolling up good won-loss records against war-depleted Southern Association competition, so there’s no real reason to think he would have been a top major league pitcher. Freitas, by contrast, had some modest if fleeting success in the majors and rolled up most of his wins in the Pacific Coast League.
The 325-349 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1907 1935 Jack Quinn 247 218 0 1 101 65 348 284 0.551 64
1965 1993 Nolan Ryan 324 292 2 2 21 10 347 304 0.533 43
1908 1928 Stan Coveleski 215 142 3 2 127 104 345 248 0.582 97
1928 1953 Bobo Newsom 211 222 2 2 131 106 344 330 0.510 14
1985 2009 Randy Johnson 303 166 7 9 29 27 339 202 0.627 137
1909 1933 Red Faber (1) 254 213 3 1 79 64 336 278 0.547 58
1961 1989 Tommy John 288 231 6 3 41 30 335 264 0.559 71
1912 1935 Dazzy Vance 197 140 0 0 133 129 330 269 0.551 61
1901 1920 Three Finger Brown 239 130 5 4 85 52 329 186 0.639 143
1901 1917 Eddie Plank 326 195 2 5 328 200 0.621 128
1984 2012 Jamie Moyer 269 209 3 3 56 35 328 247 0.570 81
1962 1983 Fergie Jenkins 284 226 43 26 327 252 0.565 75
1966 1986 Tom Seaver 311 205 3 3 12 12 326 220 0.597 106

[CHART: k.bf.prime.updated]
Dazzy Vance was, as measured relative to the league, the highest-strikeout pitcher of all time, despite not winning a major league game until he was 31. Vance’s rate of strikeouts per batter faced was 222% of the league average, 228% in his power-pitching prime from age 31-42. Nobody else is over 200% career, although Bob Feller, Grove and Rube Waddell are all over 200% if you focus on their prime years. Vance may have had some unique help from Ebbetts Field (it was said that he bleached his pitching sleeve and often threw against the backdrop of white laundry hung by Brooklyn housewives from clotheslines behind the park); the numbers show that from 1922-32, the years he was with the Dodgers, he had a 2.67 ERA and averaged 7.3 K per 9 innings at home, a 3.67 ERA and 5.1 K/9 on the road. Grimes, his teammate, had a 2.70 ERA at Ebbets from 1918-26, 3.38 on the road, but wasn’t a big strikeout pitcher (1.7 K/9 at home, 1.4 on the road).
Mordecai Peter Centennial “Three Finger” Brown, one of baseball’s unique stories due to the boyhood farm accident that left him with a mangled pitching hand that naturally threw curveballs, didn’t even play in the minors until he was 24. Brown’s teams had among the best team defenses in baseball history, a great edge for a guy who, from 1906-09, walked just 1.6 batters per 9 innings and allowed 5 home runs in 1165.1 innings. Yet, by 1911, Brown was making nearly half his appearances in relief (between 1906-11, he is credited with 38 shutouts and 38 saves).
Stan Coveleski is one of those Hall of Famers whose resume of a high-quality but relatively short career (his ERA+ from age 27-35 is a sterling 136) looks more impressive when you throw in 127 minor league wins between age 19-25.
Eddie Plank is the first pitcher we encounter here who never pitched in the minors; lefthanded pitching was sufficiently rare in baseball’s early days that when Plank retired, he had won 129 more games than any other lefty.
Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1913 1940 George Payne (1) 1 1 348 262 349 263 0.570 86
1923 1949 Sam Gibson 32 38 307 200 339 238 0.588 101
1910 1931 Oyster Joe Martina 6 8 0 0 330 268 336 276 0.549 60
1915 1941 Alex McColl 4 4 0 0 332 263 336 267 0.557 69
1902 1920 Charles Baum 327 279 327 279 0.540 48
1891 1911 Ted Breitenstein 160 170 165 92 325 262 0.554 63
1917 1938 Frank Shellenback 10 15 300 179 310 194 0.615 116

Ted Breitenstein holds some quasi-legitimate records for most hits and runs allowed in a season, their legitimacy based on drawing the recordbooks’ line across 1893, the year the mound was moved back to 60 feet six inches. Relocating to the more lenient Southern Association after the turn of the century, he posted a 2.02 ERA from age 32-42, including ERAs of 1.05, 1.33, 1.48, and 1.53.
Bill James, in the Historical Baseball Abstract, picked longtime Pacific Coast League hurler Frank Shellenback as the best minor league pitcher of all time; he was a spitballer cut by the White Sox in mid-1919 who had the misfortune of being in the minors and not “grandfathered” when the pitch was outlawed the following year.
The 300-324 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1879 1892 Mickey Welch* 307 210 1 2 16 14 324 226 0.589 98
1881 1902 Tony Mullane 284 220 38 26 322 246 0.567 76
1957 1983 Jim Kaat 283 237 1 3 36 33 320 273 0.540 47
1913 1937 Jesse Haines 210 158 3 1 107 61 320 220 0.593 100
1991 2013 Andy Pettitte 256 153 19 11 43 22 318 186 0.631 132
1888 1914 Clark Griffith 237 146 78 55 315 201 0.610 114
1969 1992 Bert Blyleven 287 250 5 1 22 7 314 258 0.549 56
1886 1910 Gus Weyhing 264 232 50 53 314 285 0.524 29
1905 1927 Babe Adams 194 140 3 0 116 61 313 201 0.609 112
1879 1891 Old Hoss Radbourn* 309 194 3 0 312 194 0.617 118
1903 1927 Chief Bender 212 127 6 4 94 44 312 175 0.641 137
1921 1948 Charlie Root 201 160 0 3 111 83 312 246 0.559 66
1924 1943 Carl Hubbell 253 154 4 2 52 38 309 194 0.614 115
1927 1946 Paul Derringer 233 212 2 4 74 53 309 269 0.535 40
1871 1887 Bobby Mathews 297 248 8 13 305 261 0.539 44
1948 1967 Robin Roberts 286 245 0 1 14 4 300 250 0.545 50

Tony Mullane is best known for being Irish-born and ambidextrous, occasionally toying with throwing with each hand; he won 284 big-league games despite missing the 1885 season, at the age of 26, after being suspended for jumping a contract. Mullane averaged 34 wins a year the prior three seasons and 30 a year the next three, so he would have easily had 300. But perhaps it’s just as well, given how he treated his catcher, African-American pioneer Fleet Walker, in 1884:

“Moses Fleetwood Walker was the best catcher I ever worked with, but I disliked a Negro and whenever I had to pitch to him, I used to pitch anything I wanted without looking for the signals,” wrote Mullane of Walker, his former teammate with the Toledo Blue Stockings. “One day he signaled me for a curve ball and I shot a fast ball at him. He caught it and walked down to me. He said: ‘I’ll catch you without signals but I won’t catch you if you are going to cross me when I give you signals.’ And all the rest of the season he caught me and caught anything I threw. I pitched without him knowing what was coming.”

Mullane threw 63 wild pitches in 64 starts that year; Walker was charged with 72 passed balls in 41 games, albeit not that many more than teammate Deacon McGuire (66 in 41 games).
Andy Pettitte finishes up as a 275 game winner in the majors if you include the postseason.
Babe Adams, a control specialist, had a really remarkable baseball odyssey, going back to the minors four times over his career yet pitching all but one of his big-league games between ages 25 and 44 for the Pirates, for whom he was the hero of the 1909 World Series and would make his last World Series appearance as a 43 year old in 1925. From 1919-22, Adams walked 74 batters in 857.2 innings.
Bert Blyleven, the best pitcher born in Holland, had 167 wins and a career ERA+ of 127 in 3000.2 innings from age 19-30; Sandy Koufax had 165 wins and a career ERA+ of 131 in 2324.1 innings from age 19-30. Blyleven would win 131 more games, including three seasons when he was in the top 4 of the Cy Young balloting after age 30; Koufax was retired at 30. Oddly, Blyleven, the last man to throw 20 complete games, holds the single season record for no-decisions, with 20.
Chief Bender and Jesse Haines are both marginal Hall of Famers (in Haines’ case, far below marginal) who pitched multiple big World Series games and had long minor league records. Bender won 212 games between age 19-33, left baseball to spend a year working in the shipyards to support the war effort in 1918 (I don’t credit him for missed time because he wasn’t actually in the military, but that may be a quibble), then had a second act in the minors starting with a season of 29-2 with a 1.06 ERA in the lowly Virginia League in 1919. He made one more brief cameo in the majors at 41, and had a 1.33 ERA in the Middle Atlantic League in his professional coda at 43.
There are four great pitchers who really stand out from their own contemporaries for their workloads at their peak, relative to the years they pitched in: Robin Roberts in the early 50s, Bob Feller in the late 30s to the season of his return from the war, Phil Niekro in the late 70s, and John Clarkson in the mid-late 1880s. But Niekro was a knuckleballer, and Clarkson was just doing what everybody else had been doing 5 years earlier; only 12 pitchers between 1924 and 1962 threw 320 innings in a season, and three of those were Roberts in consecutive seasons (in that 3-year stretch he averaged 338 innings and 31 complete games), and three others were Feller, albeit separated by four years in which Feller didn’t pitch due to the war. Roberts tossed 300 innings six years in a row and less than 3 innings short of a seventh, at a time when the #2 workhorse in the game (Warren Spahn) was miles behind. Like Mariano Rivera, Roberts in his prime threw basically one pitch, a fastball with great movement and pinpoint control, and that put little strain on his arm.
Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1910 1933 Rube Benton 150 144 1 1 172 136 323 281 0.535 42
1898 1928 Long Tom Hughes 132 174 0 1 189 165 321 340 0.486 -19
1907 1929 Harry Krause 36 26 281 237 317 263 0.547 54

Harry Krause led the AL in ERA at age 20 with a 1.39 mark in 1909, albeit on a team where Plank, Bender and Cy Morgan were all below 1.80. But he flamed out of the majors by age 23 and missed most of the A’s dynasty that would follow.
The 275-299 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1911 1930 Wilbur Cooper 216 178 83 76 299 254 0.541 45
1974 1998 Dennis Martinez 245 193 2 2 51 23 298 218 0.578 80
1947 1967 Whitey Ford (2) 236 106 10 8 51 20 297 134 0.689 163
1923 1947 Red Ruffing* (2) 273 225 7 2 16 27 296 254 0.538 42
1958 1975 Juan Marichal 243 142 0 1 50 26 293 169 0.634 124
1909 1926 Hooks Dauss 233 182 60 49 293 231 0.559 62
1919 1944 Earl Whitehill 218 185 1 0 74 55 293 240 0.550 53
1990 2008 Mike Mussina 270 153 7 8 14 4 291 165 0.638 126
1966 1994 Charlie Hough 216 216 0 0 75 55 291 271 0.518 20
1964 1984 Jim Palmer 268 152 8 3 14 6 290 161 0.643 129
1920 1943 Freddie Fitzsimmons 217 146 0 3 73 64 290 213 0.577 77
1909 1929 Jeff Pfeffer (1) 158 112 0 1 130 98 288 211 0.577 77
1912 1931 Carl Mays 208 126 3 4 75 57 286 187 0.605 99
1961 1982 Luis Tiant* 229 172 3 0 52 30 284 202 0.584 82
1957 1975 Bob Gibson 251 174 7 2 25 25 283 201 0.585 82
1895 1910 Vic Willis 249 205 0 1 31 32 280 238 0.541 42
1950 1971 Jim Bunning 224 184 55 66 279 250 0.527 29
1986 2007 Curt Schilling 216 146 11 2 50 43 277 191 0.592 86
1976 1994 Jack Morris 254 186 7 4 15 13 276 203 0.576 73

Whitey Ford started 156 career games in which the Yankees scored 6 runs or more, and never lost one of them. And he did that despite facing unusually stiff competition. In his rookie season, Ford made just 2 of his 12 starts against .500 or better teams – but from his return from the Army in 1953 until Casey Stengel’s last season in 1960, Ford made more than half his starts against .500 or better teams. Partly that’s because more than half the rest of the league was over .500 in those years, but in 1954, 1959 and 1960 there were only two other winning teams in the AL. One of the great what-ifs is what the early 50s World Serieses look like if Ford is on the 1951 and 1952 Yankees and Don Newcombe is on the 1952 and 1953 Dodgers instead of in the military (the 1952 and 1953 Serieses went to the Yankees in 7 and 6 games, respectively). From Ford’s arrival in July 1950 through the end of the 1954 season, counting the postseason, the Yankees went 267-134 (a .666 winning percentage).
The best defensive support of any pitcher – most sophisticated fielding metrics place Brooks Robinson and Mark Belanger among the four or five most valuable defensive players of all time, and that’s before we get to Paul Blair – helped Jim Palmer throw a High Quality Start in 47.6% of his career starts, the best of any post-1920 pitcher.
We don’t really have a full record of what Luis Tiant did before coming to the U.S., as he had been pitching since “age 16.”
As I’ve noted before, Jack Morris actually had two great “years” that just weren’t within a single season: from June 1, 1983 to May 31, 1984, Morris was 27-9 with a 2.36 ERA, with 24 complete games and 248 strikeouts in 317 innings; from July 5, 1986 through July 4, 1987, he went 26-5 with a 2.98 ERA. Had he done those in two single seasons, he might be in the Hall of Fame now even with the same relatively unimpressive career resume.
Honorable Mention

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1910 1933 Ray Caldwell 134 120 0 1 159 147 293 268 0.522 25
1928 1950 Luke Hamlin 73 76 213 147 286 223 0.562 63
1910 1930 Jim Bagby 127 89 1 1 151 131 279 221 0.558 58
1927 1966 Satchel Paige 28 31 0 0 248 103 276 134 0.673 142

Jim Bagby, like Krause, tasted big-league greatness for a short time, winning 31 games in 1920 as the ace of the Indians’ first World Championship team.
Satchel Paige started pitching in 1927 and was, in his last publicity-stunt start in the minors in 1966, a teammate of Johnny Bench. He went 21-12 with a 2.15 ERA at age 49-50 pitching for Miami in the International League in 1956-57. He threw shutouts in his second and third major league starts, at what was probably the age of 41. As uneven as the statistical record of his career is, every piece of it points to a tremendous pitcher, one who racked up 1990s-style strikeout rates against all types of competition between the 1920s and early 1940s and who was still far above the league strikeout average in the majors in his mid-40s.
The 250-274 Win Club

1st Last Pitcher W-MLB L-MLB W-Post L-Post W-Min L-min W(All) L(All) W% G+.500
1877 1887 Jim McCormick* 265 214 3 3 6 6 274 223 0.551 51
1928 1947 Curt Davis 158 131 0 1 115 93 273 225 0.548 48
1982 2007 David Wells 239 157 10 5 22 28 271 190 0.588 81
1884 1897 Bill Hutchinson* 182 163 87 54 269 217 0.553 52
1913 1935 Dolf Luque 194 179 1 0 72 45 267 224 0.544 43
1937 1956 Eddie Lopat 166 112 4 1 97 82 267 195 0.578 72
1936 1966 Bob Feller (4) 266 162 0 2 266 164 0.619 102
1912 1933 Eppa Rixey (1) 266 251 0 1 266 252 0.514 14
1897 1914 Jack Powell 245 254 21 18 266 272 0.494 -6
1905 1920 Eddie Cicotte 209 148 2 3 55 36 266 187 0.587 79
1972 1993 Frank Tanana 240 236 0 1 24 8 264 245 0.519 19
1916 1938 Waite Hoyt 237 182 6 4 21 44 264 230 0.534 34
1906 1933 Rube Marquard 201 177 2 5 61 43 264 225 0.540 39
1894 1913 Jesse Tannehill 197 117 65 34 262 151 0.634 111
1937 1959 Murray Dickson 172 181 0 1 90 63 262 245 0.517 17
1923 1946 Ted Lyons (3) 260 230 260 230 0.531 30
1990 2009 Pedro Martinez 219 100 6 4 35 20 260 124 0.677 136
1947 1967 Lew Burdette 203 144 4 2 53 49 260 195 0.571 65
1914 1934 Ray Kremer 143 85 2 2 115 145 260 232 0.528 28
1912 1934 Herb Pennock (1) 241 162 5 0 13 10 259 172 0.601 87
1897 1913 Rube Waddell 193 143 65 50 258 193 0.572 65
1927 1947 Mel Harder 233 186 24 15 257 201 0.561 56
1967 1990 Jerry Reuss 220 191 2 8 34 33 256 232 0.525 24
1965 1985 Jerry Koosman 222 209 4 0 28 30 254 239 0.515 15
1901 1915 George Mullin 228 196 3 3 22 22 253 221 0.534 32
1956 1975 Jim Perry 215 174 0 1 38 28 253 203 0.555 50
1871 1877 Al Spalding 252 65 252 65 0.795 187
1989 2011 Tim Wakefield 200 180 5 7 47 49 252 236 0.516 16
1957 1977 Mike Cuellar 185 130 4 4 63 60 252 194 0.565 58
1942 1972 Hoyt Wilhelm (3) 143 122 0 0 109 67 252 189 0.571 63
1935 1953 Harry Brecheen 133 92 4 1 114 77 251 170 0.596 81
1970 1991 Rick Reuschel 214 191 1 4 35 15 250 210 0.543 40
1986 2009 John Smoltz 213 155 15 4 22 26 250 185 0.575 65
1979 2000 Orel Hershiser 204 150 8 3 38 30 250 183 0.577 67
1951 1968 Larry Jackson 194 183 56 32 250 215 0.538 35
1930 1953 Dutch Leonard 191 181 59 57 250 238 0.512 12

Continue reading WINFILES II

WINFILES: Baseball’s 400 Win Club

Let’s take a new look at an old-fashioned topic: baseball’s winningest pitchers.
One of baseball’s most unique aspects is the outsize role of the starting pitcher in each game, reflected in the fact that only a pitcher (usually the starter) is assigned a “win” or “loss.” Even today’s advanced statistical formulas confirm the primacy of the starting pitcher: using the popular “Wins Above Replacement” metric, Babe Ruth in 1923 is the only non-pitcher since 1872 to play more than 8 games in a season and earn more than 1 WAR per 11 games played; 167 starting pitchers have topped that threshold just since 2010. Put another way, in any given baseball game, a typical #1 or 2 starting pitcher is at least as valuable to his team as Babe Ruth at his best.
That’s never more true than in October. In the era of three divisions and a wild card (expanded in 2012 to a play-in game, and sometimes requiring a play-into-the-play-in game), starting pitchers throw fewer regular-season innings and make more postseason starts than ever in the game’s history. 2013 saw the end of the career of Andy Pettitte, whose 44 career postseason starts and 276.2 career postseason innings are career records and represent more than 8% of his career workload and more than a full season’s work for a 21st century pitcher. This will also be the first year on the Hall of Fame ballot for Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Mike Mussina, all stalwarts of the post-1994 October order (it’s also the second year of Curt Schilling on the ballot, and next year we get John Smoltz). The games they won there are a part of their stories.
The Story Of The Win
Traditionally, 300 wins has been the gold standard for a successful pitching career. There’s a simple logic to this: 30 wins a year for a decade, or 20 wins a year for 15 years, or 15 wins a year for 20 years, or 12 wins a year for 25 years…no matter how you slice it, you need an exceptional combination of success and durability to win that many games. And winning games is, after all, the point of playing them; a starting pitcher who walks off the field with a W can always feel satisfied with his day.
In the age of advanced statistical analysis, wins have come under a lot of criticism as a yardstick of pitching success. Much of that criticism is fair. Pitchers have always been at the mercy of their offensive and defensive support to win games; while some of these factors even out over the course of a career, not all do. Among the greats, for example, Jim Palmer had unusually good defensive support, while Warren Spahn and Christy Mathewson had unusually good offenses behind them.
Then again, applying current criticisms of the win retrospectively can overlook the extent to which the game has changed over time. The big change in the starter’s role is the role of the bullpen: with starters finishing ever fewer of their games and increasingly leaving games in the fifth or sixth inning, they are more and more at the mercy of their bullpens as well. This is not a new trend – complete games have been in steady decline since the dawn of organized baseball in the 1870s, part of a broader pattern of declining pitcher workloads – but the late 1970s was really the tipping point, after which it became accepted that even a staff ace would finish no more than half of his own games. Roger Clemens in 1987 was the last starter to finish half his starts; no pitcher did that more than twice after 1977. By contrast, Spahn completed at least half his starts in 17 different seasons, Fergie Jenkins in 9 seasons. The argument that awarding wins to the starter vs the reliever is arbitrary may be a fair one in the baseball of 2013, but it made a lot more sense in Spahn’s day. And in other ways, pitchers have more control over their situation than they used to – defense is actually less important in today’s game than ever before, due to historically low percentages of plate appearances resulting in a ball in play – down to around 70% where it was once above 90%. Instead, we’re more likely than ever to see a time at bat end with a walk, strikeout or home run, all of which are one-on-one contests between pitcher and batter.
So, if we’re doing a sophisticated look at ranking baseball’s best pitchers, we’d use multiple measurements more precise than their win totals. But if the win has fallen from its once-privileged place in the world of analysis, career won-loss records still tell a story of the great pitching careers, of successes and failures both earned and fortuitous – and any list of the game’s winningest pitchers over their careers will still overlap quite a lot with any list of the game’s best. As Joe Posnanski has written, sometimes you have to sit back and let the numbers tell those stories. To expand that story, let’s taking a look baseball’s winningest professional pitchers, including not only the postseason but also the minor leagues and in some cases other professional leagues in the United States and abroad. As we’ll see, in some cases there’s a good deal more to the story, our appreciation of which can only be deepened by taking in the whole picture.
Major, Minor; Season, Postseason
Now that baseball-reference.com has expanded to more comprehensive (if still not 100% complete) coverage of the minor leagues, we have a consistent source of data to see the all-time wins list in a new light – because most everybody on the list of the game’s great pitchers has won games outside of their career win totals. Some pitched a good deal in the postseason, as noted. And most pitched at least some years in the minor leagues, others quite a few years, as we will see below. It was particularly common in the years between 1900 and 1940 for major league players to not only spend years working their way up the minor league ladder, but also spend additional years working their way back down it once their major league primes had passed.
To understand why, a very brief history is in order. Professional, league baseball began with the National Association in 1871, followed five years later by the foundation of the National League. The “major” leagues were in a state of flux from 1871 until the American League opened up shop in 1901, and unsurprisingly, other “minor” leagues were even less stable in terms of things like keeping the same franchises in business from year to year, having a standard length to the schedule and keeping players on their rosters from jumping teams – to say nothing of their record-keeping. The numbers laid out below include largely complete minor league records from around 1900 onward, but are much spottier for the 19th century.
Beginning in 1903, the NL and AL each had 8 teams, which didn’t change cities until 1953; none of those teams was south or west of St. Louis, leaving many markets without a major league team. The leagues also stopped raiding each other’s rosters, with the brief exception of the 1914-15 Federal League experiment, baseball’s last effort at a third major league. This was an era of peace and stability in the game, but it left the players little bargaining power, so few made very much money. And until Branch Rickey began building the first farm system beginning in the early 1920s, most minor league teams were independent businesses. The result was that many experienced players spent significant time in the minor leagues – either they liked it on the West Coast (the Pacific Coast League being the most powerful minor league), or their teams wouldn’t sell them to the majors, or they were ex-big-leaguers employed as player-managers or just looking to make a living. Between the late teens and the early 1950s, there were also Negro League teams composed of black players who couldn’t cross MLB’s color line, although for a variety of economic reasons the Negro Leagues generally played less regular schedules than white baseball did (contributing to the difficulty of getting reliable Negro League statistics). Minor league competition was rarely the equal of the big leagues, but these were nonetheless competitive leagues.
With that background in mind, let’s take a look at baseball’s winningest pitchers, adding up major league wins, minor league wins and major league postseason wins. I haven’t included exhibitions like spring training or the All-Star Game (starters can only go three innings in the ASG anyway), and stats on the minor league postseason are too irregularly kept to be included. In a few cases down the list, I include statistics from Japan, and in just one (Satchel Paige) is there sufficient information to include Negro League stats.

Continue reading WINFILES: Baseball’s 400 Win Club