Aug 9, 2018

  • Bradford DoolittleESPN Staff Writer

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    • Sports reporter, Kansas City Star, 2002-09
    • Writer, Baseball, Baseball Prospectus
    • Co-author, Pro Basketball game Prospectus
    • Member, Baseball game Writers Association of America
    • Fellow member, Professional person Basketball game Writers Association

The Houston Astros' Justin Verlander volition take the mound on Th for his first shot at career victory No. 200. If he gets it, the baseball game world will non stop to recognize the moment. Commemorative medallions will non be produced. There will non be a Justin Verlander 200th Win Bobblehead given out next year. (Well, on that last 1, maybe.)

When Verlander reaches 200 wins, whether it's Thursday against the Seattle Mariners or on some future date, it volition exist a milestone worth marking. However, it'due south non the number that historically turns a lot of heads. That number would be 300, as in the hallowed 300-win society. For Verlander, 200 wins will be overnice, but information technology seems clear that the milestone will non bring with it the hoopla that a 300th win would generate.

There isn't much we can do about that. We've always viewed 300 wins every bit the ultimate accomplishment for a pitcher, and information technology has been awhile since we had a new member of the 300-win lodge. The last to join was Randy Johnson back on June 4, 2009. At that place have been no active 300-game winners since Johnson retired afterward that season. It's condign one of those old-timey barriers, things players used to do, like win 30 games in a season or hitting .400. It doesn't happen anymore.

If whatever active histrion is going to attain 300 wins, Verlander is the well-nigh probable candidate, unless it'due south Washington's Max Scherzer. The active wins leaders are Texas' Bartolo Colon, who is 45 years old, and the Yankees' CC Sabathia, who is 38. Sabathia is still constructive, simply he's on a year-to-year footing as far as retirement goes, and unless he can eke out four wins between now and the end of the season, he'll have finished with unmarried-digit W'southward in 4 of the past five seasons.

In the 2018 Bill James Handbook, Scherzer was given the highest probability of reaching 300 wins, at just 33 percent. He'due south already at 15 wins this season, and then the quest is live. Verlander was next at 15 percent, followed past Zack Greinke at fourteen percent. Everyone else was in unmarried digits or at zippo.

We all know what has contributed to the slowdown of 300-game winners: Rotations are larger. Teams rely on bullpens more than ever, which leads to fewer starter decisions and more leads blown after a pitcher has left the game. We haven't had a xxx-game winner since Denny McLain in 1968. Last yr, no pitcher even had 30 decisions.

All this makes it worth asking: Is 200 wins the new 300?

Many of yous, if yous've come up to the game through the prism of sabermetrics or even if you've gotten into analytics tardily in the game and thus revised your consideration of onetime standards, are saying the same thing right now. You're saying that wins don't matter. If you lot're Brian Kenny of the MLB Network, yous're shouting, "Impale the win!"

If we're talking near one-season numbers, and then aye, I have to agree with you. You accept to look no further than Mets ace Jacob deGrom, who must take left his lucky rabbit's pes in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where New York trains in the spring. After throwing six shutout innings Wednesday in a Mets win over Cincinnati, deGrom has a season ERA of 1.77. His record is 6-7.

That said, I am withal on board with looking at career win totals. A loftier win total -- such equally 200 -- tells yous a lot. It tells you that a bullpen has been durable. He has been consequent. And given plenty years for the vagaries of the poorly designed win stat to somewhat even out, it tells you roughly how frequently a pitcher has outperformed his opponent.

That isn't to say, fifty-fifty at the career level, that wins should be viewed as a bottom-line metric. There is much noise in the stat. It has ever been thus. Pitchers used to pile upwards so many decisions that it wasn't terribly uncommon for an boilerplate or worse pitcher to crack, or at to the lowest degree approach, 200 wins. Journeyman Bobo Newsom won 211 games -- and lost 222. Charlie Hough won 216 and lost 216.

Through 1990, 68 pitchers had reached 200 wins. 3 of them -- Joe Niekro, Jerry Reuss and Lew Burdette -- had career ERAs that were worse than the averages of the leagues they pitched in. Thirteen others had better-than-average ERAs that were within 0.25 runs of break even. That includes 324-game winner Don Sutton.

Now, though, information technology is highly unlikely that a bullpen would get to 200 wins without existence a really good pitcher. Teams simply take found a better way to distribute innings, with a lot of the frames going to power relievers with above-average run-prevention abilities.

Colon and Sabathia are the only agile pitchers with more than 200 wins, so Verlander will make three. At that place are only eight active pitchers who accept reached 150 wins. All of them have ERAs at least 0.threescore runs better than the league boilerplate, with ane exception: Colon is only 0.26 amend. He is, in more ways than i, a throwback to an era that is besides recent to exist called bygone.

Every bit much equally the win stat has been maligned -- with adept reason -- in that location are things about it that, if the stat were better designed, would be fantastic. Beginning, if nosotros limited the stat to comparing starters, you'd accept a number of advantages already in place. The pitchers are doing the same job, in the same ballpark, on the same day, in the aforementioned environmental conditions. What meliorate style could nosotros contextualize the success charge per unit of the starting pitcher matchup over a number of years?

Alas, the win stat as we know it is too deeply embedded to be overhauled at this signal in baseball history. And considering it's designed the fashion that it is, in today'south game, wins are increasingly difficult for a starting pitcher to come up by.

In a fashion, though, this just validates the win accomplishments of Colon, Sabathia and Verlander, as it volition Greinke, who is at 184 West's. Just the elite of the elite are going to get the innings, and the decisions that come up with them, to compile high career win totals. The boilerplate bullpen is no longer likely to break into the exclusive clubs.

Verlander said this flavour that he could encounter himself pitching for another ten years, so perhaps 300 wins is not out of the question. Just even if he doesn't become there, 200 wins or 250, when put in the context of the contemporary game, would be clumsily impressive on its own.

In many means, 200 is the new 300. So while we won't be doing backflips over Justin Verlander's side by side win, that doesn't mean we should lose sight of just how impressive the milestone really is.