Pitchers winning 300 games is one of those issues, I am aware, about which I write too often.   However, while I generally pooh-pooh the idea that pitchers are going to stop winning 300 games, I do acknowledge that it is theoretically possible for this to happen.   .400 hitters have become extinct; 30-game winners have become extinct.   300-inning pitchers have disappeared.   It is possible for the same thing to happen to 300-game winners.

            One method that I have used since the 1970s to track this issue is to look at the league-leading wins total. . .what we could call the “normal league-leading” number.    The normal league-leading number, in any category, is the average of the last ten players to lead the league in that category.    In wins, at the moment, this is 19.9:

            That adds up to 199 wins, an average of 19.9.    Let’s call it 20.   If a league-leading pitcher wins 20 games, then a 300 wins represents 15 years worth of league-leading performance. 

            If the league-leading numbers go up, then the number of years required go down.   If the league-leading numbers go down, the number of years required goes up.   We can track how difficult it is to win 300 games by tracking the league-leading totals.

            It recently occurred to me, though, that one can track this change in a different and perhaps better way by looking at the data for just one season.   In 1884, seven major league pitchers won a total of 329 games—59 by Old Hoss Radbourn, 52 by Guy Hecker, 48 by Charlie Buffinton, 46 by Pud Galvin, 43 by Billy Taylor, 41 by Charlie Sweeney, and 40 by either Jim McCormick or Bill Sweeney.   Eight pitchers won 40 or more games.

            If seven pitchers can win 300 games in a season, then, how long would it take a top-flight pitcher to win 300 games?   Seven years.   You just have to remain one of those top seven pitchers for seven years.

            Seven is the lowest “300 group total” in the history of baseball.    In 1876, 1877 and 1878 there were fewer than 300 major league games played, thus there is no number of pitchers required to win 300 games.    The first year in major league history in which 300 games were played was 1879, and in 1879 it required 13 pitchers to win a total of 300 games.    This number dropped to 7 in 1884, and was 8 or 9 for most of the 1880s:

            They were still figuring out the rules then.   Pitchers in 1880 were still required to throw underhand—and still did.  By 1883 they were still required to throw underhand, but no longer did.  By 1886 they were no longer required to.   Pitchers in this era threw 500, 600 innings in a season.    You could rack up a lot of wins in a few years.  

            In the 1890s pitchers began to develop sophisticated throwing motions, and to throw hard.   Increases in velocity required the mound to be moved back to 60 feet, 6 inches beginning in 1893:

            By the end of the decade win totals were low enough that one had to remain a top-flight pitcher for 12 to 14 years to win 300 games.     This remained the standard, generally speaking, into the early 1920s:

            During all of that period, the Dead Ball Era, the top pitchers won 30+ games, and a pitcher could get to 300 with a run of 12 to 14 years, excepting 1918, which was a war-shortened season, and 1919, when they chopped the schedule to 140 games.   This snuck upward by two in the early 1920s, and then one or two more in the late 1930s:

            By the late 1930s the “300 group total” was up to 18 pitchers.   It stayed about there through the 1940s, and ticked upward again in the 1950s:

            I would like to pause for a second to reflect on the uncanny steadiness of this number.   In theory, this number could fluctuate wildly from year to year.   In 1955 no American League pitcher won more than 18 games.   In 1956 six American League pitchers won 20 or more, and Don Newcombe won 27 in the National League.   The number, which was 19 in 1955, ’57 and ’58, suddenly dropped to 15.

            It could fluctuate, but it normally doesn’t.   The era 1889-1891 is one of the wildest and most unstable eras in baseball history—but the numbers go 9, 9, 9.   The number from 1901 to 1903 go 13, 13, 13.  From 1921 to 1923 they go 14, 14, 14, followed by 16, 16, 16.    From 1940 to 1942 they go 17, 17, 17.   

            The numbers are very stable, but there is, from 1900 to 1959, a gradual increase in them.    In the Walter Johnson era a pitcher could win 300 games in 12 high-quality seasons.    By the Whitey Ford era it was up to 19 years.  If that number goes over 20—even to 21—if it is stable at 21, 300-game winners disappear.     In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the number went back in time by 50 years:

            By the mid-1970s the number was stable at 15.    Several things contributed to this—the addition of 8 extra games to the schedule, expansion, the Designated Hitter rule, other things.    From 1962 to 1974, however, the number was usually 15.

            We could predict, based on that, that there would be an explosion of 300-game winners—and in fact there was.   Carlton, Sutton, Nolan Ryan, Phil Niekro, Gaylord Perry, Tom Seaver, all active in that period, all won 300 games.   By the late 1970s, however, the number was beginning to work its way back up:

            Basically, over-simplifying, during all of the 1980s and 1990s it required 17 top-flight seasons for a pitcher to win 300 games.    Several pitchers still did.   

            Then we come to our own decade:

            We started the decade back at 16, then stabilized at 18 (18, 18, 18), and then this year it took 19 pitchers to add together to get a total of 300 wins. 

            19 is a high number.   19 is the highest number ever, except for the strike-shortened seasons and the years 1876-1878.    19 is close to 21, and at 21, 300 game winners are gone.  

            There are two kinds of predictions.  In the 1970s and early 1980s I could and did “predict” that there would be a flood of 300-game winners.   But this was not really a prediction.   It was an observation about the reality of the game today. and about how that would manifest itself in the future.

            To say that this number will go on up from 19 to 21, however, would be an actual prediction.   It went to 19 before, in the late 1950s, but then history turned a corner and went off in a different direction.   Is it possible we could turn a corner now?

            Sure it is.    Pitchers don’t have to come out of the game at the 100-pitch mark; it’s just a choice that managers make.   If the commissioner succeeds in speeding up the games, one result of that should be more complete games, which would drive this number down, thus making it easier to win 300 games.    All I will really say is that it is still possible to win 300 games now.    Ten years from now, if that number is 21, 22, 22, 22. . ..it’s over.