I was answering a question from a reporter, having to do with 300-game winners, and my mind went back over familiar things that I have talked to you about before.   Early Wynn in 1963, asked if he was disappointed that Warren Spahn had beaten him to 300 wins, said that no, he was delighted, because this way he (Wynn) would always be the last pitcher to win 300 games.   Nobody would ever win 300 games again

                In the late 1970s I tried to publish an article entitled "300 Game Winners:  There is going to be a flood", the premise of the article being that we were positioned to see a whole bunch of pitchers win 300 games in the 1980s—Carlton, Seaver, Gaylord Perry, Sutton, Niekro, Nolan Ryan.   The editor thought I was nuts.   It was obvious that this was going to happen, if you looked at their ages and win totals, but the editor wouldn’t believe it.     After those guys there was another round of sportswriters claiming that Nolan Ryan would be the last-ever 300-game winner, and then there was another round of them—Clemens, Maddux, Johnson, Glavine.   People for some reason want to believe that 300-game winners are going extinct, and will rush to that conclusion at any opportunity.

                There are certain factors operating over time to make 300-game winners less common, and there are certain factors operating to make them more common.    My analysis of these various factors would be no better than yours, and, honestly, I’m not sure that anything relevant to this issue has changed in the last 25 years, except perhaps for the expansions of the 1990s creating a few more 300-win candidates.   The other things that changed—the DH Rule, the change from the 4-man to the 5-man rotation, the lengthening of the schedule to 162 games—all happened more than 25 years ago, and several pitchers have already won 300 games entirely after all of those changes, clearly establishing that it is still possible for a pitcher to win 300 games.

                The bullpens?   Well. . .but starting pitchers get about as many decisions (per team) now as they did 25 years ago.    In 1987 starting pitchers accounted for 115 decisions per team; the bullpens, for 47.   In 2012 starting pitchers accounted for 117 per team; the bullpens, 45.     There has been no shift of decisions to the bullpen in the last 25 years; thus, nothing has happened there that seems relevant to a pitcher’s chance of winning 300 games.

                That is all old business.    I had a new thought here, which was that we could easily measure the pool of potential 300-game winners.    What I have done before is to estimate a given pitcher’s chance of winning 300 games.   What is James Shields’ chance of winning 300 games?   What is CC Sabathia’s chance?    What I realized we could do, thinking about this now, is to measure the pool of candidates—comparing not CC Sabathia to James Shields, but 2012 to 1974.   

                First, we set up a very simple set of rules to assess the strength of each 300-win candidate.   The rules are:

                1)  The pitcher gets one point for each 20 wins that he has in his career.

                2)  The pitcher gets one point for each 3 years than he is younger than 45 years of age.

                3)  Points awarded under rules one and two are discounted by 20% if the pitcher pitched less than 200 innings, 40% if less than 150 innings, 60% if less than 100 innings, and 80% if less than 50 innings.

                And there’s a fourth rule that we’ll get to in a minute.  The highest-scoring pitchers of all time are two 19^th-century pitchers and Christy Mathewson after the 1911 season; they all score at "19".   Mathewson after the 1911 season had 289 wins, which is 14 points, and he was 30 years old, so he gets 5 points for that.   That’s a total of 19.    All of the (three) pitchers who score at 19 did in fact go on to win 300 games.

                A bunch of pitchers score at 18, but the last one of those was Walter Johnson in 1919, so that’s not too relevant to today.   A bunch of pitchers score at 17, but the last one of those was Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1923.    Greg Maddux after the 2003 season and Roger Clemens after the 2001 season scored at 16.    Mike Mussina, Randy Johnson, and Tom Glavine got to 15, as well as Clemens and Maddux.

                The fourth rule is that if a pitcher has more than 280 career wins, his score cannot be less than his career win total, minus 280, regardless of age or innings pitched.    I said there were three pitchers at "19", but actually there was a fourth.   Early Wynn after the 1962 season had 299 career wins, so he also was at "19". 

                Historically, four pitchers have scored at "19", and all four did go on to 300 wins.   In terms of exact numbers, 9 of 11 have reached 300 who have been at 18 (82%), 10 of 12 who have been at 17 (83%), 20 of 36 who have been at 16 (56%), 26 of 51 from 15 (51%), 35 of 90 from 14 (39%), 32 of 143 from 13 (22%), 40 of 247 from 12 (16%), and 38 of 373 from 11 (10%).    5% of pitchers who have been at "10" have gone on to win 300 games, 3% of pitchers from "9", 1% of pitchers from "8", and 2/10ths of one percent from "7".   

                It is essentially consistent with the record, then, to value a pitcher at 19 at "90", 18 at "80", 17 at "70". ..on down to 11 at "10".   That’s a simple image of the "pool value" of a pitcher at each level.    We will assign a pitcher at 10 a pool value of 5, a pitcher at 9 a pool value of 3, and a pitcher at 8 a pool value of 1.   Pitchers at 7 or less we will just ignore, since they haven’t shown us anything that suggests they will be 300-game winners.

                In this way we can measure the pool of potential 300-game winners after each season in major league history.     After the first season of major league baseball there were 8 pitchers who qualified for the pool, but their total pool value was just 14. . ..obviously, nobody could establish himself as a serious 300-win candidate in just one season.    These numbers went up quickly in the first few years

And continued to ascend rapidly through the 1880s:

                A pool value of 610 indicates, in general terms, that there should be about six active pitchers who will get to 300 career wins—not counting any active pitcher who already has 300 career wins; those are not 300-win "candidates", so we ignore them.   In fact, only four of the 1889 pitchers did go on to 300 wins (Mickey Welch, John Clarkson, Tim Keefe and Old Hoss Radbourne), so they underachieved a little bit, as a group.

                Pitchers from the 1880s often were credited with 40 wins a year, sometimes 50, so it didn’t take a pitcher 20 years to get to 300 wins.   The pitching business changed substantially in 1893, when the pitcher’s mound was moved back to 60 feet, 6 inches.    Keefe and Welch won their 300^th games in 1890, which made them no longer 300-win candidates, so that immediately shrank the pool, and then the game changed in the mid-1890s.  

                Well. . .I suppose I should dwell on that a moment, make sure people are keeping up.   In 1876 most teams used one starting pitcher every game.   The pitching distance was shorter, and pitchers threw underhanded, delivering the ball at the height requested by the hitter; the pitcher was more the initiator of the action than the determiner of the outcome.    These things changed quickly.   By the mid-1880s most teams used two starting pitchers; by the early 1890s, three.  By 1900 some teams were using four-man starting rotations.

                However, the conditions of the game, which involved many double-headers and frequent rainouts and longer breaks for travel, did not allow for great regularity in pitcher usage patterns.   Even though a team might have a four-man pitching "rotation", they also might have a five-game, three-day series or a four-day, seven-game series, so pitchers would start on short rest or long rest with no great predictability.    Up until 1920, teams would sometimes start a pitcher Friday and again on Sunday in a big series—or if a starting pitcher pitched poorly, he might disappear from the rotation for ten days without any explanation.    It was a rotation/catch-as-catch can.  

                Anyway, the 300-win candidates pool went down in 1890 because two of the leading candidates crossed the wire at 300 wins, whereas the number of possible candidates went up because there was a third league in 1890.     The "610" pool of 300-win candidates in 1890 is the largest the pool has ever been.   We’ve never gotten back to 610:

                Through the 1890s, 30-win seasons were commonplace, so 300 wins was only ten years work.   Thirty-seven pitchers won thirty games in the 1890s, as opposed to ten from 1900-1909, seven from 1910-1919, and four since 1920.   A pitcher could get to be a serious 300-win candidate pretty quickly.     The pool of potential 300-game winners shrank next when Kid Nichols (1899) and Cy Young (1901) crossed the 300-win threshold, then recovered as Christy Mathewson, Eddie Plank and others emerged as serious 300-win candidates, the "others" being a series of guys who didn’t make it—Addie Joss, Ed Walsh, Rube Walberg, Iron Man McGinnity, Jack Powell, Vic Willis, etc:

                After 1910 the dominant pitchers in the game were Walter Johnson and Pete Alexander.   Christy Mathewson crossed the 300-win mark in 1912.   After that the pool of 300-win candidates stayed in the range of 200 to 300 points—two to three likely 300-game winners—for the rest of the decade, with Pete and Walter being the biggest part of that:

                The numbers hung in that range for about ten more years, and then dropped sharply in the early 1930s:

                There was a dramatic "aging" of the major league population in the late 1920s, which I think was driven by economics.   The popularity of baseball exploded after 1920 due to

                1)  Babe Ruth, and

                2)  Throwing the gamblers out the window.

                I think what happened was that, as attendance went up, salaries went up, and as salaries went up, there was a strong incentive for major league players to stay in the game rather than to retire.   In any case there were many, many more older players in the majors in the late 1920s than ten years earlier.    When those players finally gave up the ghost, then there was a youth movement in the 1930 era, and in that era there were increasing numbers of 300-win candidates, but most of them were young pitchers who were a long way from 300 wins.

                The only pitcher to win 300 games between Pete Alexander (early 1920s) and Spahn and Wynn (early 1960s) was Lefty Grove.    Red Ruffing and Bob Feller might have gotten there had it not been for World War II; in fact, I think we should say of each of them that they probably would have made it to 300, had it not been for World War II.

                Anyway, something very interesting happened to the pool of 300-win candidates in the mid-1930s:

                Between 1934 and 1935, the number of candidates for 300 wins dropped from 47 to 36—but the size of the pool increased from 151 to 240.   What happened?

                In a sense this is a normal maturation process.   You have a group of young pitchers; they all look great, and any one of them has a chance to win 300 games, but only a slim chance.   Over time, most of them fall off the radar, while one or two step forward to be serious 300-win candidates.   It just happened that in 1934-1935, this happened in an accelerated time frame.    In 1934 Lefty Grove had an injury season, and his run appeared to be over.   This left the top 300-win candidates in the game as Ted Lyons (score of 12), Guy Bush (11), Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons (11), and Earl Whitehill (11).   In 1935 Grove won 20 games, re-establishing himself as a serious contender, while his teammate Wes Ferrell, also injured in 1933 and 1934, won 25, putting him in a strong position as well; after the 1935 season he was 27 years old, and had 141 career wins, with five 20-win seasons.   After the 1935 season the leading 300-win candidates were Grove (14), Ferrell (13), Bush (12), Whitehill (12), while five new pitchers had stepped up to 11.

                During the War the number of 300-win candidates in the game fell to historic lows, while 1946 was a "starting-over" season, almost like 1876.    After 1946 the number of 300-win candidates began to grow steadily:

                In the 1950s there were three obvious candidates for 300 career wins:   Warren Spahn, Early Wynn, and Robin Roberts.    Roberts was actually the best 300-win candidate, among the three of them, for most of his career.    Roberts won his 200^th game at age 31, whereas Wynn and Spahn didn’t win their 35^th games until they were 35.    But Roberts was worked very, very hard by a series of bad Philadelphia teams in the late 1950s, had some difficult years, and fell short of 300, whereas Spahn and Wynn held on to reach the target.

                Spahn crossed 300 wins in 1961, Wynn in 1963, but the 300-win pool hardly noticed, as expansion, a longer schedule, and a pitcher-friendly environment created a pool of 300-win candidates behind them—Koufax, Gibson, Marichal, Drysdale, etc.   None of those guys made it, but in the mid-1960s, they were all good candidates:

                What followed, emerging about 1970, was the most remarkable group of starting pitchers in the history of baseball.    I mentioned before the ones who won 300 games—Carlton, Seaver, Niekro, Perry, Nolan Ryan, Sutton—but the list of outstanding pitchers in that generation who didn’t get to 300 wins is even longer:   Ferguson Jenkins, Tommy John, Luis Tiant, Blyleven, Jim Palmer, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Jim Kaat, Mickey Lolich.  

                The mind searches endlessly for the causes of every effect, and it will never come up empty.   It may come up with the wrong answer, but it will always come up with an answer; this is just how we are wired.    What I note about this generation of pitchers is how many of them were born during World War II or else very early in the Baby Boom era.  Carlton and Seaver were born in 1944, Ferguson Jenkins in late 1943, Sutton in early 1945.  Denny McLain was born in ’44, Jim Palmer in ’45.  I always think that these guys had an edge in their youth because, competing with the Baby Boomers as kids in the less-organized play of that era,  they were always the big kids, the kids who were a year older than the guys they were playing against.    Maybe it’s an arbitrary explanation.

                In any case, in the 1970s there was a remarkable explosion of pitchers who pitched very large numbers of innings every year, with great effectiveness, and did it for a long time.    Catfish Hunter got into the Hall of Fame for a simple reason:   he retired in time to get to the ballot first.   Catfish Hunter was 7 and a half years younger than Jim Kaat—but retired four years before Kaat did.    When Catfish hit the ballot in the mid-1980s he was the best pitcher on the ballot.   By the time Kaat got there, the ballot had been invaded by 300-game winners and near-300 game winners like Ferguson Jenkins and Jim Palmer.    Kaat was pushed way back in the line.    Jack Morris was a very, very good pitcher who had a wonderful career—but if had come up ten years earlier, he would have been just another one of those guys, another one of that long list of magnificent starting pitchers from that era.   I won’t even mention Jerry Koosman and Jerry Reuss and Rick Reuschel—but in another generation, they’d be near the top of the list.    It was an amazing time.

                This abundance of starting pitchers is reflected in the growth of the 300-win pool in those years:

                In 1967 the 300-win pool was 202 points—likely about two 300-game winners.   There were actually at least six 300-game winners active at that time, but in 1967 we had no way of suspecting that.    By 1980 the 300-win pool had expanded to 481 points—the largest it has been since 1890.   For 1981 we get a bad read on the data because of the strike, and after 1981 the pool begins to shrink as pitchers began to roll past 300 wins.

                As there are remarkably many #1 starters in the 1970s, there are remarkably few in the 1980s.   Most of the 1980s data is accounted for, actually, by holdovers from the 1970s.    The top four pitchers on the list from 1985 are Sutton, Ryan, Blyleven and Jerry Reuss.   Even in 1988 the top two names on the list are Blyleven and Nolan Ryan.

                Gradually, another generation of star pitchers began to emerge.   By 1990 Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Tom Glavine were in the majors and in the rotation, as well as worthy candidates like David Cone, Bret Saberhagen, Dwight Gooden, Frank Viola and Fernando Valenzuela.   The pool from the 1990s was not small; it merely looked small compared to the lake from the 1970s.    It was in this generation, the early 1990s, that it once more became fashionable to say that there would never be another 300-game winner.   By 2001 the fallacy of this had become apparent:

                And where are we now?   Well, the pool of 300-win candidates is thinner than it has been since the mid-1950s, discounting the "bad data reads" from the strike seasons.   This is the data since 2000:

                The pool is smaller than it has been in many years, and, a month into the 2013 season, the pool is much smaller than it appears to be here.   The leading candidates among current pitchers include (or included, at the end of the 2012 season) Roy Halladay, Verlander and Greinke, all of whom have had some setbacks, not wanting to make too much of Verlander’s thumb issue until we know what the facts are.

                Are 300-game winners dead?    300 game winners would be dead if the pool size was 18, or 20, or zero.    153. ..that still means there are probably one or two now-active pitchers who will get to 300 wins.   As I see it, nothing really has changed, in regard to winning 300 games, since the transition from four-man to five-man rotations was completed by the late 1980s.   But the 300-win pool is, in fact, smaller than it has been since I became a baseball fan.