Saw Jon Lester get his 200th and immediately thought to myself that MLB used to shit out 200 game winners like they had the runs or something. Not now apparently.

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yeah those days are done for sure. wasn't clemens the last 300+ game winner? or tom glavine...i think. and that was almost 15 years ago.

Scherzer is the only guy with a chance.. I could see him pitching another 6 or 7 years.

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I think it is going to be tough the way that they are currently using pitchers.

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It'll be someone with a rubber arm who stays fit and pitches until they're 50. Will probably happen again.

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Scherzer would need to average 15-16 wins a year for 7 years to get to 300. Can't see that happening.

There will be, but it is going to be awhile. Will need to cycle back towards starting pitchers going longer in games.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Funny that two of the pitchers mentioned in this thread are Lester and Scherzer. Lester wasn't a disaster for the Cubs, but it's obvious the Cubs would have been much better off signing Scherzer in 2015. Scherzer has earned every penny of his 7-yr contract. Here are his Cy Young results for each year:

2015 (5)
2016 (1)
2017 (1)
2018 (2)
2019 (3)
2020 (-)
2021 (1 likely)

So every year except the Covid year he was top 5. Conversely, Lester finished in the top 5 just once (2nd in 2016).

It will be interesting to see what kind of deal Max gets. I agree he's got several productive years left.

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Yes. His name is Dylan Cease

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I'm surprised MLB hasn't removed the 5-inning minimum yet.

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It's possible another savant of grips and control, like Maddux, will show up. Such a guy could win 300 but would have to throw 120 pitches per start consistently.

Before COVID/Tommy John, Verlander probably had a better than 50% shot at winning 300. He was at 226 wins going into his age 37 season, and had just won a CY Young. You'd have to think he would have grabbed 30 wins in 2020/2021, that would have put him at 250 going into age 39.

It's interesting because Joe Posnanski wrote something that makes sense a lot. These milestones aren't made at the beginning of a career, but at the end. Look at a guy like Gaylord Perry. He won 300 games, but he had to slog through some real shitty seasons at age 41-44 to get there. During those years Perry probably made more than he did when he was winning Cy Youngs. So he stuck around in part, or maybe mostly, for the money.

What motivation does a 40 year old Clayton Kershaw have to go out there and get his brains bashed in pitching for the Pirates or something? Almost none. Perry pitched because he didn't have the generational wealth that Kershaw did. I mean sure, Perry probably wanted to get to 300 wins, but I'm guessing if he had 300MM in the bank, he would have been fine with 290 career wins.

To support this point I think Posnanski said that through their age 28 seasons Madison Bumgardner had more wins than Perry. So I think there is a lot to that, a lot of these milestones are achieved late in a career, not early.

Look at a guy like Buehrle, with his pitching style he easily could have logged another 5 seasons @ 10 wins, which puts him at age 41 sitting on about 265 wins. He'd have to ask himself if he wanted to slog through another 3-4 seasons, likely with bad teams, for a shot at 300. At some point you're tired of being on the road and being away from your family and you're looking at more money in the bank than you can possibly spend.

All that said, I'd like to think I see another 300 game winner in my lifetime.

26 pitchers have retired with 300+ wins in the ~150 year history of MLB


Kershaw's the only current active pitcher who has an outside shot:



Among relatively recent retirees:

Maddux (355)
Clemens (354)
Glavine (305)
Unit (303)

Recent also rans:

Mussina (270)
Moyer (269)
CC (251)
Bartolo (247)

Mussina is the perfect example of a milestone being achieved late. In his age 39 season Mussina finished 6th in Cy Young voting, and won 20 games. Barring a UCL type injury he easily could have achieved the additional 30 wins to get to 300. He just chose to retire, and it probably had a lot to do with the 144MM he made over his career.

Moyer only won 269 games because he pitched for about a million years.

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Its hard to progress through the farm if you don't have stupid velocity. The guys that do take forever to make it to the bigs, starting way too late to have a chance at three-hundred. What you will get though eventually is somebody who breaks into the majors at a young age with freakish durability and makes it.

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"Yes, I would just like to say I'm sailing with the rock, and I'll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I'll be back, I'll be back."

yeah a little unfair to put him up against guys who didn't take 55 seasons to get to that number.

To be fair, his time in WW2 took 2 years from him.

Well....that pretty much tells us we won't see another 300 game winning starting pitching in this era.

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Yeah, 200 wins will be tough in the next 15 years. It's insane how much pitching has changed over the past 15 years.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Other than Cole, nobody currently between 100-150 has much of a chance at 200.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Here is an amazing statistic: After being acquired by the Cubs early in 1966 and pitching primarily out of the bullpen with a couple of spot starts, Leo Durocher moved Jenkins permanently into the starting rotation on August 25, 1966 for his last nine starts.

From that day until the end of his career, Jenkins had 591 starts and 14 relief appearances. In that time he had 499 decisions and 1 save. Several of his no-decisions were games where he pitched 9 full innings (or more) and the game went to extra innings.

499/591 = 84.4%

If Durocher had moved him straight into the rotation when they got him in 1966, he would have ended up with 300 wins.

Jenkins is my favorite Cub, and it's not even close.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal