Here in Chicago, Greg Maddux's quest for his 300th win is garnering a fair amount of attention.  It's not nearly as much notice, however, as one might expect, in light of the significance of the accomplishment.

I've long been on record as stating that there is no statistic in baseball more overrated than wins credited to pitchers.  For my money baseball is a team game.  Teams win games; pitchers do not.  There are too many vagaries--offensive support, with regard to which the pitcher has no relationship; fortuitous positioning, such as who happened to have been on the hill in the last half inning before a team took the lead for good; and just plain dumb luck--endemic to the assignment of wins to pitchers on a game-by-game, or even season-by-season basis for me to take the measure very seriously.  It's not so much that pitcher's wins (and, by extension, losses) are meaningless; it's just that they're so inherently flawed as to hold intrinsically less value than that traditionally assigned them by "baseball people."

However...like most flawed measures, when the numbers pile up to a critical mass, they're impossible to dismiss.

300 wins for a single pitcher is one of those thresholds that has taken on a kind of mystical semblance, much like 3000 hits or 500 home runs for hitters.  These markers have assumed the veneer of "guaranteed" Hall of Fame status for those who achieve them (presuming that they're not banned for life from baseball, but that's another matter).  While 500 home runs appears to have lost a bit of its luster as a function of the past decade's longball uptick, 300 wins is, if anything, representing an increasingly elite accomplishment as time goes by.  (More on that later.)

Barring something cataclysmic, Maddux will join some elite company.  In the history of "big league" baseball, 21 pitchers, excluding Maddux, have reached the 300-win plateau, and only 15 have done so in the modern (i.e. 300th win coming after 1900) history of the game.  What's more, Maddux will become only the second pitcher who primarily threw in a five-man rotation to reach the mark.  Roger Clemens is the other.

The Active List

What makes this particularly interesting, however, is that a peek at the list of active pitchers, ranked by wins, gives one real pause about identifying the next hurler to make a serious run at the 300-win mark.  The pitcher next closest to 300 wins on the list is Tom Glavine, who entered the 2004 season at the age of 38 with 251 wins.  Nearly four full months into the season, despite pitching very well overall, Glavine has yet to crack the 260-win mark (he has 259 to date) but remains, easily, the best hope to reach 300 wins.  Glavine has a legitimate shot to reach 300, but it's probably going to take at least one more big season--18+ wins say--next year for him to get close enough to be able to make the final push...and this, of course, assumes that he stays healthy.

After Glavine, Randy Johnson stands right on the 240-win mark.  Johnson, who appears destined at the moment to remain the property of an awful Arizona Diamondbacks team, turns 41 in September.  No one else on the list is even at the 210-win mark.  David Wells, who turned 41 this past May, is next, at 206 wins and has no shot.  Mike Mussina may be the next best hope with 208 wins at age 35.  Mussina turns 36 in December, but is on the disabled list and will miss the 200-inning threshold for the first time since 1994.  Does he really have 92 more wins in him?  Kevin Brown, who will be 40 in March, is next at 204 wins and is not a factor.  

The next best chance is held by Pedro Martinez, who has 177 career wins to date and won't turn 33 until October.  Still, Martinez, who hasn't eclipsed 30 starts in a season since 1998, has shown signs of slippage as a pitcher this year.  He still needs 123 more wins.  Martinez has won an amazing 57% of his starts (that's games that Pedro has won, not the percentage of games his team has won that he's started, a mark that is undoubtedly higher) since becoming a full-time starter in 1994.  Were he able to keep up that rate (a dubious prospect, but let's play along) he'd need roughly 215 more starts to get to 300.  If he could manage to average 30 starts a season (something he hasn't been able to do for his career up to this point, but again, let's play along), he'd need to pitch into an eighth additional season to make it...which would leave him at the age of 40.  That's all awfully unlikely to come about.

No one else currently active entered the 2004 season with as many as 100 wins and an age of less than 30.  Bartolo Colon, who turned 31 this May, began the season with exactly 100 wins.  He now has 109.  He needs 191 more before he retires to reach 300.  Anyone consider that a likely scenario?  Kevin Millwood presently has accumulated 97 career wins; he turns 30 in October.  Anyone think he has 203 more wins ahead of him in his career?

What we're looking for is someone who has eclipsed the 100-win mark by the time he reaches, say, 27 or 28 years of age.  Maddux had reached 117 wins before his 28th birthday.  Glavine had reached 108 wins at age 28.  Clemens cleared the 100-win mark when he was still 26.

There is no one in baseball who will enter the 2005 season with 100 wins under the age of 30 (and Millwood will be the only one at age 30 who will reach that mark, assuming he picks up three more victories before season's end).

What It Takes

What does it take to become a 300-game winner?

1) Good health and longevity are a must.  If a pitcher doesn't all but completely avoid the disabled list and pitches fewer than 20 big league seasons, there's virtually no chance, in this day and age, to reach 300 wins.

2) The would-be 300-game winner must be a good pitcher.  This would seem to go without saying, but it's worth noting that a pitcher doesn't need to be exceptionally effective.  Don Sutton, Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry all reached the 300-win mark and it's doubtful that any of the three were regarded as among the very best pitchers in baseball during most of their careers.  Indeed, though all were certainly fine pitchers, they were frequently regarded as something other than the best pitchers on their own teams during substantial chunks of their careers.  While season-after-season greatness isn't a requirement, mediocrity for all but a few years will certainly doom any 300-win effort.

3) The effort is dramatically improved if the candidate spends most, if not all, of his career on strong teams that routinely win a majority of their games.  A pitcher who regularly toils for second division clubs will have almost no chance of reaching the 300-win plateau, particularly in this day and age.  One of the most remarkable feats in baseball history was achieved in 1972 when future 300-game winner Steve Carlton won 27 games for a club that finished 59-97.  It's so remarkable because it's virtually unheard of for hurlers to pile up big win seasons pitching for lousy clubs.

4) It's a big help if you complete a decent percentage of your games, because it provides fewer opportunities for other pitchers--who will rarely be as good--to blow your wins.

The four factors above are particularly highlighted for pitchers who are toiling here and now, as opposed to those who pitched in the past.  For instance, consider Phil Niekro.  He was certainly healthy over a long career.  Niekro didn't become a full-time starter until 1968, when he was 29, but he went on to pitch parts of 24 seasons (21 essentially full years), making 716 starts (and appearing in another 148 games in relief).  And he certainly was an effective pitcher, with a career ERA 1/3 of a run below league average (despite pitching in a great hitter's park half the time and on many, many awful defensive teams).  But he pitched, for the most part, for lousy ball clubs.  Still, he made up for that by starting 30+ games in every season from 1968 through 1986 (except 1981, where the strike-shortened season made that impossible), averaging 37 starts a season over that span of time.  Had Niekro played most of his career on good teams he probably would have won more than 350 games rather than 318.  Further assisting Niekro's effort, the knuckleballer completed 245 of his starts, with double-digit CGs in 11 seasons.  As things presently stand, it's unlikely that we'll ever see another pitcher even approach 245 career complete games.

Niekro pitched, as a regular member of a starting rotation, until he was 48 years old, and just as importantly, he spent most of his career in a four-man pitching rotation--as did every current member of the modern 300-game winner list other than Clemens.  Whereas pitchers could reasonably anticipate 40 or 41 starting assignments, assuming no injuries, at one time, today's best pitchers can expect no more than 35.  No active big league pitcher entered 2004 with a single season of 40+ starts.  But from 1960 through 1985, 19 pitchers had at least two seasons with 40 or more starts.  Only six active pitchers entered the 2004 season with more than two seasons of 35+ starts:  Maddux (5), Glavine (4), Clemens (3), John Smoltz (3--no longer starting), Steve Avery (3--no longer a factor), and Barry Zito (3).

There just don't seem to be enough starts going around.  Of the nine 300-game winners who accomplished the feat after World War II, eight are in the top 10 in games started during that time frame, (the ninth, Early Wynn, is 13th).  All have more than 600 career starts.  Only three pitchers, active entering the 2004 season, had more than 500 career starts.  They are, predictably, Clemens, Maddux and Glavine.  The next highest was Randy Johnson at 444 (Kevin Brown had 441).  

Greg Maddux represents something close to the perfect storm, in terms of 300-game wins.  First, he's been healthy and has had a long career.  He's pitching his 19th big league season (18th full season).  He's been a wildly effective pitcher, one of the best, if not the best, pitchers of his era, an absolute no-doubt first ballot Hall of Famer.  And, he pitched the bulk of his career on the most successful regular season team in the post-expansion era, if not all-time.  The Atlanta Braves, for whom Maddux pitched for 11 years (1993-2003) won their division every year during that time span (other than the non-completed 1994 season).  Maddux entered the 2004 season with 104 complete games, one of only five pitchers with more than 100 career complete games after 1980 (Clemens had 117 on opening day).  And Maddux, indeed, is poised on the doorstep of 300 wins.  

But consider the case of Tom Glavine.  Glavine has an awful lot of Maddux in him.  He's been healthy and has had a long career (Glavine's working in his 18th major league season, 17th full season).  He's been an extremely effective pitcher himself, clearly one of the top few pitchers of his era, and a very likely Hall of Famer in his own right.  And, of course, Glavine had the benefit of pitching for 11 Braves division winning clubs himself.  Glavine completed only 52 games during his career entering 2004, but that was still more than the average pitcher could have expected to complete over that time (37).  Still, it would appear to be the complete games that will ultimately let Glavine down in his quest for 300, assuming he doesn't make it.  All the other factors were lined up for him--health and longevity, talent, great team...but 125 no-decisions over the years (a relatively low total for this day and age) could doom his chances.

It simply doesn't take much to derail a run at 300 games.  Today's starter has to essentially stay healthy for 20 full seasons...averaging 15 wins a year.  Some 20-win seasons sure wouldn't hurt.  But 20-win seasons are going the way of the dodo bird.  Entering 2004, only seven active pitchers had more than one 20-win season:  Clemens (6), Glavine (5), Johnson (3), Maddux, Martinez, Jamie Moyer, Andy Pettite and Curt Schilling (all with 2).  Expand the search to years after 1940 and 76 pitchers had multi-20-win seasons.  Warren Spahn alone had 13.  Jim Palmer had eight.

Only 13 active pitchers have at least three 15-win seasons.  The bottom line is that the decisions aren't there.  

It's simply hard to imagine the circumstances, given the way major league baseball is currently played, that would allow a current pitcher to reach the 300-win plateau.  Fewer starts and fewer decisions per start...it's a lethal combination.

Still, perhaps Maddux won't be the last 300-game winner in our lifetime.  Maybe something about the game, as it's currently played, will change, arresting the trend over the last 25-odd years toward fewer and fewer decisions for starters.  But I wouldn't bet on it.  The trend is toward shorter and shorter stints for starting pitchers, deeper bullpens and increasing specialization of relief roles, and richer, long-term contracts for starting pitchers has clubs ever-more cautious about "risking the health" of their aces by pushing them, both in terms of pitches thrown per game and starts made.  Pitchers are increasingly likely to be disabled whenever a hint of injury pops up, further decreasing the likelihood of piling up the annual number of starts necessary to have a legitimate shot at 300 wins.

So, when Maddux wins his 300th, which could be as soon as this Sunday, take note.  Unless his old buddy Tom Glavine beats the odds, it's something we may not see again for a long, long time.

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