Since the beginning of Major League Baseball in 1876, only two dozen pitchers have won 300 games. And because of new philosophies about pitch counts, the role of relief pitchers, shrinking strike zones, and five-man rotations, there's a good chance that the 300 Club has admitted its last member.
Beginning with Cy Young and Walter Johnson, the only two players to win more than 400 games, as 10 living 300-game winners, including Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, and Greg Maddux, while. Johnson was the last pitcher to join the club, winning his 300th during the 2009 baseball season.
There's a very real possibility that no pitcher will win 300 games again. Changes in relief pitching, salaries, starting rotations, and injuries are conspiring to keep the 300 Club "closed" Everybody was saying [in] '95, '96 'There'll never be another 300-game winner,'" Maddux said during his recent hall of fame induction. "And there's been four of them since."
With two of those 300-game winners -- Maddux and his longtime friend and Atlanta Braves teammate, Tom Glavine -- inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014, the "will there or won't there?" question regarding pitching's magic number has been asked plenty over the past several months, especially with only five active pitchers even halfway to 300 wins.
From the lowest rungs of the minor leagues through the majors, an increasingly specialized game is no longer focused on cultivating 300-win candidates. General managers, looking to protect young pitchers and hoping to curtail arm injuries, have minor league hurlers on strict pitch and innings counts throughout their rise in a system.
As 20-year-olds in 1986, Glavine and Maddux were two of 19 minor league pitchers to throw at least 185 innings as well as two of 83 hurlers to finish with at least three complete games. No minor leaguer has reached 185 innings in a season since 2007. And last year, only two pitchers recorded as many as three complete games.
Atlanta Braves broadcaster Don Sutton, who won 324 games, threw at least 200 innings in 20 of his 23 seasons. One of those three where he didn't was a year shortened by the 1981 player strike, and the other two were his final two, played at 42 and 43 years of age, respectively.
"I think [back then], you rewarded starts, you rewarded innings, you rewarded innings per start and the chance to win," Sutton said. "The carrot in front of the donkey was to go out there every fourth or fifth day and to stay out there as long as you can. That's not a carrot anymore. You get in trouble if you want to stay in the ball game now.
"And I'm not sure we have developed a collection of starters who want to argue to stay in."
Of the estimated 48,000 in attendance at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, few may have had a more nuanced perspective of the past and future of elite starting pitching than Greg Maddux's older brother, Mike, who is a former big league pitcher and the current pitching coach of the Texas Rangers.
With pitchers throwing harder than ever and the risk of injury seemingly increasing by the year -- the Rangers have employed at least six pitchers this season who have previously undergone some kind of elbow surgery -- Mike Maddux believes that teams will grow even more cautious with their big league pitchers in the coming years.
"It is more difficult, it's harder work," he said. "And harder work leads to more maximum effort. And max effort leads to maybe a shorter shelf life.
"That's why you're going to see fewer starts a year. No more 40-start seasons. Thirty-two starts a year is what you're going to see, 33. And people are going to pull the plug on guys at 100 pitches and 105 pitches."
While Glavine and Greg Maddux almost certainly won't be the final 300-game winners inducted into the Hall -- 303-game winner Randy Johnson was inducted in 2015 while steroid-tainted Roger Clemens, who won 354 games, has eight more chances to escape purgatory with the new rules in place -- the limitations being placed on starting pitchers make it difficult, if not impossible, to see the next 300-game winner on the horizon.
Tim Hudson leads active pitchers with 222 wins, but at age 39,he's retiring at the end of the 2015 season. New York Yankees ace CC Sabathia (213), the Mets' Bartolo Colon (218) and Toronto's Mark Buehrle (213) have reached the 200-win milestone in their careers, but neither seems especially likely to get another 100 wins. Colon is 41 years old, and the 35-year-old Buehrle throws the slowest fastball in the game. Sabathia at 34, depending upon how many more years he's able to pitch, would be possibly the last active pitcher to reach the 300 win plateau.
"Obviously, 300's that number, but I don't see many, if any, coming-up guys that are going to be getting there," Buehrle said. "Getting to 200 nowadays seems to be tough."
The pitching stars of today Justin Verlander , (32) has 155 wins, Felix Hernandez (29) 143 wins, Clayton Kershaw (29) 112, Tim Lincecum (31) 108 wins. All these pitchers, barring any unforeseen injuries or major setbacks, might just reach the 200 win plateau. Tim Lincecum and Clayton Kershaw are multiple Cy Young award winners, but Lincecum also has 3 world series rings.
Baseball is still trying to clean its image after former major league stars such as Roger Clemons, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Jose Cancesco were all busted for using steroids during their playing careers. Alex Rodriguez has led a highly controversial career due to his lucrative contracts and his use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs, is another major star who probably hurt his hall of fame chances when he retires.
Roger Clemons, Mark McGwire , Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Jose Canseco gravely soured their chances of any possible induction into Baseballs Hall of Fame. Whether these former players are ever granted induction into the hall of fame remains to be seen.
Nolan Ryan, Dave Stieb, Scott McGregor, Jim Palmer, Dennis Eckersley, they were all guys I couldn't wait until they either started or came in a relief situation as Dennis Eckersley did for the Oakland A's. These pitchers were fun to watch pitch due to the pitching arsenal each one had. In the case of Dennis Eckersley, he became a hall of fame pitcher when he became a relief pitcher for the A's, after a so-so career as a starting pitcher. The players names in bold letters are hall of famers.
It's a shame that young people of todays generation couldn't see such talented pitchers during their playing careers. Hopefully baseball will finally rid itself of players who need any form of steroids in order to play todays game. Each year when the hall of fame announcements are made, it's not too shocking seeing who didn't get inducted.
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