Is 300 Wins Still a Thing?
Because Justin Verlander sure wants it
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We’ve been pretty busy over the past several years re-thinking baseball records, what they mean and what they’re worth, and although it’s usually fun to blame analytics for ruining everything, that’s probably not at the heart of all this.
The game has simply changed. Teams spend much more time than they used to in trying to figure out how to maximize individual performance, for example, and while that does not automatically come at the expense of career longevity, it often does. Not that franchises ever cared too tremendously about how long guys played — they’ve always viewed pitchers, especially, as fireflies — but ask any professional pitcher today about the new-new religion of velocity: If you aren’t max-exerting on every throw, somebody is going to ask you why pretty quickly.
Franchises want pitchers to throw harder, but usually for a shorter amount of time. Again, the idea isn’t to save arms (MLB pitching injuries have been rising steadily for two decades), but rather to force opposing hitters to face, say, four different pitchers during their five at-bats in a game.
Too, the concepts of pitching rotations and what being a “starter” even means have undergone some serious filler-and-plumping re-sets. From 2000 to 2019, the average pitcher’s starting workload dropped noticeably from previous decades, down to 5.8 innings per start. Since 2020, the number has plummeted to an even 5.0. And many teams now either routinely schedule skipped starts for their guys or expand their rotations temporarily to push back pitchers’ starts by a day or several days.
So — starting pitchers make fewer starts than ever, and they are out of games more quickly than ever. That’s going to make it pretty tough for any pitcher, even a No. 1 starter, to rack up a serious number of victories.
Which brings us to Justin Verlander, who wants to hit 300 wins before he hangs it up.