Evolution Of The Game(s)

Somewhat lost amidst the hoopla surrounding Barry Bonds inexorable pursuit of baseball's Holy Grail was that perennial nice guy Tom Glavine won his 300th game as a starting pitcher.

I say somewhat, because for a reality-deprived sports maniac like myself, Glavine's achievement has been properly noted, if in most quarters with some sepia-toned sadness, as though we were seeing the last pandas die without successfully mating.

Indeed, if you look up any collection of articles discussing Glavine's feat, most of them bemoan the dearth of future 300 game winners...as though this were a bad thing.

Friends, did I miss something?

I thought that we taught our children that individual accomplishments are secondary to team goals.

I thought that winning the game was the whole goal of teamwork.

For all of our carping about the lack of 300 game winners on the horizon, for all of our complaining about not seeing iron men log 300 innings or more in a season, let's remember something: great teams are still winning over 100 games in a baseball season.

And all this without staffs littered with 20 game winners (surely the next pitching species on the endangered list).

It's gotten so bad that there's a new faux-stat in vogue: the quality start. To get a quality start, a pitcher must go at least seven innings...this, despite the rule that says a pitcher gets credit for the game if he completes five innings.

Again, it's nice if a pitcher is good enough to put up a body of work deserving of the Hall of Fame, but I'd guess that Jack Morris will take some solace in his World Series ring from 1991 whenever his 254 career victories leave him out of baseball's Valhalla.

Seriously, if 300-game pitchers go the way of the sabre-tooth tiger, I say so long, hasta la vista, and good night.

There are lots of reasons for the lack of 300-game winners on the horizon, all of them valid, and none of them Tony LaRussa's fault.

First off, there are all of 23 men who have won 300 or more games as a starting pitcher in the entire history of baseball.

23.

That's it.

Period.

So, before we all start crying about the sudden lack of 300-game winners, let's talk about the paucity of 300-game winners in respect to a few other baseball hallmarks.

There are 27 men who have 3000 or more hits.

There are 22 men who have 500 or more home runs.

There are 14 men with 3000 or more strikeouts.

Yes, I will admit that the offensive numbers are more likely to change in the short term, but not by much. For example, the 3000 hit club is not likely to grow by another 10 men in the next 5 years, nor is the 500 home run club.

So, again, there are only a handful of men in baseball who have been good enough for long enough to win 300 games as a starting pitcher. This tells me that we should not bemoan the lack of the achievement, but rather celebrate the singularity of the achievement. These few men defied age and, more importantly, younger hitters to get their wins. Before we bury them, let's praise them.

Second, if there are a lack of 300-game winners, it might be due to the fact that managers might have more options available to them.

Let's go back to 1904. If you lived in the Big Apple back then, you might have cheered for the New York Highlanders (who became the Yankees). That team went 92-59. Starting pitcher Jack Chesbro, usually appearing on two days rest, went 41-12 while appearing in 55 games. In plain terms, the man won a third of his team's games by himself. And I'll bet the rent that his manager, Clark Griffith, would have run Chesbro out to the hill 100 times if he could have.

Not impressed? Let's get a little closer to films with color and sound.

In 1968, Bob Gibson went 22-9.

Not impressed? He had 28 complete games. (Do the math, bunky: he was the pitcher of record in 31 games, and he finished 28 of them. Talk about a pitcher who could have sued for non-support...)

Still not impressed? He had 13 shutouts. That's 13 times that his team only had to score one single run to win. (For the record, he won four games that season by the score of 1-0.)

And for you roto-stat-freaks, he posted a 1.12 ERA, and a 0.853 WHIP.

He appeared in 34 of his team's 162 games.

And if it were up to Red Schoendienst, he'd have appeared in 90 games that season.

In other words, if there's a lack of 300 game winners, it might be because there's an abundance of live arms in the bullpen.

Managers keep their jobs (or lose them) based on their won-lost percentage. Therefore, it's in a manager's best interest to field the best possible lineup out of 25 players, in order to win games. Back in the old days, when arms like Gibson's were rare, you ran him out to the mound every 4 days, only because you couldn't run him out there every 3 days...and, to be frank, because you knew that the guy replacing him might not have been fit to lace Gibby's cleats.

Nowadays, it just makes sense to shorten games.

One, it keeps your starter fresher for longer. If a guy doesn't have to log 350 innings, he's likely to be a lot more effective during a white-hot pennant race than the guy who gets overused.

Two, when you shorten games, it makes it harder for batters to adjust. Just about the time that a good hitter has timed a good pitcher and gotten a feel for that pitcher's rhythm, you pull that pitcher and replace him with a fresh junkballer out of the bullpen. Now the batter has to start all over again, but this time it's late in the game and his team is down a run or two, which means that he might be pressing against a pitcher that he hasn't seen all day.

Better yet, when the game gets late, you can situationally pitch to hitters, doing thw whole lefty/righty thing until the game is in the books.

In other words, managers are managing games like they were the seventh game of the World Series.

Remember a few years ago, when Randy Johnson came out of the bullpen in Game 7 to help seal the victory for his team?

That happens every night in the bigs, and we're too spoiled to notice it.

Finally, it may be that pitchers aren't willing to extend themselves like they used to.

After all, when Gibby was chunkin' for the Redbirds, he was literally putting food on his table for his children. Nowadays, Carl Pavano can suck so bad that he'd mess up Stephen Hawking's math and his family would still never have to taste Spam forever.

In other words, when modern, multi-millionaire pitchers get to the sixth or seventh and they have the lead or are tied, and the welfare of their children doesn't depend upon their pitching a shutout into the eighth or ninth, they are much more likely to give the ball to skip and let the bullpen sort it out.

This is NOT to say that they are lazy, only that priorities have changed. In the old days, starting pitchers scoffed at the bullpen, largely because the bullpen was only there in case the starter broke something beyond immediate repair. Nowadays, modern pitchers love their 'pens, because those guys who get Holds and Saves also preserve Wins for the teams.

And, ultimately, that's what matters most.

But I don't believe we've seen our last 300-game winner.

In fact, all a guy has to do is win 15 games a year for 20 years. Raise the number of wins per season, and lower the number of seasons needed to get there.

In other words, there are pitchers out there right now, doing their due diligence, winning 15-18 games a season, that will be on the doorstep of 300 before we know it.

And I can prove it.

Give me a fastball pitcher with a nasty change-up and modern bullpen tactics, and I can give you a 300-game winner by 2027.

Unless you give me C.C. Sabathia, Roy Halladay, and Johan Santana right now...heh heh heh...