Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
July 28, 2002
Can Schilling Win 30?

With Curt Schilling picking up his 18th win last night, 30 wins becomes a legitimate question. He needs to win 12 games over the last two months of the season for this to happen. No one has done that since Saberhagen in 1989, when he went 13-1. Saberhagen pitched a lot down that stretch. He started 14 games, five on 3-days rest. His last start on 5 days rest was August 1. The Royals were in a pennant race with Oakland that year; Royals won 92 games but finished 7 games back. John Wathan was managing, and looks like he was trying to give the most starts to what he thought were his best pitchers. It worked with Saberhagen, but backfired with Tom Gordon. Gordon got 6 great starts in August, and was given 7 in Sept, which were a disaster, as he went 1-4 with a 7.20 ERA. Gordon also made five starts on 3-days rest, and all but one were a disaster. This stretch may have cost Saberhagen a Hall of Fame career, as he didn't start in 30 games again until 1998, when he started 31 for the Red Sox.

What Wathan was doing was trying to maximize the starts by his best pitchers. Brenly and Cox have been doing the same thing this year, using the schedule to get more starts for their best pitchers. Look at the list of most starts on 4-days rest:


Most Starts, 4 Days Rest, 2002

Pitcher Starts
R. Johnson 20
T. Glavine 20
Burnett 18
Schilling 17
G. Maddux 17
Milton 17


I believe what's happening is that these managers are skipping a starter when the schedule gives them a day off. LaRussa did this effectively in 1990, and it's one of the reasons Welch won 27 that year.

Back to the point at hand. The DBacks have 58 games left, which in a full five-man rotation would give Schilling 12 starts, meaning he'd have to win all of them. However, with the skipping of 5th starters that Brenly does, Schilling should get 1 extra-start, or 13 remaining. Still not much of a margin of error. However, looking at the schedule, it doesn't work out right for 13 starts for Schilling, due to the number of days off and Randy Johnson being on the same schedule. Although you never know. If the race is tight down the stretch, I could see Brenly going to 3-days rest for Schilling and Johnson. At their ages, the probability of real damage isn't any higher than it would otherwise be, especially if pitch counts are kept low.

Schilling is going to have to be perfect down the stretch to have a shot at 30. One no-decision pretty much kills it for him. If the races stay really tight, however, I think that favors his getting more starts and more of a chance to reach 30.


Posted by David Pinto at 10:03 AM | Baseball