Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
August 05, 2007
Tom's Terrific

The Mets bullpen holds the lead and the offense adds a few runs just in case as Glavine wins his 300th game by a score of 8-3 over the Cubs. Note that over the course of Tom Glavine's career, only seventeen pitchers managed 300 decisions. Congratulations to Tom on a great milestone!

Note that Tom's wins were pretty consistent over his career. It took him about eight seasons to get to 100, seven to get to 200, and eight to get to 300. He adjust to a higher level of offense in the mid 1990s, and a new and (at first) weaker team when he transfered to the Mets.

So who is next? The Big Unit's career might be over. Mike Mussina, at 246 wins, probably needs four more good seasons to reach the goal. With his strikeouts way down, he'll need to reinvent himself as a junk baller, which isn't out of the question. My money might be on C.C. Sabathia, however. At seasonal age 26, he already has 95 wins. Glavine had 73 through age 26.


Posted by David Pinto at 11:39 PM | Records | TrackBack (0)
Comments

You need to change that link. Tommy's debut was on August 17, 1987, but the link includes the entire 1987 season. So it might be less than 17 pitchers, but I didn't check that. Interestingly, since his debut, he's 1 win ahead of Roger Clemens.

Posted by: Devon Young at August 6, 2007 07:40 AM

Congrats to Tom. The funniest thing last night was Joe Morgan announcing with a straight face that 500 homers is a bigger achievement than 300 wins. Right, Joe. That's why we've got two guys - Thomas and Rodriguez - getting to 500 this year and three others - Thome, Sheffield and Ramirez -about to get there. Meanwhile, one (1) guy has gotten to 300 since 2004, with nobody else in sight right now except (maybe) Johnson.

Over the course of baseball history, it's gotten easier and easier to rack up home runs for the hitters, and harder and harder to get wins for the starting pitchers. Closer fences, a livelier ball, and an emphasis on the home run as the key offensive weapon have all pushed homer totals up. Meanwhile, five-man rotations, pitch counts, and much increased use of relievers have all pushed win totals for starters down.

Anybody, even Joe Morgan, can see this. How does Morgan keep his job?

By the way, the other big story from the game is Soriano's injury. Soriano is wildly overrated as a hitter (.847 OPS this year, .837 career) but he is the best the Cubs have after Lee and Ramirez. My guess is that the Cubs will move DeRosa to the outfield and play Fontenot all the time at second. That may not be the best defensive alignment, but those guys are are fourth and fifth on the OPS parade for the Cubs, who are a league-average offensive team in the best of times.

Posted by: Casey Abell at August 6, 2007 08:28 AM

Casey, Morgan is just brutal to listen to. Last night I particularly liked when he expalined that Luis Castillo was having trouble with wind-blown pop-ups at Wrigley because he'd spent his whole career in the AL; Castillo, of course, was a Marlin for 10 years before going to the Twins in '06 and was on both of their World Series teams, starting at 2b in 2003.

ESPN's lead analyst, everybody.

Posted by: mikeski at August 6, 2007 01:11 PM

Yep, that was pretty funny. Castillo has played a lot at Wrigley and actually does well in the park. In his 29 regular-season games there, he's got a .905 OPS on a good-sized sample. Way above his career .725.

He also played four games at the park in the infamous Bartman 2003 NLCS. But maybe he never caught a pop-up in the place.

Posted by: Casey Abell at August 6, 2007 02:38 PM

Not sure what Morgan was thinking with regard to 500 HRs being a more remarkable feat than 300 wins. A win is team dependant, a homerun is not.

At best a starting P gets 32-35 starts a year these days. If he gets decision 85% of the time that means 27-30/year. If he wins 60% of the time that's 17.5 wins/year for 18 seasons to clear 300. That pretty well describes Greg Maddux when you think about it. How many Ps even avoid injury for 18 seasons.

A good homerun hitter can reach 500 in 12 seasons. A much great margin for error and/or injury.
Bill

Posted by: Bill McKinley at August 6, 2007 02:56 PM
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