As you probably could have guessed, I'm a huge fan of the 300-win milestone. There is nothing quite like celebrating the select group of 24 pitchers with the talent, the longevity, and the luck to average 15 wins a year for 20 seasons. It was enough for me to dedicate almost 500,000 words on celebrating the 10th anniversary of the last time the milestone was reached, almost a year ago.
Yes, I hear the criticisms about the pitcher's win. I hear the complaints how the men in the 300-win-club are mere compilers and not actually the best pitchers in baseball history. To that I say "Bah." The pitching win is an antiquated stat and reliant more on the team than individual performances, and win-loss record is often very deceiving. Yet it takes a certain type of pitcher to put in the innings required to achieve strong win totals. And with the complaint that the 300-win pitchers are not the best? I'd like to direct people to the JAWS statistic. JAWS is a creation of sportswriter Jay Jaffe, and stands for JAffe Wins above replacement Score. It makes use of the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) stat, which attempts to quantify the contributions of a baseball player in all aspects of the game. JAWS is basically the average between the career WAR and the sum of the total WAR from the player's seven best seasons. It's remarkably simple, yet gives equal consideration towards a player's career as a whole and their peak.
Each player has a JAWS score, and their scores can be compared to the scores of Hall of Famers at their respective positions to give a general estimation at their Hall of Fame worthiness. The list of the 500 best JAWS score among starting pitchers is available over at Baseball Reference, and it's worth noting that the 13 pitchers with the highest JAWS scores are all 300 game winner. One would have to get to the 14th spot before you get to the first pitcher without 300 wins (Bob Gibson with 251). The average JAWS scores among Hall of Fame starters is 61.6. Of the 32 pitchers that eclipse that mark, 21 of them are 300-game winners, with only Mickey Welch, Don Sutton and Early Wynn falling short. To see how much 300-game winners tower over their Hall of Fame counterparts without 300 wins, consider the fact that the 300-game-winning Hall of Famers have an average JAWS score of 78.3*, compare to the 52.5 put up by the Hall of Famers without 300 wins**.
*The average JAWS of all 300-game-winners becomes an even more impressive 79.3 if you throw in Roger Clemens, who has his 354 wins but isn't in the Hall of Fame. There are only 10 pitchers with a JAWS score above 79.3.
**The average JAWS of all pitchers with at least 150 wins outside the Hall of Fame is 38.1, and that's if you include all of the players still active and Roger Clemens. If you remove Clemens the average falls to 37.7. If you remove the active players the average falls to 37.6. If you remove Clemens and the active players, the average becomes 37.2.
And yet among all of the pitchers that have ever played in the Majors, there is one man that stands atop the JAWS mountain, the player with a strong case for being the best pitcher of all time. That man is Walter Johnson. And today is the 100th anniversary of his 300th win.
