Well, I wasn't originally going to do anything for Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day today other than watching the game, especially after the grueling failure that was my 10th Anniversary Special a year ago. However, I am constantly on the lookout for stuff related to this game, so might as well list some of my findings, plus update the progress of the 300-win hopefuls, which I'm afraid is not looking good.
First of all, I'm sure y'all heard that I met the man himself at long last. I wrote an entire post about it, so there's no need to rehash.
I'm not sure how many people know about Cameo, a service where you can send requests to celebrities and athletes, and then they'll record a video. It's kind of a shout-out by proxy and can be a pretty dangerous rabbit hole for people. No, Randy Johnson isn't on there yet, but his catcher on June 4, 2009 is, and his pricing is relatively cheap. So I had him recount his experiences from the game. He didn't really say much other than the experience was special and amazing. I wasn't sure what I expected, but it was still pretty cool.
I also found that somebody had listed another game-used baseball from this game, and wouldn't you know it's the ball from Edgar Renteria's error that I wrote about in the Aftermath post ten years ago. They were selling the ball for $1,300, $300 more than how much it originally sold for back in in 2010. And you know what? After doing some saving up I was able to purchase the ball. So yet another game-used ball is finally mine.
And I'm sure you are all aware that because of the coronavirus scare there has not been a single Major League game played this season. Which means that every pitcher's win totals are the exact same that they were at the end of the 2019 season. So that means the pitcher with the most wins since last year is Gerrit Cole on the basis of his 15-0 record in 20 starts after June 4 of last year. Among the 10 winningest active pitchers, none of them have more than the 12 wins since last year that Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke have recorded. With the owners and the MLBPA at open warfare with each other it's starting to seem more unlikely that we'll have a season this year, and that can serve as a major blow for both of their chances. Verlander had said he wanted to pitch until his mid-40s, but he had strained his latissimus dorsi in spring training. Some pitchers have recovered from lat strains to be just fine like Stephen Strasburg that's not always a guarantee. Even though this layoff would give him time to recover, nobody knows how much of a toll it would take on him down the road. It's still possible he pitches another seven seasons to make 300 wins a lock, but we won't know that until we get there.
Meanwhile, here's the top 10 leaderboard dating back to 2009.
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