Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day - 2022

It's June 4, 2022! Which means that it's the 13th anniversary of Randy Johnson's 300th Win, the signature baseball moment of my lifetime. Which also means that it's time for my favorite holiday of the year, the one that I made and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person to celebrate.

Happy Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day!

It hasn't exactly been the best day for me. I woke up after only three hours of sleep from a throbbing pain in my ear. I knew I had developed an ear infection, but in order to get any antibiotics I had to go to a 24-hour emergency room. Then I found out that my Nintendo Switch no longer reads any of my cartridges, so I am probably going to have to send it in to Nintendo for them to repair. It hasn't been all bad. I did get to go to my first baseball game in person on June 4 since the historic double-header in 2009. And it was a Rangers 3-2 victory that took 2 hours 30 minutes, which happened to be the running time for Randy Johnson's 300th win 13 years ago today!

Happy Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day!

I've written way too much about the milestone game itself over the years that I don't think I'm going to do so again. (But you darn well know I'm going to watch it again). But I do feel it could be a good time to update about a variety of subjects, including the progress of hopefuls for the next 300-game-winner.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person that celebrates Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day with such fervent enthusiasm. I don't know what Randy Johnson does on these anniversaries, but he's been out there living his best life. Most people know about his second career as a photographer, which had been his love even before professional baseball. I'm not sure how much traveling he's been able to do due to the pandemic, but even the he's found ways to keep busy. He's out there making an appearance in a documentary about fellow 300-game-winner Nolan Ryan. He's out there working with Pop Fly Pop Shop to make a special Big Unit themed print designed to look like a comic book cover. He's filming hilarious Direct TV Stream commercials with his former Mariners teammates Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez (as well as should-have-been Mariners teammate David Ortiz). And of course he's still out there signing autographs. I recently got into autographs by mail, and I found that there are a lot of private signings involving Randy Johnson. I've managed to get a pitching rubber already signed by the 300-game-winners from Warren Spahn to Nolan Ryan and added Randy's name to the list. And of course I got the Topps 2010 Randy Johnson card that I placed with the Randy Johnson's 300th Win ticket signed, so now my most precious memento is double signed!

And as for me? I was laid off from the job I was working a year ago, which kind of sucks but thankfully I already had another job that I was able to fall back on. Better yet I'm able to work from home, which saves me the hour that I was spending on my commute back and forth. So I had plenty of free time, which I had used to complete my trek to all active Major League Baseball stadiums. And better yet I was able to memorize the date, final score, and losing pitcher for all of Randy Johnson's regular season and post-season wins. It was a monumental task, although one strategies I used was to score every game based on the Baseball Reference play-by-play. I also created a Sporcle quiz for the losing pitcher for Randy's wins from 1 to 300. And finally I collected a card for the losing pitcher of every one of his wins. I had some of them, but many of them I had to buy from eBay. And now that I've gotten the wins memorized I've moved on to another challenge: trying to get all of the cards signed through autographs by mail. You can follow my progress on this Facebook album.

So I suppose that's it. Anything else?

Oh that's right...the future of the 300-Win Club.

The chorus of fans proclaiming that the 300-Win Club being dead is growing every year, and it's hard not to feel that way when there has been so many obstacles for a pitcher to accumulate prodigious win totals. For one thing, the specialization of a Major League pitching staff has continued, as is the diminishing of the mystique of a starting pitcher. Moreover, clubs have continued to seek out younger pitchers, leaving fewer and fewer opportunities for veteran starters. The stark effects of these factors can be clearly visible in the list of the ten active pitchers with the most wins through today*.

*By active I mean they are signed to a contract with a Major League Baseball organization. That allows for the player to be on an affiliated minor league team, but not an independent league or foreign league team.

Ten winningest active pitchers on June 4, 2022

Ten winningest active pitchers on June 4 from 2009-2022

That's a lot to take in, but if there's one thing that I hope you'll notice, it's the fact that Lance Lynn was able to crack the top 10 with 115 wins. That's not a dig on Lance Lynn, as he had been tremendous during his two seasons with the Rangers and one year with the White Sox. But still, 115 wins wouldn't have come close to being in the top 10 in any of the other years. Last year I made note of the fact that J.A. Happ made it onto the top 10 with 126 wins, which was already by far the fewest of any of the pitchers in the top 10. Lance Lynn is still 11 wins behind Happ, who was granted free agency at the end of last season, never signed with another team, and announced his official retirement earlier in the week. Also gone was his teammate with the Cardinals Jon Lester, while Ervin Santana's triumphant return from several frustrating seasons of finger injuries wasn't enough for him to get a deal with a Major League team, even on a minor league contract.

Of course, a look further down on the active wins leaders reveals a more dire landscape. Baseball Reference lists only 17 active pitchers with at least 100 career wins, but I'm not sure there should be that many given the fact Dallas Keuchel was released by the White Sox earlier in the week, making him a free agent. And as far as I know no team has signed the former Cy Young winner. Anyways, even if we include Keuchel, the 17 active pitchers with at least 100 wins is less than half of the totals ten years ago, when there were 37 active pitchers with at least 100 wins. The 17 isn't even the true total of pitchers that's currently on an active roster, since so many of them are currently on the Injured List: Anibal Sanchez (112), Stephen Strasburg (113), Chris Sale (114), Lance Lynn (115), Clayton Kershaw (189), Max Scherzer (195), and Zack Greinke (219). Meanwhile, Ian Kennedy (103) and David Price (155) have become full-time relievers. 

That leaves just eight that are making regular starts. Corey Kluber (105), Charlie Morton (110), and Johnny Cueto (135) are all in their late 30s and have still yet to reach the 150-win milestone which marks the halfway point to 300 wins. Even if they invoke the ghost of Phil Niekro, they will fall short of 300. Adam Wainwright (189) did pass the 150-win barrier back on April 24, 2019, and he's still pitching reasonably effectively. Yet at 40 he's the oldest pitcher with at least 100 wins, and with his longtime batterymate Yadier Molina retiring at the end of the season, who knows if he's going to make 200, much less 300.

The two pitchers besides Lance Lynn making their top 10 debut were Madison Bumgarner (129) and Gerrit Cole (122). They are both below the ages of 35, but their chances at 300 are quite disparate. MadBum is closing in on his 33rd birthday, and once upon a time he might have been viewed as the player with the best shot at getting to 300. Through June 4, 2016 the former World Series hero was still 26 and already had 92 wins, and would reach 100 wins by the end of that 2016 season. However, all of those post-season innings caught up to him, and he hadn't been the same ace that he was before. His 29-43 record since the beginning of the 2017 season is remarkably similar to the final five seasons of Steve Carlton's career (29-44), but Lefty made sure to get to 300 wins first before falling apart. 

And then there's Gerrit Cole. At 31 he is over a year younger than Bumgarner, and he is still one of the top pitchers in the American League. He has a 63-22 record with a 2.84 ERA since coming from the Pirates before the 2018 season, and had led the league in each of the Pitching Triple Crown categories once while recording two second place finishes in Cy Young voting. However, he was embroiled in the Spider Tack controversy last year, and he was fairly inconsistent after the sticky stuff was banned. He is doing well again for a dominant Yankees team, but nobody knows how much he is being aided by foreign substances, if at all.

Finally there's Justin Verlander, the last great hope for the 300-win milestone. To many his chances at 300 went down the drain after he fell victim to elbow problems following his first and only start in the 2020 season. He tried to delay the inevitable Tommy John surgery, but that just led to him missing all of 2021. As a result he had gained only seven wins in the past two years while staring at his 40th birthday which will come before the start of the 2023 season. I felt that much of his chances rest on how well he does in his comeback season. And for the first six weeks it sure seems like he's silenced all doubters, as he came out blowing 100-mph heaters and knee-bucking curves past hitters. Through his first eight starts he was 6-1 with a 1.22 ERA with 19.1 consecutive scoreless innings, while flirting with his fourth no-hitter. However, his last two starts were completely different. He allowed six runs in six innings to the Mariners in a loss, and three runs in seven innings against the Athletics in a no-decision. Putting up a 6.23 ERA against the two worst teams in the AL West is less than ideal. 

But all hope is not lost. Even though the two are fairly different, I can't help but compare Justin Verlander to Randy Johnson, especially after I spent so much time memorizing the Big Unit's wins. Randy was around where Verlander is now in the 2003 season, and people forget how much he struggled with a knee injury that year. He missed almost three whole months, and wasn't quite the same when he came back. As a result he didn't get his 232nd win until April 26, 2004 when he was well past his 40th birthday. Now he was phenomenal in 2004 and should have won the Cy Young over Roger Clemens that year, but he went only 16-14 on a Diamondbacks team that lost 111 games. Then he went over to the Yankees and had back-to-back seasons with 17 wins, although he dealt with inconsistency and back issues, the latter of which led to him missing most of 2007. Even then he came back to get the wins necessary to reach 300 wins, after his fastball has fallen to the lower-90s and his slider wasn't quite the Mr. Snappy as in his prime. Perseverance became an oft-mentioned keyword for Randy as he went after the elusive milestone. 

And perseverance is going to have to be the guiding principle for Justin Verlander if he is to make a chase for 300. He is over a year younger than Randy was at his 232nd win and over two years younger than Phil Niekro, but he is older than every other 300-game winner at their 232rd wins, even such greybeards as Gaylord Perry, Early Wynn, and Nolan Ryan, who all won 300 at the age of 43. Verlander has talked about how he wants to pitch until his mid-40s, and that is what he is going to have to do if he is to reach 300 wins. And that's not even mentioning the arm and shoulder injuries that he had suffered throughout his career, which is surely more concerning than the back and knee problems that plagued Randy and Nolan Ryan. Nevertheless, I'm still holding out hope that Justin Verlander can make a run for 300. If he falls short, then maybe I will have to concede the unfortunate truth that the 300-Win Club is dead.

But no matter what happens, we'll always have Randy Johnson's 300th Win!

Happy Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day!