Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day - 2024 - 15th Anniversary

Five years ago today, it was the 10th anniversary of Randy Johnson's 300th Win, and throughout the day I was posting my 10th Anniversary celebration posts. It was a project that I was working on for six months, and not surprisingly it opened to a complete thud. Nobody paid any attention to it, and even now Part IV, the longest part of the entire series, had somehow disappeared off the face of the earth. Oh well. 

Of course the fact that five years have gone by means today is the 15th anniversary of Randy Johnson's 300th Win! Today I went to Globe Life Field in Arlington to pick up a giveaway replica 2023 World Series ring. It was a long and arduous process that involved standing in line for over an hour. And instead of the wonderfully overcast day we had in DC in 2009, it was well over 90 degrees with humidity, making it a tough experience. And then I didn't stay for the game, because I still have to do my Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day festivities, which will probably just consist of me rewatching Randy Johnson's 300th Win while playing The Sims 3, which was what I had wanted to do on June 4, 2009 before the rainout the night before delayed my plans for the 4th.

Meanwhile I don't know what exactly Randy Johnson is doing to celebrate, if he does so at all. But even though he's 60 years old now, the Big Unit is still out there living his best life as a professional photographer. Last year I talked about his Storytelling with Photographs exhibition in Cooperstown. It had a successful run in New York, then moved to his home state of Arizona for a few months earlier in the year. He did have to have a full knee replacement, not surprisingly since he did miss most of the 2003 season due to knee issues, but it hasn't stopped him from doing advertisements for DirectTV where he's making ballparks for birds using old satellite dishes instead of exploding them with baseballs.

Not only that, but he's also inspired some of his former teammates to go into photography, most prominently Ken Griffey Jr. who has been seen on the sidelines at NFL games taking photographs. Meanwhile Randy is still out there doing private signings. Recently I sent in a copy of the Giants Magazine celebrating his 300th win. Yeah, maybe it kinda sucked to not have the physical interaction that I had when I met him in person back in 2020, but it's still a cool thing to have. And next month I do plan on going to Cooperstown for Adrián Beltré's Hall of Fame induction. And who knows, maybe Randy Johnson will be there as well.

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And now we come to the most despairing section of these posts, the part where I take a look at the 10 winningest active pitchers and compare them to the previous years on this date. And hoo boy things are looking rather grim.

So the first noticeable thing is that 108 wins is enough to get into a two-way tie for 10th place on the list. Back on June 4, 2012 Carl Pavano and his 108 career wins was only enough to be 31st among active pitchers, but now it's enough for the top 10. Of course there are only 14 active pitchers that even have 100 wins. Back in 2012 the 14th ranked active pitcher was Chris Carpenter with 144, although he was only active because he was under contract with the Cardinals while trying to recover from shoulder pain that was eventually diagnosed as thoracic outlet syndrome.

Of course the fact that I define "active" as being signed to a contact with a Major League organization does lead to the situation being more dire than most. In fact of the 11 pitchers on the top 10 (thanks to the tie for 10th), four of them - Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Gerrit Cole, and Wade Miley - are currently on the 60-day IL with only Miley having thrown an actual pitch in the Majors. Johnny Cueto is also currently with the AAA Round Rock Express on a minor league contract. He is pitching well and with the Texas Rangers still dealing with injuries in the pitching department it's possible he may find his way to the active roster soon; he has agreed to delay his opt-out date.

That leaves just six pitchers on the top 10 that are actually active and contributing to Major League teams. Kyle Gibson is having a nice bounce-back year with the St. Louis Cardinals after two subpar seasons where he somehow managed to win 25 games despite below-average ERAs. He had a chance to win number 109 yesterday to break out of the tie with Wade Miley, but alas the bullpen blew a one-run lead as we have our first tie for 10th since June 4, 2017. Carlos Carrasco is also trying to bounce back from a terrible 2023 season this time with his original team in the Cleveland Guardians, but without much success either. Still, the fact he is pitching at all after his battle with leukemia in 2019 is laudable enough. 

Chris Sale is having a tremendous year in his first season with the Atlanta Braves. He's third in the Majors with eight wins, and would have been in the top 10 in ERA as well had he not suffered a disastrous start against the soon-to-be-Sacramento Athletics. Still, with 128 wins he's only five away from passing Ryan Dempster for fewest among pitchers with 2,000 career strikeouts. Although the 107-win Yu Darvish is only 18 strikeouts away from wrestling the title away from Sale, but he's on the IL for the second time this season.

The next two pitchers on the top 10 are, like Darvish, also seeking their 2,000th career strikeout. Sale's Atlanta teammate Charlie Morton isn't having quite as dominant of a season as Sale, with only a 3-2 record and a roughly league average 3.88 ERA, but the fact he's still getting hitters out at 40 as the third oldest player in the Majors is quite admirable. He's 55 strikeouts away from 2,000 but with 132 wins he's already at the Dempster Line. Meanwhile Lance Lynn has only a 2-3 record in his return to the Cardinals, but his 3.23 ERA suggests he's been a bit unlucky with his run support, He is 37 strikeouts away from 2,000 and with 137 wins he's well past the Dempster Line.

And that brings us to the last great hope for the 300-Win-Club: Justin Verlander. A year ago he was still dealing with some inconsistencies as he was coming off of a shoulder strain that kept him out in April. His struggles continued through June, but he bounced back with a strong four-win July. With the New York Mets well out of the playoff race by the end of the month, he ended up getting traded back to the Houston Astros where he left the year before. With the Astros' powerful bats behind him, he surged to a 7-4 record in his last two months to give him 11 wins between June 4 and the end of the season and 13 overall. The Astros fell in the ALCS to their in-state rivals with Verlander delivering a strong start in the Division Series and two mediocre ones in the ALCS, but those wouldn't have counted towards 300 anyways. 

Verlander missed the start of the season for a second straight year with another shoulder ailment, but this one wasn't quite as severe, and he was back in action by mid-April. He won his season debut against the Washington Nationals but followed that up with two strong starts that ended in no-decisions as he dealt with the new reality of the Astros being a sub-.500 ballclub. He was absolutely annihilated by the New York Yankees in his next start before pulling off two wins in his next three start, although with a loss in between. Since then he's had a strong start and a mediocre start that ended in no-decisions. So far he's 3-2, and his 3.63 is a tad bit above league average. With the 11 wins to finish off 2023 that gives him 14 wins in the yearlong span between June 4, the same as he had the year before. He is currently at 260 wins, and if he can consistently get 14 wins a year then that would put him over the 300-win mark sometime in 2027. He would be 44 years old, and it would be 18 years after Randy Johnson's 300th Win, far short of the 20-year drought between Lefty Grove and Warren Spahn's milestone win.

Of course, this is under the assumption that Justin Verlander can still continue to put up 14 wins a year through 2027, even when dealing with some shoulder maladies that cost him a couple of starts the past few years. A search on Baseball Savant shows that Verlander's pitching run value thus far in 2024 is only 2, roughly average. And that mostly comes from his breaking balls and offspeed pitches, which had all combined to make him one of the top pitchers at preventing hard-hit balls. However, the rest of his measurements are average to poor percentile-wise. And it falls well short of 2023 when he still put up great run values.

Of course we have to consider an important caveat in that this is the first time that I've thought of looking up Verlander's stats on Baseball Savant. Which means that we've only gotten his 2024 season totals through June 4, while the 2023 values encapsulated his entire season. I don't know if there's any way to look at his percentile rankings up until June 4, 2023 but there probably isn't. It's entirely possible he could have had miserable rankings through June 4 a year ago, only to dominate as he went off the rest of the season. I guess it is something worth looking at. Nevertheless, Verlander has said that he wants to get to 300 wins. It will really depend on whether or not teams will continue to give him chances to do so. But hey, the San Francisco Giants were willing to sign 45-year-old Randy Johnson and give him the opportunities to get the five wins he needed for 300. Would we be seeing the same thing for Justin Verlander in 2028? Only time will tell.

Before I wrap things up, I guess writing another one of these posts is just another reminder of the unrelenting nature of the passage of time. When you get to be close to 40 like me 15 years just doesn't seem like a lot. Yet on the baseball scale 15 years is a long time. As part of the Randy Johnson's 10th anniversary I took a look at the players that played in one of the 13 games that were played on June 4, 2009, a list that ended up totaling 324 players. I can't find the post anymore, but I do know that back on June 4, 2019 there were still 41 of those 324 that were considered active. Today that number is down to four. And one of those is Clayton Kershaw who is recovering from shoulder surgery, so if we want to list the players that have actually played a Major League game in 2024, that number is down to three: David Robertson, Jesse Chavez, and Andrew McCutchen. There are more players that played on June 4, 2009 that have passed away* than played a Major League game in 2024. It's really a stark reminder of the passage of time.

*RIP Luis Valbuena (1985-2018)
RIP Pedro Feliciano (1976-2021)
RIP Julio Lugo (1975-2021)
RIP Tim Wakefield (1966-2023)

Anyways, perhaps I shouldn't end this post on such a somber note, because Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day should be a celebration! A celebration of Randy Johnson and his tremendous achievement!

Happy Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day!