Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day - 2026

 It's June 4! (At least it was when I started writing this post.) Which means it's the anniversary of Randy Johnson achieving his milestone 300th career win, a day that I've been celebrating as Randy Johnson's 300th Win Day! For the past few years I've used this day to take stock of the changes in my life, the life of the man behind the milestone, and in baseball as a whole, particularly in the realm of the obsolete statistic of the pitcher win.

This year there's a pretty massive change in the game of baseball, with the introduction of the Automated Balls and Strikes challenge. This year pitchers, catchers, and hitters gained the ability to challenge balls and strikes calls based on a well defined strike zone. Each team has two incorrect challenges that they can use for a nine inning game, with additional incorrect challenges becoming available with every extra inning. This system has been put in place in minor league ball for a few years, and it's allowed home plate umpires to keep some of their autonomy while rectifying some of the more egregious calls. I do like the system, even if it could have completely changed the outcome of Randy Johnson's 300th win had it been available in 2009.

In case you didn't memorize the play by play like I did (or at least I thought I did until I tried recreating the entire box score from memory. I ended up making several mistakes on assists and putouts. I'm such a fucking failure,) the Washington Nationals mounted a bit of a rally in the bottom of the eighth. They had the bases loaded with two outs, and their top slugger Adam Dunn at the plate facing San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson. Wilson unleashed a sinking fastball down around Dunn's knees. Dunn, who was tied for third in the National League with 16 bases on balls heading into this game, watched the ball enter Giants catcher Bengie Molina's glove, then tossed the bat and jogged to first, confident he had drawn the game-tying, milestone destroying walk. To his surprise, home plate umpire Tim Timmons called it strike three instead, ending the inning and also the Nationals' best chance at avoiding the milestone. Had the ABS challenge been available to Dunn, he could have tapped his helmet as soon as Timmons made the call, indicating his desire to have the pitch viewed according to his own individual strike zone. Alas, the only recourse available to him was to plead his case to Timmons before going out to his position in left field, where he watched San Francisco score three more runs to cement the win for Randy Johnson. 

Anyways, Major League Baseball isn't the only entity to go through dramatic changes. There's been a lot of changes in my life. I ended 40 years of the single life when I got married, then after a honeymoon that took me across Europe, I wound up moving away from Texas back to the east coast after all. In fact, one reason why this post was so late was because I spent the majority of the day back in Texas finishing cleaning out my apartment. I also finished paying off my student loans, but then I picked up a mortgage. And along the way I still went to games in five new National Hockey League arenas, and one new Major League Baseball ballpark (and no it isn't the one in Sacramento). Yes, there's been a lot of changes that I could never have anticipated a year ago when I was sitting in a hotel room watching Azumanga Daioh. 

Because I was so busy with moving and house-hunting, I was unable to take in the most significant public event in Randy Johnson's life: his number retirement ceremony with the Seattle Mariners on May 1. It seemed whatever animosity that Mariners fans held against Randy for his subpar performance prior to the trade deadline in 1998 had gone away, as they celebrated his legacy in a lovely ceremony. I watched whatever I could from home, when I noticed something strange. I recognized his son Tanner and daughter Lexi from the milestone game and from his Hall of Fame speech, but the person sitting to the side did not look like his wife Lisa. Going back to watch the beginning of the ceremony later, I noticed emcee Rick Rizzs announce the mysterious lady as "his girlfriend Sherry." I was shocked. I hadn't heard anything about Randy Johnson separating from his wife, and if this could explain why only two of his kids showing up. I don't have the answer, and ultimately it doesn't matter what Randy does in his private life. I'm not holding him up as a paragon of virtue, but merely as the man behind the greatest baseball moment I've seen in person. 

Anyways, it's now been 17 years since that moment. It doesn't feel all that long ago, but in those 17 years I've managed to get through medical school and two residencies, and have been out working long enough to finish paying off my student loans. It's been so long that my cousin once removed who was born that same day is now entering his summer break before his senior year of high school. It's been so longer that losing pitcher Jordan Zimmermann, the youngest player on the Nationals that day, had just turned 40 almost two weeks ago, while Pablo Sandoval, the youngest player on both teams, would join him there in August. It's been so long that we no longer have any active players that had played in any of the 13 Major League Baseball games on June 4, 2009. Andrew McCutchen, the man who had made his Major League debut 17 years ago today and the final active player, had been signed by the Texas Rangers, but he struggled mightily and wound up getting released a week prior to the anniversary.

And we are now firmly in the third longest longest drought between 300-win games. Since Lefty Grove won his 300th game less than two months before the 17th anniversary of Grover Cleveland Alexander's milestone win, this current drought surpassed it back in April. And now I suppose it's time to take a look at how long this drought may last. And one way to do that is to look at the top ten winningest active pitchers, where active pitcher is defined by a player that had been signed to a Major League Baseball team.

This year we have four new players make their debuts in the top 10, what with Clayton Kershaw and Charlie Morton retiring, Wade Miley still debating his future as a free agent, and Carlos Carrasco bouncing between AAA Gwinnett and the Atlanta Braves bullpen. Zack Wheeler, Kevin Gausman, Jose Quintana, and Michael Wacha were all among the pitchers that reached the 100-win milestone late in the 2024, but didn't have enough wins to break into the top 10 by June 4 last year. Of those four Wacha had the most wins in the last year with 11, but Wheeler is clearly the best hurler with an ERA below 3.00 although he missed the last six weeks of 2025 after a blood clot was found in his shoulder. 

Among all pitchers in the top 10, Sonny Gray had the most wins in the last year with 14. He had a fairly middling finish to 2025 with the St. Louis Cardinals, but he seems to be performing better after a trade to the Boston Red Sox. Chris Sale is among the league leaders in wins in 2026, but he missed time in the second half of 2025 after breaking some ribs while making a defensive play. Gerrit Cole was another pitcher just coming back from injury, although in his case it was Tommy John surgery.

And then there are the two graybeards, the final two Major League Baseball players older than me. Max Scherzer certainly left a mark with his postseason performance in helping the Toronto Blue Jays to the World Series. However, that seemed to overshadow the mediocrity that he displayed the regular season, during which he watched Clayton Kershaw zoom by him in career wins and then retire after a third ring. Scherzer had been even worse this year, with an ERA almost 10.00 before landing back on the Injured List with forearm tendinitis and ankle pain, although he is making rehab starts already.

Things aren't going much better for Justin Verlander. Much was made about how he didn't have a single win in 2025 prior to June 4, which left him with only the two wins he collected in the latter part of 2024. He actually pitched much better after returning from the Injured List, and his four wins was double to what he had the year before. He could have had more had the bullpen not blew several leads, but it left him with 266, just 34 from the magical milestone. During the offseason he signed with his original team in the Detroit Tigers. While his prodigal return was celebrated, he did an interview with the Athletic's Jayson Stark during spring training in which he acknowledged that he may not want to continue pitching if things go catastrophically. And then what do you know things went catastrophically. He was knocked around by the Arizona Diamondbacks in his first start to the tune of five runs (all earned) in three and two-thirds innings: a 12.27 ERA. Then he went to the Injured List himself with left hip inflammation. He had spent almost two months on the IL before finally coming back to make a rehab start with Triple A Toledo. Of course, he looked extremely sharp, with five scoreless innings. Who knows if he can maintain that level of production against Major League hitters, but if he can perhaps 34 more wins isn't out of the question.

Of course, I've spent all this time looking at the pitchers that have accumulated the most wins during their careers, which is nice and all, but it really isn't meaningful in tracking the pitcher's chances of getting to 300. I've sufficiently toyed around with Stathead on Baseball Reference to be able to track a different statistic: the most wins for a pitcher in the calendar year beginning with June 5 and ending in June 4 the next year. And here for the first time are the winningest pitchers between June 5, 2025 and June 4, 2026. 

It's certainly an eclectic list, with some Cy Young candidates, including Cristopher Sanchez who had a scoreless inning streak over 50, a pair of Seattle Mariners aces, and top-10 member Sonny Gray. It also includes two pitchers that perhaps best illustrate why the 300-game-winner may just be going extinct: Aaron Ashby and Adrian Morejon. You might not know who Aaron Ashby and Adrian Morejon are, but the long and short of it is that they're both relievers. Aaron Ashby did make two spot starts in the past calendar year, but they both primarily come out of the bullpen. I went back and looked up the top 10 in each calendar year ending June 4 going back to 2009-2010, and none of the other 125 pitchers that spent time in the top 10 made more than half of their appearances out of the bullpen. Relief wins are extremely unpredictable since much of it comes with being in the right place at the right time, but the fact that Ashby and Morejon were both able to make this top 10 is surely a sign of how much more chances relievers have to get wins nowadays. 

Another sign is how many fewer wins the top winners in each calendar year get. This year there is a four-way tie for 16. There's been several years since 2009-10 where 17 isn't even enough to get on the top 10. There has also not been a pitcher that won 20 games in a calendar year between June 5 - June 4 since Corey Kluber won 22 in 2017-18. It really makes you pine for the days of Jake Arrieta winning 26 between 2015-16, by far the most by any one pitcher in a calendar year.

Anyways, I do think this would be an interesting statistic to track. After all, unlike the top 10 winningest active pitchers list where you can get to a certain point and stay on the list despite barely getting any wins, you have to keep getting high win totals if you want to make this list multiple times. And you want to be able to make the list multiple times if you want to accumulate high win totals. For example, while Arrieta's 26 wins in 2015-16 is impressive, that is the only year he made a top 10 calendar year list, and as such ended his career with 115 wins having never made the top 10 career list. Among the 127 pitchers that made one of these top 10 calendar year lists, Verlander is the leader with nine appearances spanning 2009-10 and 2023-24. Meanwhile fellow 200-game winners Scherzer has seven while Kershaw has five. Meanwhile Randy Johnson's 300th Win losing pitcher Jordan Zimmermann has made two himself.

That got me curious at how many times Randy Johnson finished in the top 10 of a calendar year between June 5 and June 4. Having still kept each of his wins memorized, it was a cinch to calculate how many wins he had in his calendar years. After that it was just going to Statcast to see where it ranked. To my surprise, he finished in the top 10 only eight times, one fewer than Verlander. Of course back in Randy Johnson's day starters pitched in games longer, allowing them to accumulate more wins. It's also quite telling that in years where he didn't finish in the top 10, Randy averaged much more wins than Verlander. It probably explains why Randy got to 300 while Verlander is still 34 off. 

As fun as this is to track these win statistics, it has no real correlation with how well a pitcher would do in the future, which is why it's lost so much of its luster as a stat. Nevertheless, I'll keep tracking pitcher wins. In fact recently I've been going over the winning pitcher for every game, and naming the date in which Randy Johnson won that same total number of games. For example, when Jacob deGrom won 100 on Monday, I said that it was his April 6, 1996, since that was the day Randy won 100. It's completely pointless but it keeps me entertained. Just as much as celebrating Randy Johnson's 300th win! 

Anyways, since we've hit the 17th anniversary of Randy Johnson's 300th win, it means we have 18 sets of top 10 career winningest active pitchers. Here they all are for your entertainment