Enough with this "a triple shy of the cycle" nonsense

Last night, Carlos Zambrano "nearly" became the first pitcher to hit for the cycle, smacking a single, double and home run against the Diamondbacks. After the home run, his last hit, the AZ announcers noted that he was "a triple shy of the cycle." I am so sick of announcers saying that someone was a triple shy of the cycle. I guess it's okay during the game when he could still get it (although I think it should have been clear that Z was not coming up again), but referencing it in game stories is functionally nonsense. Let me lay some numbers on you really quick:

So, since the start of the 2000 season there have been, very roughly, around 400,000 games played by major league players. In those games:

A player has hit for the cycle - at least one each of a single, double, triple and home run in the same game - 41 times. Pretty rare occurrence. Amazingly, there have already been three (Orlando Hudson for the Dodgers, Ian Kinsler for Texas, and Jason Kubel for the Twins, who capped his with a grand slam) in the 2009 season.

70 times a player has recorded a double, triple and home run but failed to get a single, making this nearly as rare an occurrence as actually hitting for the cycle. It has yet to happen in 2009.

217 times a player has hit a single, triple and homer but failed to get the double for the cycle. It's three times more likely than missing just the single and more than five times as likely as completing the cycle, but it's still pretty rare. It also hasn't happened yet in 2009.

504 times a player has fallen a homer shy of the cycle, including four times in 2009.

So, how many times has a player "fallen a triple shy of the cycle"?

2,540.

Two thousand, five hundred and forty! Just since the year 2000! Including, by the way, 37 times already in 2009, including twice by Mark DeRosa alone. To give you some impression of how many times that is, there have been just 1,178 ten-strikeout games by pitchers since the start of the 2000 season, including 15 so far in 2009. Not that ten strikeouts is an easy thing to do, but if you're watching a game, it's more than twice as likely that one of the hitters will fall "a triple shy of the cycle" than that one of the starters will strike out ten guys. (Zambrano had only three Ks last night.)

So, with that in mind, is there any chance we can stop making a deal out of a guy going "a triple shy of the cycle"? The triple is the hard part. Getting the rest? Turns out it's not so hard. It happens hundreds of times per year. Enough.

300?

The last post got me thinking. What is it going to take for someone to win 300 games again? And is anyone even within reasonable range?

First, let's look at some recent 300-game winners and their career arcs:

Greg Maddux
355 wins
75 wins through age 25 season
165 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .610

Roger Clemens
354 wins
78 wins through age 25 season
163 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .658

Tom Glavine
305 wins
53 wins through age 25 season
139 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .600

Randy Johnson
296 wins
10 wins through age 25 season
81 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .646

Of these four (Johnson will hit 300 this year barring something unforeseen, so I include him), Johnson clearly has the oddest career track, as he was a very late starter whose three best seasons came well after age 30 - in fact, Johnson's biggest win year and best ERA year were the same year, 2002, in which he went 24-5 and 2.32 in his age 38 season, which is virtually unprecedented. (Post-1900, no one else has ever won that many games in a season at that age or older. Reducing the age to 35 gives you just eight more guys, and only one beyond the deadball era - Steve Carlton, 24-9 at age 35 for the 1980 Phillies.)

Take note of where the first three guys were through their age 30 seasons, though. Maddux and Clemens were both more than halfway to 300; Glavine was a little behind but not crazily far off. Other 300-game winners in the past half-century (bear in mind there have only been nine) have done similarly:

Carlton: 148 wins through age 30 season
Seaver: 168 wins through age 30 season
Sutton: 155 wins through age 30 season
Ryan: 141 wins through age 30 season

Others have done it more like Johnson, by starting slowly and then hanging around forever:

Perry: 95 wins through age 30 season, pitched until age 44
Niekro: 54 wins through age 30 season, pitched until age 48

But everyone who's won 300 games has hung around forever, regardless of whether they were halfway there at 30 or not. Of the nine, only Seaver retired before his age 42 season, and he did it at 41. If you're going to win 300 games, you're probably going to do it at age 40 or so, so you'd better have both the drive and the stuff to pitch that long.

Obviously, then, predicting the next 300-game winner is no easy feat, since we can't say who's going to hang around until age 42 or so. One thing we can say, however, is that you really need to be close to halfway there by age 30. Yes, Maddux and Clemens won more games after 30 than before - enabling them to get to 350 - but Maddux is Maddux and we know now that Clemens had some assistance. Even Nolan Ryan, who pitched until age 46 to pick up his 324 wins, was nearly halfway to 300 by 30.

So, is anyone close, or might anyone be close? Perhaps the two most reasonable active candidates are Tim Hudson - 146 wins at age 33 - and Roy Halladay, who has 134 wins at age 32. Roy Oswalt, with 129 wins at 31, is also right there. However, these guys are all older than 30, and none is at 150, and Hudson is currently on the shelf and may not get there this season. (Halladay has a reasonable chance; Oswalt most likely won't.)

Let's look at Halladay as an example. Over the past seven seasons he's been one of the best pitchers in baseball. But at age 30 he had just 111 wins, meaning that if he pitched until 42 he would need 189 wins in 12 seasons, or nearly 16 wins per. Let's say he wins another 20 games this year, finishing his age 32 season with 151 wins. That still means he needs 15 wins a year for the next decade - probably about as long as he could pitch - just to get right onto the nose of 300 (and obviously, any setback makes it that much harder). To put himself in real position, Halladay needs to rip off a string of 20-win seasons in the next couple of years while he's still in his relative prime. But bear in mind that most pitchers don't just tear off a series of career-best years once they get towards the mid-30s. Doc's average is 17-8 per 162 games, and while 20 wins this year and 17 wins a year for the next decade would get him to 300, that average is likely to drop the older he gets.

Oswalt would seem to be in better position; through his age 30 season, he had 129 wins, 18 ahead of Halladay at the same age. Assuming 13 more seasons for Oswalt, he would need just over 13 wins per. Oswalt has only one season so far in which he hasn't passed that marker. But it's more likely that Oswalt will need 15 wins a year for the next ten years, and then he can bleed out the last 21 wins over two or three final seasons in his 40s. And can he win 15 games a year every year even as he ages?

The thing to consider is that Maddux (and to a lesser extent Clemens) have kind of spoiled us, because they came around right at the same time. The fact is that 300 game winners are extremely rare. Again, even counting Johnson, only ten guys whose careers started after 1960 have done it, and Glavine and Johnson barely got there. Yet Maddux and Clemens both reached 350. But you can't necessarily expect everyone to follow their career path. The most winning pitchers of the past 15 years or so tend to fall into one of three arcs, none of which match Maddux and Clemens' "lots of wins early, lots of wins late" track:

1. Slow start, pick up in their 30s, never really threaten 300 seriously.
Kenny Rogers (219 wins, 70 by age 30) and Curt Schilling (216 wins, 69 by age 30) are the poster boys.

2. Okay start, okay at age 30, can't quite get there for whatever reason.
Pedro is the #1 guy for this since he actually was halfway to 300 by age 30, with 152 wins. But he's won just 17 games in the last three seasons, beset by injuries, and without a job at age 37, stuck on 214 wins, he clearly has no hope in spite of one of the best winning percentages in history. John Smoltz had 129 wins by age 30 and played for a team that won a lot, but he had to convert to a closer due to injuries and has just 210 wins at age 42. Mike Mussina was just three wins behind Glavine through their age 30 seasons, but Moose couldn't pick up the pace like Glavine did, and retired after last season with 270 wins.

3. Jamie Moyer.
Moyer will almost certainly win his 250th career game in the next month or two. He's also 46 and has won more than 200 games after his age 30 season. Weirdo.

It's more likely that most guys currently active will fit one of those tracks (probably 1 or 2). A fast starter like Felix Hernandez (41 wins at age 23) could easily fall into #2; someone like Derek Lowe (127 wins at age 36, but seems like he's at his best now and could pitch into his mid 40s) could be a #1.

So will anyone do it? Well, I think anyone who's going to do it has to have at least 140 wins by the end of their age 30 season. You're still a long shot at that point - you have to pitch well, on teams that aren't terrible, until you're 41-42 - but at least it's vaguely within reach. (Glavine, as we saw, just barely got to 300 with 139 wins by age 30, but he also spent most of his 30s pitching for Braves teams that won 90-100 games every dang year.) Who fits this bill?

Well, no one currently at age 30 or older fits the bill. Buehrle is actually the closest. If he wins 18 games this year - possible if not extremely likely - he'd have 140 at the end of his age 30 season, putting him ahead of Glavine's pace. But he'd still have to pitch as long as Glavine did, and likely play for a lot of winning teams, to get there. He's a longshot.

Johan Santana may be the game's best pitcher, but he needs 21 wins this year just to get to 130 by the end of his age 30 season. I might buy him for 250, but 300 seems too far away.

C.C. Sabathia is frequently mentioned. At the end of his age 27 season he already had 117 wins, meaning that even an extremely conservative 11 per year would give him 150 on the nose by the end of his age 30 season. Given Sabathia's body, though, does anyone think he can pitch effectively until age 42? Pitching for the Yankees might boost his win total in the short-term, but he's going to have to really rack up the wins in NYC to compensate for what will probably be a shorter career.

Carlos Zambrano? It's not quite as ridiculous as it sounds. Z had 96 wins coming into this season, but he still has three full years before the end of his age 30 season. 15 wins per (not a giant stretch) would put him at 141, again ahead of Glavine's pace. But can Carlos pitch effectively until he's 42, or even 38? Can he keep winning 15 games a season if the Cubs of 2012 and beyond start to fall apart around him?

Beyond that you have a lot of guys who, with their current totals, might be candidates for 200 or even 250, but almost certainly won't sniff 300. Typical of this group is someone like Jake Peavy, who had 86 wins at the end of his age 27 season. That doesn't put him too far behind Zambrano, but since Zambrano himself is obviously a longshot, Peavy and guys like him must be considered even more so.

Really, you have to look at guys now in their early 20s to even start thinking about it. Take Chad Billingsley, for instance. At the end of his age 23 season he already had 35 major league wins, and he's added three just in the first three weeks this year. By the end of his age 25 season he could be in the high 60s or low 70s in wins (Glavine had 53 at the same age), and by age 30, if he wins 15 games a year, he'd be pushing 150. The issue, of course, is projecting anything on a guy this young. At the end of his age 25 season, Doc Gooden had 119 major league wins, putting him more than 40 ahead of Clemens at the same age. But at the end of his age 30 season, Gooden had added just 38 wins to that total (Clemens won 85 in the same span), and ultimately he didn't even get to 200 for his career, finishing with 194. Obviously there were some extenuating circumstances in Doc's case that probably won't repeat these days, but the point is that you can't really assume that a 24-year-old kid is going to be able to win 15 games a year for the next decade and a half. And so, ultimately, trying to project which guys are likely to win 300 games is pretty fruitless. No one's likely to do it, so we might as well enjoy the ride if anyone can manage to make it.

No.

In Rob Neyer's mailbag today, someone wrote in to ask why Mark Buehrle was never in the "what active pitcher could possibly win 300 games" discussion:

Just a quick question -- why is it that, when discussing who may end up winning 300 games, no one mentions Mark Buehrle, ever? For comparison's sake, he ended his Age 29 season with 122 wins, 13 more than Johan Santana at the same age. And assuming he wins more than nine games this year, he'll have more wins than Oswalt at the same age as well as Halladay at a year older. He's no lock, obviously, but wouldn't you be looking for guys who've won a lot of games, haven't had any injury history (he's thrown 200+ innings and made 30 or more starts all eight years as a starter), and don't rely on velocity?

If there's a reason he gets left out, I'd love to hear it, but the only one I can think of is "He's on the White Sox." I'm sure you weren't going for a complete analysis of pitchers with a chance at 300, but I've seen similar articles and he's never mentioned.

I love it. Even when it has nothing to do with the Cubs, the Sox fan's inferiority complex runs rampant.

I assume that Santana, Halladay and Oswalt were mentioned on whatever list of Neyer's this guy is referring to, because I can't recall having heard them in any such discussions. In fact, about the only guy I've heard consistently mentioned as a real possibility is C.C. Sabathia, who has six fewer wins than Buehrle but is a year-plus younger. (Sabathia is also a lefty.) Another "maybe" guy is Felix Hernandez, who through last year's age 22 season had 39 wins (Buehrle, by comparison, had 20 wins at the end of the same season).

But let's forget about everyone else for now. The real question here is, is there any reason to think that Mark Buehrle has a chance at winning 300 games? Neyer says no, though he oddly resorts mostly to "he's never finished higher than 5th in the Cy Young voting" and "his ERA+ is only 122," neither of which strikes me as a great reason. That said, he's obviously right: Mark Buehrle has no real chance at winning 300 games.

Including his two wins this year, Buehrle has 124 career wins, which ranks him first among all pitchers age 30 or younger (he is 30, of course). Johan Santana, who is just ten days older than Buehrle, has only 111 career wins.

The question is, does raw win total really tell us all that much? The obvious answer is "no." Basic stats will tell you that Buehrle is as much of a longshot to get near 300 as any of his contemporaries. Here:

Wins: 124
Wins needed for 300: 176
% of starts won, career: 46%
Starts needed to win 176 games at that win rate: 383
Seasons of 34 starts needed to make 383 starts: 11.3

So, the first thing Buehrle has to do in order to win 300 games is make another 380 starts or so, and that's assuming no significant fluctuation in the rate at which he records a win in games he starts. (Sure, it could go up. But 46% is already pretty high - as a comparison, Pedro Martinez's career percentage of starts won is 53.5%. Pedro's W/L percentage is also nearly 100 points higher than Buehrle's, it should be mentioned. Even Greg Maddux's career percentage of starts won was only 48%, and he won 355 games. Maddux had 150 wins at the end of his age 29 season, 28 more than Buehrle, and in the next decade he won 168 more. Raise your hand if you think Mark Buehrle is going to win almost 17 games a year for the next ten years. Did you know he's only won more than 16 games once in his entire career? Put your hand down.)

It's also assuming that Buehrle is healthy enough to make 380 more starts. 11.3 seasons takes him over the age of 40, and while it's certainly not impossible to think that Buehrle - especially since he's a lefty - could still be pitching at that age, it's a very, very rare player who manages to avoid the DL for virtually his entire career.

Buehrle's 162-game average to this point in his career is 15 wins. Which is certainly very good. But to win 300, he needs to do that again this season, and then for each of the next 11. And his career trend isn't necessarily on the up. He's started well enough this year, and he won 15 last year, but in 2007 he won just 10, and 12 in 2006. So over the last three years he's averaged 12 wins a year. An average of 12 wins a year going forward puts him at 300 nearly 15 seasons from now, and it's not very likely that Buehrle will pitch until 44 or 45, right?

300 wins is twenty 15-win seasons. Buehrle has just five in his career, and even winning 15 games a year for the next ten years (at which point he'd be 40) won't get him to 300. And where's the evidence that he can win 15 games a year consistently, let alone every year for the next decade?

Buehrle is a very good pitcher who should win 200 games easily, and might even chase 250 if he doesn't lose too much of his effectiveness over the next decade. In the modern age, that's an impressive total. I wonder if we'll see another 300-game winner again, frankly. But I feel pretty confident in saying that if we do see one, Mark Buehrle ain't gonna be it.

Tears of the Sunkist

My love affair with Sunkist Lemonade has hit a snag.

Let me start at the beginning. You will probably recall how I fell head over heels for Lift during my trip to New Zealand and Australia in 2000. Sunkist Lemonade is the only true American counterpart to Lift I've ever seen, but finding it in the US has proven nearly impossible over the years. Only once did I ever see it "in the wild," at a gas station in Wisconsin (but one had exploded and all the cans were sticky, so I didn't get any); the rest I've had only because Drew brought it back from Minnesota. Until this past weekend, when I quite by chance discovered they now stock Sunkist Lemonade at at least one Jewel in Chicago. Ridiculously excited, I bought two fridge packs (about all I could carry at the time or I might well have gotten more). Yes, I've been drinking basically no soda lately, but I figured I could make a minor exception.

Tonight I had a late dinner (9:15ish) and had a can with it. Then, because I was really enjoying it, I had a second can a little later, maybe around 10 or 10:30. Then I went to bed about 12:30 and couldn't fall asleep, which seemed odd because when I left work at 7 pm, I was so tired my eyes were starting to water.

And then I remembered - Sunkist Lemonade, just like regular Sunkist Orange, contains caffeine. A quick check of the can confirmed this. And now it's 3:15 in the morning, I have to get up in (ideally) less than five hours, and I have yet to be able to fall asleep.

Bear in mind not only that I wouldn't have had Sunkist Lemonade so late in the day if I'd remembered it contained caffeine, but until Sunday when I bought the soda and drank three cans in one three-hour span (yes, I know), I had had nothing containing caffeine, to my knowledge, in months. No wonder my stomach acid seemed worse today.

Anyway, this blows. I'll finish the cans I have - which is like 18 more - and then I may have to swear off my favorite soda of all-time. Yes, it will be better for me, but it will also be less fun.

Too much of a good thing

Let's recap.

MLB's decision to retire Jackie Robinson's #42 throughout baseball in 1997: good.

Ken Griffey Jr.'s petition to wear the number for a day in 2007: appropriate.

Last year's extension of the exemption, allowing any player who wanted to pay homage to Robinson to wear the number for a day: respectful.

This year's seemingly mandatory "request" from the Commissioner's office that every uniformed player or coach wear #42 on April 15: none of the above.

I get the idea, or at least what Major League Baseball wants me to think the idea is. But is it even about honoring Robinson at this point? When Griffey requested the exemption to pay homage to Robinson on the 60th anniversary of the latter's debut, it was a nice, thoughtful move on his part. To require everyone to wear the number renders it meaningless. I'm sure there was some worry about whether players who didn't wear it would somehow be made to feel disrespectful, and thus the easiest thing to do was to have everyone wear it. But how does this not cheapen the entire endeavor?

Got anything to say there, Bud?

"It's just my way of giving that man his due respect," Griffey said at the time. "I just called Bud and asked him if I could do it. He made a couple of phone calls and said, 'Yeah.' We had a good conversation. It was about me wearing it on that day, and only that day."

Selig enjoyed the feel of it so much he now wants to blanket big league fields with all those No. 42s dancing across America.

"I think it's great," the Commissioner said. "Just their understanding of history and what that man did for so many people is so important. Believe me, it makes me very happy."

Does Griffey's "only that day" sound a little... peevish, to you? At all? Either way, the real point about this quote block is Selig's line. "It makes me very happy." It makes you very happy? I've gotta say, Bud, that doesn't strike me like a good enough reason to do it. Oh, wait. This is about your legacy, right? Because people blame you for steroids and you don't like that, so you're doing something you think looks good. But because you're Bud Selig, you only know what that looks like, you don't know what it actually is.

Go Cubs go

The season starts today. I'm excited but also terrified; see the Cubs blog for more.

Oh, and I've got a mantra for the season:



Hey, it worked for Obama! (And since he's an annoying Sox fan, if appropriating his slogan would tick him off even slightly, all the better.)