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.