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.