The game’s evolution has made it harder than ever to rack up wins for a pitcher, which makes Justin Verlander’s quest to win 300 all the more remarkable.
Imagine a manned spacecraft is five years from Pluto and it is iffy whether it has enough fuel to complete the mission .
Zack Greinke won the AL Cy Young that year. He was 25. He is still around, back with the Royals. He has the second-most wins among active pitchers with 223. He is 39 and eight months younger than the active leader in wins. Gerrit Cole has 130 wins through his age-31 season, 22 fewer than Verlander had at the same point. Jacob deGrom has 82 wins through his age-34 season. Aaron Nola has 78 through age 29. Shane Bieber has 54 through age 27.
Yet, Verlander has talked about being the baseball Tom Brady and going to age 45. That would be six years, and if he can do that, it would mean averaging nine wins a season for those six years to join a list that began on Sept. 4, 1888, when Pud Galvin was the first to reach 300. “After he had Tommy John surgery [and missed all but one start in 2020-21], people asked the same question. But he finished second for the Cy Young in 2016 and he finished second in 2018 and he won in 2019. …Then he didn’t pitch in 2020 and 2021, and last year when he pitched he won the Cy Young again. You are talking about a guy on a run. When he has pitched, he has been Justin Verlander.
Plus, a greater appreciation has developed for what a pitcher is responsible for and what he is not, and how so much of a win is beyond a pitcher’s control and the win itself is reflective of a team. Look, a win will never mean what it meant when I was becoming a baseball fan. Rightfully. But I wonder if this has swung too far the other way. I get it, there are 10, 15, 20 stats I might look at before “wins” to gauge the value of a starter. And the “win” certainly was overvalued as a defining stat for the first century-plus of the game.
Thus, a win at this time pretty much indicates a starter who pitched well and deep and helped save the bullpen for others in an age when that is more valuable than ever. It does one other thing:“If you look at what constitutes a win on a granular level, yeah, you can get wins in bad starts,” said Verlander, who has averaged seven innings and a 1.86 ERA in his 244 wins.
“Go watch him pitch for Detroit in 2006, ’07, ’08, ‘09 and ‘10. His arm slot was lower. There was a little more run to his fastball, a big curveball. Now we are talking about a guy straight over the top who has one of the best, if not the best, four-seams in the game. Big curveball that is more of a for-a-strike pitch. And that devastating wipeout slider. He’s just recreated himself and had the talent level to do that. A lot of guys don’t have that. That is why he’s been great and stayed great.
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