Glavine may be the last to 300 wins

Tom Glavine won his 300th game on Sunday night. He is only the 23rd pitcher to ever get to that mark.

He also might be the last.

Getting to 300 wins is tougher than it used to be. This is the era of 5-man rotations, pitchers getting pulled after five or six innings, and more and more trips to the DL (doctors and trainers catch more injuries today that went unchecked years ago). Today’s pitchers just don’t pitch enough to get 300 wins.
Using data from Baseball-Reference, here’s the 8 active pitchers between 200 and 300 wins. Yes, there’s only 8:

Randy Johnson, 284 Age: 43
Mike Mussina, 245 Age: 38
David Wells, 235 Age: 44
Jamie Moyer, 225 Age: 44
Curt Schilling, 213 Age: 40
Kenny Rogers, 210 Age: 40
Pedro Martinez, 206 Age: 35
John Smoltz, 203 Age: 40

All of these guys are very old. Johnson is out for the rest of this season and there’s a chance he’ll never pitch again. Even if he does, he’ll need a great season to get 16 wins.

Mussina and Pedro are the only guys below40 on this list. Mussina, who has 57 wins in his last four full seasons, would need another four good seasons to get there, but that’s not exactly a given at 38. Pedro has had many injury issues lately — 94 more wins for him are definitely a stretch. You have to go back seven seasons to compile Pedro’s last 94 wins — who really thinks Pedro has seven more years left in him, let alone seven more quality years?

I’ll go further down the list. Only two other active pitchers are in the 150-200 range, Andy Pettitte (193 at age 35) and Tim Wakefield (164 at age 40). Pettitte would be a longshot, and Wakefield would have to double his win total after the age of 40 — it’s not happening.

Looking at the numbers, Glavine may really be the last to get to 300. And if it’s not him, it will be Randy Johnson or Mike Mussina. Pitchers are just used so differently now than the old days.