We've recently had a lot of baseball milestones, as Bonds tied Hank Aaron in HRs, ARod hit his 500th HR (the youngest ever to do this) and Glavine notches his 300th win. This is a great convergence of accomplishments and is lots of fun for me as a fan.
But there is a problem. We now are forced to deal with lots of questions of "Will anyone ever get 300 wins again????".
This question bothers me. A lot. The answer of course is yes. And if the question sounds familiar its because this type of question is asked lots of times, but people don't learn. After Nolan Ryan reached 300, people wondered if anyone would ever reach 300 wins in the days of 5 man rotations and extended bullpen use. Well 3 players have done it in the last 5 years.
Even assuming the old guys who are close (Johnson, Mussina, etc.) all fall short, the next crop of young guys will most likely produce a 300 game winner. Consider that there are lots of pitchers on about the same pace as glavine. I'm talking about players such as Sabathia, Hudson, Santana, Oswalt, Zito, etc. Its probably a good bet that at least a couple of these pitchers will get close. Then if they are willing to play into their 40s, and with improving pitcher longevity this is highly possible, we'll see another 300 game winner. And if bad luck hits that crop of players, they next crop will get it done.
You can say that given the current state of baseball we will never see a 500 game winner or 35 wins in a season, but please please please don't say stupid things about 300 game winners.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment