That's a Lot of Wins

Roger Clemens tallied the 350th win of his career last night. That's huge number. Greg Maddux is sitting at 340 and may join him in the 350 circle. After those two Tom Glavine (297) and Randy Johnson (284) might crack 300 - although Johnson is 43 and went on the DL today. After that group of four the next 300-game winner might be....maybe Mike Mussina (he's at 243, but he's 38).

But more likely after these guys, the next 300-game winner is 'nobody' or at least nobody for a good fifteen years.

One of the great things about baseball is that performance can be measured more accurately and more meaningfully than in any other sport. Moreover, to a large extent the stats carry their credibility for decades at least since the end of the dead-ball era in 1920. Sure things do change, such as the size of ballparks and the height of the pitching mound, but the stats hold validity. Heck, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays played large parts of their careers in the pitching-dominated 1960's and still ended up at or near the top of the statistical heap.

Steroid usage or even the assumption of wide-spread steroid usage has messed with the stats' credibility and that is a big reason that baseball fans get more upset about steroids than football fans (after all these are often the same people anyway). As an eyewitness to the McGwire-Sosa home run frenzy I can attest that it was huge fun to be there and see Big Mac swat homer after homer as he battered the County Stadium bleachers. But what did it mean? Was it all fake? No, but how much was steroid-induced? 10%? 20%?

Back to Clemens, there are mutterings that Roger has, err, padded his stats with unnatural aids, but no proof and no BALCO investigation.

Where does Clemens fit in the all-time pantheon of pitchers assuming his wins are all legit? Bill James, who virtually invented modern statistical analysis, uses some great tools such as 'win shares' to analyze player value. James literally changed the way baseball operates, although many tradition-bound baseball execs had to be fired or retired before his full impact was felt. I highly commend The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract to you.

Back in 2003, James ranked Clemens as the number 11 pitcher of all time and arguably the greatest pitcher of all-time. That dead-ball era is a problem when comparing all-time best pitchers because most of the stat leaders hail from the pre-1920 era, like Cy Young and Walter Johnson. Clemens is up to number 8 on the all-time win list, but only one of those 8 pitched most of his career after the dead-ball era - Warren Spahn. (One year Spahn and teammate Lew Burdette tricked the Topps baseball card company into printing a "Warren Spahn" card that had Burdette's picture on it!)