Glavine

Tom Glavine won his 300th game yesterday, prompting a rash of (easy to write) articles about how he'll be the last 300 game winner.

Sportswriters love an easy story, especially one that someone else has already written. It's also a safe article to write, because no one's going to remember it by the time the next pitcher wins 300. Randy Johnson, stuck at 284, is looking like a more and more unlikely candidate for 300, and as I mentioned in May, no one else is close.

So the next 300 game winner isn't going to happen for a while. It could be Tim Hudson, Roy Oswalt (if he gets on a team that figures out how to score), or one of the others, but we've got a few years.

I'm sure that similar articles have been written before. The list of 300 game winners contains some gaps. I bet that plenty of people decided that Nolan Ryan would be the last such pitcher in 1990. Although six guys (Gaylord Perry, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver Phil Niekro, Don Sutton, and Ryan) made it withing 8 years, no one else was on the horizon. At the end of the 1990 season, Clemens had just 116 wins.

Before Gaylor Perry it had been 20 years since Early Wynn won 300. I'm sure there were articles by lazy sportswriters in 1963 too saying that he was the last. I don't think we'll be waiting another 20 years; I think it'll happen sometime in 2021.