In one of the most historic weekends in the history of baseball Alex Rodriguez hit his 500th home run, Barry Bonds tied the all time home run record, and Tom Glavine won his 300th game.

While there could be as many as three more members of the 500 home run club by the end of the year or at least by next season, Glavine may be the last to win 300 for a very long time.

Due to the changing nature of how pitchers are used it's becoming more and more difficult for starting pitchers to put up big win totals. A great example of this is last year in the NL. No NL pitcher won more than 16 games last year. That's the lowest league leading total for a full season in NL history.

Randy Johnson does have 284 wins but he appears to be in sharp physical decline. He is out for the rest of the year and will be 44 on September 10th. It seems unlikely that he will be able to win 16 more games. He did win at least 16 games in 2004, 2005, and 2006 so if he is able to fully recover it may be possible.

But after Johnson there is no one else within striking distance.

Taking a look at a young pitcher who appears to be a good candidate, C.C. Sabithia, you can see how difficult it will be for pitchers moving forward. He is just 26 years old with 95 wins which makes it seem like he has a good shot. But he's never had more than 17 wins in a year (although he may may surpass that this year.) And at his current rate he'd need more than 22 seasons (without injury or any dip in performance) to reach 300.

My point? Tom Glavine's 300th win is probably a much bigger deal than Alex Rodriguez's 500th home run. While there are a lot of hitters who look like they will be joining the 500 home run club in the coming years, no pitcher looks to have a good chance of winning #300.

Labels: Tom Glavine