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

Tonight had a chance to be one of the most historic nights in the history of baseball with Tom Glavine going for his 300th win, Alex Rodriguez going for his 500th home run, and Barry Bonds going for a all time home run record tying 755th homer.

Unfortunately for these three, none of them could get the job done tonight.

Glavine came the closest as he pitched a great 6 innings for the Mets in Milwaukee tonight. He allowed just 2 hits and 1 run (although he also had 5 walks) in 6 innings tonight. He left the game with a 2-1 lead but he lost his 300th win when the game was tied in the 8th. The Brewers went on to win the game in the 13th inning by a final score of 4-2.

Alex Rodriguez went 0 for 5 for the Yankees as he one of the few Yankee hitters not to have a big game. The Yanks beat the White Sox in New York by a score of 16 to 3, behind a franchise record tying 8 home runs.

Perhaps A-Rod is pressing due to what Jose Canseco said? If you haven't caught it yet Canseco said he "has stuff" on A-Rod and when asked if he A-Rod ever did steroids he said "wait and see" (for his new book.) Clearly this could be seen as a publicity stunt by Canseco. But I don't see how you can just dismiss what he says considering that it looks like most of what he said in his last book was true. A lot of people dismissed what he said about Rafael Palmeiro and look how that turned out.

Bonds went 0 for 2 with 2 walks to finish off his awful July (save July 19th, that was a good day for him.) Bonds hit just .186 in July. He's had an up and down season this year.

April - .356
May - .194
June - .364
July - .186

Bonds has historically been amazing in August so it'll be interesting to see if he can keep up that trend. Even last year when Bonds was cold most of the season he hit .333 in August. 2004? He hit .414 in August that year. Although the .472 he hit in April that year was what really stands out. He also had an absolutely ridiculous .696 OBP in April of '04. I'm actually wondering if that's the greatest month of any hitter ever. An OPS of 1.828 for a full month has to be among the best if it's not the record.

As far as this magical trifecta of baseball history, I suppose if A-Rod and Bonds remain stuck there's a possibility for it to happen again on Glavine's next start.

It doesn't seem that unlikely that they'll remain stuck because of the way Bonds and Rodriguez have been hitting recently. Bonds has been in an awful month long slump other than his 2 home run game on July 19th. And Rodriguez has now gone 17 straight at bats without a hit as his batting average has dropped under .300 (he's now at .298)

Labels: Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Tom Glavine

Alex Rodriguez hit his 499th career home run yesterday. He's now just one short of becoming the 22nd player to hit 500. A-Rod turns 32 tomorrow. Barring some unforeseen incident, he will be the youngest player to hit 500 home runs. Currently the youngest player to ever reach 500 is Jimmie Foxx who was 32 years, 336 days old when he did it. Foxx was only the second player to ever hit 500 home runs at the time (1940.)

Rodriguez hopes to not follow the same path as Foxx after hitting #500. Foxx's career quickly fell apart after that and he only hit another 34 home runs before retiring at age 37.

The oldest player to hit #500? Ted Williams at age 41. Williams would have done it much sooner but missed much of the prime of his career due to World War II. Willie McCovey and Eddie Murray were both 40 when they hit #500.

The first member of the 500 home run club was Babe Ruth who hit #500 on August 11th, 1929. He was 34 years old. Ruth's feats are all the more impressive when you consider he started his career as a pitcher in the dead ball era.

Tom Glavine won his 299th game yesterday. When he gets to #300 he'll be the 23rd pitcher to do so.

While the 500 home run club seems to be losing it's luster with lesser players such as Rafael Palmeiro joining it, the 300 win club is becoming harder and harder to get into. 6 of the 22 current members of the 300 win club got to #300 before 1900. The club was founded by Pud Galvin in 1888, so it's been around 41 years longer than the 500 home run club.

It's very possible that by the end of this year the 500 home run club will have more members than the 300 win club.

A-Rod will become the 8th player since 1996 to join the 500 home run club. And as I mentioned earlier there are 3 more players who will likely join the club either this year or next. On the other hand Glavine will become just the 3rd pitcher to win #300 since '90. The other two? Roger Clemens (2003) and Greg Maddux (2004.)

While home runs have gotten easier over the years to hit. Wins have got harder to get (for starters.) This is because of the 5 man rotations and the fact that pitchers are taken out earlier in the games (which means more wins for relievers, and less for starters.)

The only other active pitcher who looks to have a shot at 300 wins (any time soon) is Randy Johnson. He has been plagued by injury problems and will be 44 years old by the end of the season. Johnson has 284 wins.

Because of this it's quite likely that Tom Glavine will be the last pitcher to win 300 games for a very long time.

Labels: Alex Rodriguez, Tom Glavine