I was just looking at the leading stats in baseball. There are about 31 games left in the season. The highest win total for pitchers, is 16. That's in the AL. In the NL, it's 14. The NL will not have a 20 game winner at all (barring some miracle of perfection) and the AL may not either. How many times has this happened? Baseball folks: Is this rare? It seems odd to me that a season could go by without someone winning at least 20. (There are only 6/7 starts left in the year)
There has never been a season without a 20 game winner in at least one league. The NL has only had one year since 1876 without a 20 game winner (1931). The AL has had 3 seasons since 1876 without a 20 game winner (1960, 1981, 1982).
This doesn't surprise me too much since most starters are barely able to go 6 innings these days. The days of Bob Gibson and Mickey Lolich and others like them where they were racking up 20 or more complete games are over.
NL 20-game-winners by decade: 50-59: 30 60-69: 44 (mound lowered in '69) 70-79: 32 80-89: 14 (strike in '81 cost pitchers about 12 starts each, 6 pitchers had at least 12 wins) 90-99: 13 (strike in '94 cost pitchers about 10 starts each, had 2 guys w/ 14 wins & 2 w/ 16) 00-06: 13 (projects out to 18ish through '09). This year is a neat little statistical thingy, but I don't see how it's historically significant, anymoreso than say 1983, 87, or 95, all of which were non-strike years without 20-game winners in the NL.
I misspoke, '95 was jacked up by the strike also...played 144 games & had 3 guys with at least 17 wins.
My bet is one of the AL's 16 or 15 win guys will sweep the rest of the games to get to 20 at the end. Wang, Verlander, Garland, and Santana all play for contenders and will have a good chance winning games down the stretch. Don't know about Halladay because Toronto is already out of it.
Although they won't make the playoffs (they're in the worst possible division) Toronto is still a winning team with a potent offense. I like Halladay's chances to reach 20 wins and think he's much more likely to get there than Garland, Wang or Verlander.
Halladay lost tonight and only has 5 games to win 4. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think anyone will win 20 for that matter. These few pitchers that have a chance have to play extremely well and the team needs to score quite a few runs to make sure they win. Whoever wins the Cy Young awards this year, won't deserve them. Unless it is an Astro.
