In honor of Jamie Moyer's 250th win, show us your pre-war 253-297 game winners

[kkkkandp]

I'm not sure why so many people pooh pooh the stats for 19th century baseball as if they were meaningless. Was the game then exactly the same as it is today? Of course not, but that was the state of the game at that time. For every Radbourn or Galvin who pitched in 70 games a season and managed to last for more than a few years so they could accumulate their 300 wins there were dozens of Elmer Smiths and Larry Corcorans who burned out from overuse after only a couple of years.

One might argue that the only reason someone like Don Sutton managed to win 300 games was that he lasted for 23 years because he only completed 23.5% of the games he started. Someone like Gus Weyhing completed over 89% of his starts. Everything is relative.

[rhettyeakley]

Peter, while I agree with what you are saying in regard to the number of starts a year, the problem is that those same pitchers also burned out fairly easily as they were asked to do a TON of work each start, as they were expected to finish every game they started. We have many examples of pitchers like Larry Corcoran, Frank Killen, Elmer Smith, etc. that went from good to terrible quickly due to their work-load. This is also what makes Cy Young an absolute freak of nature that he lasted as long as he did.

Ultimately though I agree with you that it is hard to compare 19th century pitchers to later ones because they are so different

[rhettyeakley]

Kevin, great minds must think alike, I was writing my response when you wrote yours and I can't believe we both used the same people as our examples. Anyways, I agree with what you said
-Rhett

[Peter_Spaeth]

I may be wrong about this, but other than another freak of nature, Anson, didn't most hitters have relatively short careers too?

[kkkkandp]

I have absolutely no statistical data to support this, but one would think that the career length of the average 19th century starting field player would be, on average, shorter than comparable players of today simply because of the conditions under which they played, the lack of sophisticated medical facilities/training practices and their general approach to the game - like playing drunk.

While Anson's career was exceptionally long, there were plenty of other stars of the day with long careers as well - Jim O'Rourke (23 years), Jake Beckley and Deacon White (20 years), Dan Brouthers (19 years) and Roger Connor (18 years). Heck, even a noted booze-hound like Pete Browning lasted 13 years.