Last Sunday, Tom Glavine beat the hot-hitting Cubs to post his 300th career victory. Earlier that day, Bonds tied Hank Aaron's home run record, and over a million people watched, but the Post reported that many more viewers (some say about 2 million) saw Glavine notch his number 300. That just shows you how popular the Mets are too.
On Sunday, August 12th, Glavine pitched well but failed to get his 301st, due to a poor bullpen performance by certain people named Mota. That would have brought him to within ten of former Met Jerry Koosman.
He has about 64 more wins to go before tying his idol Warren Spahn in the wins department, (Spahn leads all lefties in wins) and may never make it, but Glavine is so close yet so far away when it comes to strikeouts.
THE GREAT STRIKEOUT RACE CONTINUES
After Sunday's winless outing, Glavine has 2,549 lifetime strikouts, only 34 short of Warren Spahn, who finished his career with the Mets with a lifetime total of 2583. While Pedro Martinez could get 34 Ks in three games, Glavine has pretty much lost the use of his splitter, his strikeout pitch, and relies greatly on placement. He generally only gets three or maybe four strikeouts a game these days. He needs to up that total to about 5 and pitch 7 more games in order to break Spahn's record this year. That will require him to change his whole approach to the game, but from a statistitians' point of view, its the one to watch.
Glavine has made noises that there is a chance he won't resign with the Mets or anyone else next year, depending on how the season goes. It is almost unthinkable that Glavine will pass Koosman or anyone else this year on the wins list, but as mentioned in a previous article, he can pass alot of guys on the all time strikeout list this season, and it will greatly change the way he is presented in the Hall of Fame and in the record books.
Not that the team isn't interesting enough, or that the pennant race isn't important, its turning out to be a tight squeeze these days to stay in first. But a Tom Glavine race against Warren Spahn for most strikeouts would be pretty exciting for baseball nerds and nebbishes.
And that's who pays the light bill at Shea stadium these days!
FLUSHING FEVER COMING VERY SOON!
No comments:
Post a Comment