00:00Justin Verlander has announced that he is ending his career after the 2026 season.
00:06And right now, currently, he's had 266 victories on his legendary career, which will be a first ballot Hall of
00:13Famer.
00:14He has made it very clear that this will be the final season.
00:18And how about this? 266. That'll be the most wins you will see with a Major League Baseball pitcher maybe
00:28over the next 40 years.
00:30The next closest guy right now is Max Scherzer, and he's at 41 years of age.
00:34He's got 222 victories. And then the guy next to him is at 156 victories.
00:41And I believe that that's Garrett Cole.
00:44So at the end of the day, you're not going to see a 250-game winner ever again in Major
00:51League Baseball.
00:52One of the things that we see in baseball is that the home run total has gone up.
00:56Back in the day, if you had 300 home runs, there was a shot you were going to be a
01:01Major League Baseball player that would go to the Hall of Fame.
01:04Well, if you had 400 home runs, you were almost a sure shot to go to the Baseball's Hall of
01:10Fame.
01:10What, because of the steroid error, because of the game, because of the baseball bats, the loaded baseballs that we
01:17see in the game?
01:18There's no doubt that 500 home runs doesn't guarantee you an opportunity to make it into Baseball's Hall of Fame.
01:24600 is more so the number now to get you into that exclusive category of going to the Hall of
01:32Fame.
01:33Pitching, on the other hand, has gone the other way.
01:36You know, you have openers now like you do in Tampa.
01:39You don't really have guys going five and two-thirds to get those recorded victories.
01:44You have guys that go out, give you five innings, they go to the specialized pitching, and the bullpens are
01:50filled nowadays.
01:51You're not going to see a guy that's going to win 200 ballgames in the near future.
01:57Those guys are now extinct.
01:58So when you see Justin Verlander, and this year is his last year, this is the last 250-game-plus
02:06winner you're going to see maybe in your lifetime.
02:10Years past, Randy Johnson was the last 300-game winner.
02:14I believe he did that in 2009.
02:16And I believe he did that against the San Francisco Giants.
02:20I think before that, I think you had Tom Glavin, was also the last, second-to-last guy to end
02:25up winning his 300th game.
02:27It used to be a cool thing to go to the baseball parks and see guys like Steve Carlton and
02:33Tom Seaver going out there and giving you seven and two-thirds or nine innings of baseball and watching these
02:39goats go out there and these workhorses.
02:41That was one of the cool, fun things about Major League Baseball, when you had those workhorse pitchers.
02:47What did they call them?
02:48Stoppers.
02:49The guys that would go every three, four days and go out there at a ballpark and stop a losing
02:54streak, those guys are long gone.
02:57You do not have those guys in today's baseball.
03:00With velocity going up in the sport, the guys that are now the signature players back in the day, like
03:07a Gibson, Carlton, Seaver, Roger Clemens, guys like Pedro Martinez, players like that, those guys are going to be lost
03:17arts on how you pitch.
03:18Now, again, as I said, it's about full and big-time bullpens.
03:23It's about guys going out and giving you four innings and turning it over to your bullpen.
03:28Really no signature starters any longer that when I grew up with what made Major League Baseball was great.
03:34Those wonderful confrontations that you would have with Roger Clemens versus Mike Piazza or having Greg Maddox go out there
03:42with his magistrate the way that he would just carve that plate up and go all around the black and
03:48just get 355 victories.
03:50What an era that was, too, we just came out of with all those guys throwing over 300 wins.
03:55I believe Clemens had 350 wins, and I believe a 354, and I believe you had Greg Maddox at 355.
04:03You're not seeing that any longer.
04:05Those guys are lost, and again, a part of baseball history is lost with the revolution of the game today
04:11and the evolution of the game is that you now go towards having more guys in your bullpen than having
04:18guys as your big-time aces.
04:20The ace is gone.
04:22Justin Verlander has had a phenomenal career.
04:24I believe he was a double-time winner of Cy Young.
04:27To make it, you know, put that in context, Nolan Ryan never won a Cy Young in his entire 27
04:33-year brilliant career.
04:34Never at any time won a Cy.
04:37And you got Verlander with two of these things, 266 victories.
04:42Baseball is getting really some great athletes in it.
04:45You see Shohei Ohtani?
04:46There's awesome players in it that we watch each and every single day.
04:50Junior Caminero, who's an unknown hero and an unknown star down in Tampa, is not going to cover off the
04:56baseball.
04:57Great stars.
04:58The pitching stars, they're not there like they used to be back in the day.
05:02It's really changed the game.
05:04So when Verlander called it a career, you're looking at a dying breed.
05:11266 victories.
05:12You'll never see another 250-game winner in baseball history again.
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