FanNation

                Many of you have probably seen my round 1 blog that got me here to the final round of the MLB Spot Blogging Tournament. If not, here it is: http://www.fannation.com/blogs/post/208457. Now, as I said in that blog, I was going to have two parts to the Going Clubbing Series-one for the hitters and another for the pitchers. And now, without further adieu, here is Going Clubbing-The Pitchers.

Wins

300 Wins:

• 1. Mike Mussina
  Current Wins- 261
  Age: 39

Everyone was saying how Tom Glavine might have been the last pitcher ever to win 300 games. However, they underestimated one man. A man who has never won 20 games in a season; however, he still wins in mass amounts. There is talks that the Moose will have his first 20^th win season this year. This is amazing considering that he may have finally reached his win peak at age 39. He currently needs only 39 more wins to make it to the hallowed 300 wins plateau. If he does win 20 this year, this will put him at 270 for his career. He will be at age 40 needing only 30 more wins to make it to 300. He can win 10 more ‘til the age of 43. He can pitch that long. Jamie Moyer is 45 and still pitching, Randy Johnson is 44, and Kenny Rogers is 43.

Saves

500 Saves:

• 1. Mariano Rivera
  Current Saves: 466
  Age: 38

To start off the pitcher's edition of Going Clubbing, we have a pair of veteran teammates. Mariano Rivera is currently one of the, if not the best closer in the MLB. And, at the age of 38, he is pitching one of the best seasons of his career which has given him MVP and Cy Young talk. He has converted in all 23 of his save chances. In his appearances this year, he has a 1.12 ERA and an outstanding .645 WHIP. He is still throwing his cutter dominantly and affectively. Now, he would need 34 more saves to get to 500. Since 1997, Mariano has never had lower than 30 saves in a season. He has had 40 or more saves 5 times in his career as well as a 50 save season once. He is on pace right now for a high 40 or maybe even another 50 save season. If he converts for only 40 saves this year, which puts him at 483 for his career. He would only need another 17 save season to reach that feat. As I said before, he has never had a full season as a closer without 30 saves. He will get 500 saves and will climb up the all time list as he makes his way to about 540 saves.

400 Saves:

• 1. Francisco Rodriguez
  Current Saves: 181
  Age: 26

At the prime young age of 26, K-Rod already has 181 saves. At the age of 26, Trevor Hoffman had only 25 saves, Mariano Rivera only had 5, and The Eck only had 3. I know what you are thinking. "Why is he only getting 400 saves when you said Mariano is getting 500, Hoffman has 600, and The Eck has 390?" Well, it is simply because we have not seen much of Frankie. The main problem is if he can keep this up. We don't know if he peeked early or not. In his past 3 seasons, K-Rod has had 45, 47, and 40 saves. Also, he already has 35 saves this year and we aren't even to the All Star Break. He needs 219 more saves to reach 400. If he reaches 50 this year-which he probably will- he will have 196 for his career putting him 4 away from 200 and 204 away from 400. And that is if he slows down this year. If he gets 60 saves this year, he will end up with 206. With 206 at age 27, he has at least 10 more major league seasons ahead of him. He can only save 20 games a year to get that amount. And he will do that. Now, like I said, I'm not sure if he can keep up 40 saves for 500. So, I will leave it at 400 for now.

• 2. Houston Street
  Current Saves: 98
  Age: 24

I mentioned how many saves Hoffman, Rivera, and Eck had at the age of 26, I don't think I need to mention how many they had at age 24. Houston Street came right to the Major Leagues as a closer. He had immediate success by closing out 23 games and winning the RoY for the AL. Since then, Houston has had his peak at 37 saves and also his low with 16. When he only had 16, he was injured and pitched in 20 less games. Now, he already has 17 before the half way point of the season. So, he is currently 302 saves away from 400. If he closes out 30 games this year, that will put him at 289 away from 400. He has more seasons in the tank than K-Rod. Houston could pitch for 12 more years and only be at age 36. In those 12 years, he only needs 24 saves per year to do so. That gives him a little room to maybe be hurt one year and save only 15 because he can come back and close 30 the next year or so. He can make it to 400 and maybe deeper. But at this point, 500 is out of range.

Innings Pitched:

5,000 IPs

• 1. Greg Maddux
  Current IPs: 4927.3
  Age: 42

Need I really say more? He only needs 73 more innings pitched. His career average is 230 per season. He currently has 113 in the 2008 campaign. He doesn't even need to get to 200 innings this year to break 5,000. If he gets hurt and only pitches 150 this year, he could come back next year and only need about 30 more innings. This was one of the easiest choices to make in this entire blog.

4,000 IPs

• 1. Mike Mussina
  Current IPs: 3463.7
  Age: 39

The Moose is making his second appearance on this list today, and for good reason. He garnered recognition from me for winning 300 games, and on his way to that milestone, he will hit another. 4,000 innings is well within the reach of the Golden Moose. Moose's 162 games average for innings pitched is 226. He has 101 this year and is currently 437 innings away from 4K. Hitting 225 this year would put him at only 313 away. However, Moose has not hit 200 innings since 2003; albeit, Moose is having one of his best seasons in recent years. He could only pitch 2 more years of 150 innings: or he could pitch another of 200 then one of 150.

Strikeouts

3,500 Ks

• 1. Johan Santana
  Current K's: 1490
  Age: 29

I was exciting to finally get passed all the boring innings pitched milestones and finally get to the fun stuff-strikeouts. Then, I was disappointed to see that there isn't any pitchers that are close to a strike out milestone that have enough time in their careers to make it there. I had to dig deep into the active K's leader to find one player who can rack up a lot. With a career high of 265 in a season in 2004 and a 162 game average of 219, Johan can get this done with ease. He also has struck out 235 or more batters in his past 4 seasons. This guy just does not slow down. If he strikes out 235 this year, he has 1,616 for his career. That would put him at the age milestone of 30 and only needing 1,884 for 3,500. He can pitch for 9 more seasons ‘til the age of 39 and only strike out an average of 200 per year and still make it. He probably has more 230+ K years ahead of him as well.

• 2. CC "Don't Punctuate My Name" Sabathia
  Current K's: 1265
  Age: 27

The recently traded big name player in the MLB is big man CC Sabathia. The Brewers really made-out in this deal getting the 27 year old flamethrower. CC can be compared to our previous player in many ways. Being 2 years younger than Johan, CC has only 225 less strikeouts than the Mets ace. That can easily be made up in one year's work from CC. Also, like Santana, CC was recently traded to the NL. CC was traded at age 27. Johan was traded at age 28. At the current age of 27, CC averages 181 K's per season. That is less than Johan's 200+ but, once again, CC is the younger of the two. It is good to say that CC has recently hit his peak by striking out 209 batters last year and already having 123 this year. If he only K's up 200 batters this year, he would need 2158 more for 3,500 K's. Therefore, from that mark he would need only 200 Ks for only the next 10 seasons. That puts him at 37 years old and he still can pitch for more years after. He will get to 3,500 and push 4,000 before he slows down.

And that will conclude my Going Clubbing Pitchers Edition. I know it's not as exciting as hits, homeruns, or RBIs; but it is still baseball.

If I win this matchup against Big-D, I will write another Going Clubbing that include stats like total salary, awards, and all star games.