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Verlander’s Path to 300 Wins is the Same as Johnson’s
Justin Verlander has a genuine opportunity at 300 wins. Sure, the probabilities are still against him, but the odds on 300 don’t really swing into your favor until the end of a career. It is time to start paying attention to his pursuit.
Obscured Greatness
Consider when Adrian Beltre became a guaranteed hall of famer? (Grant Brisbee writes a fantastic piece on this back in 2017) In Beltre’s age 33 season, he was not on most people’s HoF radar. Everyone should have noticed when he had an OPS of .780 as a full-time player in his 2nd MLB season; he was 20 years old, but they didn’t. He front loaded his career totals with solid but unspectacular numbers in his early 20s while peers developed in the minors.
Part of what happened with Beltre was a botched appendectomy. Getting healthy and back on track took quite some time and helped to obscure the jump he had on everyone who started their careers in 1998. Then he signed as a free agent (a free agent at 25 with 949 hits is another huge tell that was missed) with Seattle. That big ballyard chewed up a lot of the shiny numbers that make people notice.
