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Saturday December 07, 2024

Foreign-Born Pitchers with 200+ Wins

One of the questions on today’s Immaculate Grid—or one of the squares, and yeah, I’m still doing these things every other day or so—was the intersection of a pitcher with 200+ career wins and a player born outside the U.S. I put down Bert Blyleven (Netherlands) without much thought. After I got dinged for 5%, I chastised myself for not going deeper.

Once I got the answer, I wondered if you could go deeper, since there are only 11 guys who fit that definition—and four of them are from the early years of baseball, so I don't know them. This is them chronologically:

  1. Tommy Bond, Ireland
  2. Jim McCormick, Scotland
  3. Tony Mullane, Ireland
  4. Jack Quinn, Slovakia
  5. Juan Marichal, Dominican Republic
  6. Luis Tiant, Cuba
  7. Ferguson Jenkins, Canada
  8. Bert Blyleven, Netherlands
  9. Dennis Martinez, Nicaragua
  10. Pedro Martinez, Dominican Republic
  11. Bartolo Colon, Dominican Republic

So wait, no Fernando? No, he won just 173. How about Nomo? 123. My man King Felix? 169.

The Dominican Republic is only No. 1 on this list by a whisper—basically by the difference between Ireland and Scotland. But I assumed the DR and other Latin American countries would soon flood the list.

And then I realized: Nobody wins games anymore.

Only three active pitchers are 200+: Justin Verlander (262), Max Scherzer (216) and Clayton Kershaw (212), and a more All-American trio would be tough to find. Next guy on the list, another All-American, is Gerritt Cole, and he’s way back at 153. For foreign-born active pitchers? The DR’s Johnny Cueto is tops with 144, but he’s 38 years old and last season went 0-2 with a 7.15 ERA. I have trouble seeing him getting to 150+ let alone 200+. Then it’s two guys with 110, Carlos Carrasco from Venezuela and Yu Darvish from Japan, but they’re 37 and 38 respectively.

How about Ohtani? 38 wins. 38!

So right now I’m thinking that unless the game changes in unexpected ways, this is the list—forever and ever, amen.

Trivia question: Which foreign-born pitcher won the most games in MLB history? It’s the guy I chose, Blyleven at 287, and it’s a record that’s never going to be broken.

My grid, a Palmer away from an all-Twins sweep.

Posted at 04:59 PM on Saturday December 07, 2024 in category Baseball