All hail King Wakefield by Jared Carrabis
With Pettitte's retirement, Tim Wakefield takes over as baseball's active career wins leader


Here's something you may not have realized: with Andy Pettitte headed for retirement, your very own Tim Wakefield is the active leader in career wins.

With Pettitte taking his 240 career wins with him into retirement, and with the Phillies' Jamie Moyer (267 wins) going under the knife for Tommy John surgery at the age of 48, NBC’s Hardball Talk makes notice of the fact that there are no active pitchers in baseball with 200 career wins.

Being the active wins leader, Wakefield is obviously the closest, and is just seven victories shy of reaching the 200-win plateau.

Wakefield will begin the 2011 season as a 44-year-old man. In baseball history, only right-hander Charlie Hough, who played 25 major league seasons, was able to start a season as a 44-year-old with less than 200 career wins and finish with 200-plus career wins.

The aforementioned Moyer won 51 games after starting the 2007 season as a 44-year old, but already had 216 career wins under his belt prior to the ’07 campaign getting underway.

Jack Quinn, a right-hander that began his career in 1909 and finished at the age of 49 in 1933, entered the 1928 season as a 44-year-old with 201 career wins, so he doesn’t quite make the cut, but is also worth mentioning.

Moyer, Quinn and Hough all rank in the top five for most wins after the age of 43 in baseball history. Leading all of the elders is Phil Niekro, who won 318 games in his Hall of Fame career, with 78 of those wins coming after his 43rd birthday. Nolan Ryan is fourth on the list, earning 35 of his 324 career victories after turning 43.

However, if Wakefield wants to get to 200 wins, and possibly even the Red Sox all-time record of 198 – 179 of Wakefield's 193 career wins are with Boston – he'll have the most difficult path to the milestone, as Moyer, Quinn and Hough all made at least 27 starts in their seasons as 44-year-old pitchers.

Unless something completely unforeseen happens to the Red Sox' rotation, then I can almost guarantee that Wakefield will not make at least 27 starts in 2011. However, thankfully, he doesn’t need that many starts to get to 200, and will probably pick up a few scavenger wins in relief along the way.

Wakefield will likely hold the crown of active wins leader throughout the 2011 season. The closest to the knuckleballer in active career wins is Roy Halladay with 169. Unless Halladay goes all Denny McLain on us and wins 30 games in the National League, which wouldn’t entirely surprise me, then Wakefield's spot on the top of the hill is safely protected.

-Jared Carrabis

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Published on February 04, 2011

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