Absence of 20-game winners: emerging trend or statistical anomaly?

Even the most durable aces make about 35 starts, at best, in a healthy season - and they don't complete many of them. On a good night, they're often pulled after six, seven innings or around 100 pitches. That makes it extremely difficult to win 20, long the hallmark of a big year.

"Winning 20 games is really based on how good your bullpen is," New York Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "There have been a lot of big leads squandered all around baseball, not only this year. You look up there, you used to see a five-run lead, you thought you were safe, you had money in the bank. That's not the case.

"I think a lot of it, you can blame it on the bullpen."

Minnesota lefty Johan Santana, whose 19 wins tie him with Chien-Ming Wang of the Yankees for the major league lead, tops the AL with 233 2-3 innings pitched this season.

Thirty-five years ago, Detroit's Mickey Lolich threw 376 innings. Two seasons before that, in 1969, the first year of divisional play, 15 pitchers won 20 games - the most in the past 80 years, according to Elias.

"Starts go down, innings pitched go down, complete games go down, so wins go down. It's kind of simple math," Orioles pitching coach Leo Mazzone said. "You even talk about shutting people down when they reach 200 innings. If you're going to win 20 you need to be in the game in the late innings.

"Twenty wins is always a major marker, but 20 is going to go by the wayside and 15 is going to be the standard," he added. "I don't think it's the quality of the starters, I think it's the evolution of the game."

Santana would have had a chance at No. 20 in the regular-season finale Sunday, but he'll skip his regular turn because the Twins are wisely saving him for Game 1 of the playoffs on Tuesday.

And while that decision ensured the absence of a 20-game winner in the majors this year, few sounded flummoxed by it.

"It's a different era, a different time. Teams pay good money for setup men," Santana said. "Teams pay good money for closers. I don't think it was like that before."

Palmer, now a baseball broadcaster, as is Hershiser, also thinks salaries are a factor.

"Financially, you don't need to win 20. In our organization, Dave McNally won 20 games and he got a $20,000 raise, so it kind of set a tone. So you knew what your bargaining position was going to be. That's not significant now," he said.

Standing next to him, Hershiser pointed out that two of the best teams in baseball this season, the Mets and Yankees, had aging starters at the top of their rotations: Glavine and Pedro Martinez for the Mets, Mike Mussina and Randy Johnson for the Yankees.

"We lost four 20-game winners this year," said Hershiser, who went 23-8 for the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in 1988. "All of them are six-inning pitchers now, so they're not around for their wins all the time. And they've all been hurt, on the DL.

"Like Jim said, the guys that should've won 20 got hurt. That makes it an aberration. It's not like the whole chemistry has changed, the whole equation."

---

AP Sports Writer Dave Campbell in Minneapolis and AP freelance writer Amy Jinkner-Lloyd in Atlanta contributed to this report.