Nationals Arm Race

Now that the 2025 Opening Day is past us, and I’ve updated the XLS for this year’s starters and done some housecleaning of now-retired starters, here’s some Opening day starter trivia for you.

Here’s a link to the Opening day starter xls, which is also updated along the right hand side in the Links section. It is also worth noting that Baseball Reference of course maintains similar information. Here for example is the canonical opening day list of lineups (pitchers and players) for the Washington Nationals franchise. And here’s the list of all 30 teams’ opening day lineups for the 2025 season, with similar data for all past seasons). I can’t quite find a similar resource to just the starters across all 30 teams, but I’m sure it’s there somewhere, so I continue to maintain this XLS.

Ok, that being said, here’s some useless trivia related to Opening Day Starters:

• First time Opening Day Starters for 2025: 12 of the 30, including our own MacKenzie Gore. It may be fair to say that, were there not an opening series in Japan, and were there not a couple of last minute scratches, this number should have been a lot lower, like maybe 8-9.
• Current active Leader of Opening Day Starts: still Justin Verlander, with 12. He did 9 in Detroit, then another 3 in Houston. Others in the conversation are Kershaw (9), and Scherzer (7), neither of which seems likely to extend this record before they’re out of the game.
• Current Active Consecutive streak: Logan Webb and Framber Valdez both now have 4 consecutive Opening day starts for San Francisco and Houston respectively.
• Current Leader of Consecutive Opening Day Starts: both Verlander and Kershaw at one point made 7 straight opening day starts for their teams, and are the current leaders in that category. We’ll need another four years of consistency from Webb/Valdez to catch them, which seems unlikely (see my commentary below).

Historical records:

• Most Opening Day Starts in History: Tom Seaver (16).  Tied for 2nd place with 14 is Jack Morris, Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, Walter Johnson
• Most Consecutive Opening Day Starts in History: Jack Morris; all 14 of his starts were in a row, Mr. Durability, and Mr. Hall of Famer thanks to the Veteran’s committee.

Nats Records:

• Max Scherzer is the Nats franchise leader in Opening day starts with 6.
• Strasburg is 2nd with four: he took the ball opening day in the 3 seasons before the Scherzer acquisition, then got it in 2017 mid Scherzer contract.
• Gore with his 2025 start becomes just the 9th guy to get the ball opening day for Washington.
• Odalis Perez remains the most unlikely Opening Day starter, getting the ball in our bottoming-out year of 2008.

Lastly, here’s some interesting team observations for 2025’s Opening day Starters

• With Eovaldi getting the ball for the 2nd year in a row, Texas breaks a streak of having 8 different opening day starters in the 8 years prior to 2025. And it’s even crazier than that: They’ve had 15 different opening day starters in the last 16 seasons, dating to 2009! Only one guy has repeated: Cole Hamels in 2016 and 2018, and Now Eovaldi in 2024 and 2025.
• Los Angeles Dodgers, despite being probably the league’s best team over the past decade or so and your defending WS champs, now has had 7 different guys make their last 7 opening day starts. Yamamoto, Glasnow, Urias, Buehler, Kershaw, May, and Ryu.
• Urias, in case you didn’t remember, just was suspended a Half a Season for his SECOND domestic Violence arrest and has probably thrown his last MLB pitch. So, a 2nd DV arrest, charge, and pleading guilty = half a season suspension according to MLB. Meanwhile, Trevor Bauer, when he was accused of his first DV issue (but not charged, arrested, or guilty) was suspended for two full seasons and now cannot get a job in the Majors at a time when teams are begging for starters and is seemingly blacklisted by all 30 teams. Yes, Bauer comes across as opinionated and abrasive, but he was definitively cleared of charges AND pretty clearly demonstrated that his accusations were a complete setup by someone trying to catfish a major leaguer and who was subsequently indicted on felony fraud charges for filing false reports against Bauer … yet here we are. He’s missed out on literally hundreds of millions of dollars of salary because … why? Because he’s outspoken on Twitter?
• Other teams who have not really been able to find a consistent starter: NY Mets: 5 straight different opening day starters. Cincinnati: 10 different starters in the last 11 years. Pittsburgh: 9 different starters in last 10. Baltimore: 9 different starters in the last 10 years. Angels: 9 in the last 11. Some teams just can’t find Aces.

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Now for some random commentary on the state of Starting Pitching in the game. I write answers on Quora about Baseball all the time, and came across a question there asking whether recently inducted starters like CC Sabathia were “worthy” of the Hall b/c he “only” had 251 career wins. This in the context of the three aging star starters Verlander, Scherzer, and Kershaw who currently lead all active starters in Wins with (as of this writing on 3/28/25) 262, 216, and 212 respectively. They’re 42,40, and 37 respectively, meaning that the odds of them significantly adding to their current win totals seem slim.

But, I don’t think anyone would dispute that all three are no-doubt hall of famers, despite two of them not being close to even 250 wins, let alone 300 wins. Three major individual awards basically make a player a lock for the hall:

• Verlander: 3 Cy Youngs (9 seasons in the top 5), 1 MVP, 1 Rookie of the Year, 3400+ Ks
• Scherzer: 3 Cy Youngs (8 seasons in top 5), 3400+ Ks.
• Kershaw: 3 Cy Youngs (7 seasons in top 5), 1 MVP, and has 2968 Ks as we speak.

But….. what’s next? A quick perusal at the state of Starting Pitching in the league reveals that we may not see another 250 win pitcher…. ever? Here’s the rest of the current active top 10 of career Wins leaders with their ages and some context:

• Gerrit Cole: 153 wins at age 34; just blew out elbow so he’s missing all of 2025. Does he even get to 200 career wins now?
• Charlie Morton: 138 wins at age 41: he’s the #2 guy in Baltimore’s rotation but this may be his last season.
• Chris Sale: 138 wins at age 36; having a second-wind career moment, coming off of last year’s Cy Young, but he made just 11 starts in 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined thanks to injury. Does he get to 175 career wins?
• Kyle Gibson: 112 wins at age 37. Quick: what team does Kyle Gibson pitch for? I had to look it up; he signed with Baltimore a week ago and just got optioned to AAA. He’s 7th in the majors in career wins! And now he’s going to pitch in Norfolk for a bit.
• Sonny Grey: 111 wins at age 35. Ok, so he’s St. Louis’ #1 starter and has been relatively durable, but can you count on him getting even to 150 career wins? He has 36 wins in his last four seasons combined.
• Carlos Carrasco: 110 wins at age 38. He signed a MLFA/NRI deal with the Yankees and seems to have lucked his way into a rotation spot. In his last two combined seasons, he’s had a 6.00 ERA and a -2.6 bWAR, and it doesn’t seem like he’s long for the majors at this point.
• Yu Darvish; also 110 wins at age 38. He’s still under contract for 3 more years in San Diego, which may give him a shot at 150 career wins.

Where’s the sure-fire Hall of Fame starting pitcher with 250 wins and 3,000 Ks in this group?? Nowhere to be found. Would you even characterize the two best guys on this list (Cole and Sale) as hall of famers right now? I wouldn’t. Maybe Cole if he comes back and dominates, but that’s no sure thing.

Lets look a bit further down the list of active starting pitcher win leaders to see who looks like they’re putting together a career that, maybe possibly could turn into a HoFame career?

• The two best Age/Accumulated wins combos might be Aaron Nola (104 wins at age 32) and Jose Berrios (99 wins at age 31).
• Nola had one great 9.7 bWAR season in 2018, while Barrios has received Cy Young votes in exactly one season in his career (a 9th place finish, meaning he probably got like one home-town writer vote, in 2021).
• The highest career win total for a player who hasn’t turned 30 yet is Dylan Cease, who has 57 wins at age 29.
• the 50-career win range has a slew of other guys who are “known names,” guys like Logan Webb, Zac Gallen, Jack Flaherty, etc.
• Our former #1 draft pick Lucas Giolito? 61 wins at age 30, right in this same range.

I mean, do any of these guys sound like Hall of Famers to you?

What’s my point? Randy Johnson was elected to the hall in 2015, finishing off a 300-win career in 2010. That was a decade ago, but it might as well be a lifetime ago in terms of evolution of pitching in the game. Not only does it not look like we’ll see a 300 win pitcher ever again, after Justin Verlander I’m sure we’ll ever see a 250 game winner again. And, I’ll just go ahead and say it; after Scherzer and Kershaw i’m not sure we’ll ever see a 200 game winner again. Nobody except Gerrit Cole is projecting to be even close to 200 wins for his career.

A Decade from now, will the new standards for SPs in Cooperstown really be 175 wins and 2,500 Ks?