Three articles today to share on Randy Johnson:

Randy Johnson in high school: 90 mph and attitude recollects his exploits back in the early 80s at Livermore High School. Features recollections from local players who faced him, and some photos including a black-and-white photo of him complete with the same mullet he has now.

Is Johnson the last Big Winner? by John Shea of the Chronicle speculates whether Johnson will be the last 300 game winner. The article lists some of the winningest pitchers today and mentions that Roy Halliday, who at age 32 has 139 wins, would need to average 16 a year to get to 300 by age 42. Johnson, on the other hand, due to the early struggles in his career, only had 104 wins at age 32, and actually had two recent reasons where he only won 4 and 6 games due to injury, as well as five-win and nine-win seasons in his prime years.

Not to be excluded, the Merc also weighed in on Randy Johnson as he goes for his 300th win in Washington. Andrew Baggarly’s blog article approaches the topic from the angle of, what kind of makeup does it take to be a 300 game winner? Being healthy, playing for winning teams, pitching and winning in your 40s, those all make sense. Slightly more interesting is being in the American League, the idea  being that the DH keeps pitchers in games longer and thus gives them more chances to win.

Just for fun, Barry Zito has 124 wins and age 31 as of this writing. He would need to average 18 wins a year (actually, 17.6) over the next 10 years to reach 300. If he pitches as long as Johnson (until 45), he could do it averaging 13 wins a year (12.55). It’s too early to do a projection on the other Giants starters, so we’ll check back on them in say, 5 more years.

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