The last 300-game winner will not be Unit

Please stop writing about this. The question was asked when Greg Maddux became the latest 300 game winner. It was asked against when Tom Glavine became the even-more-latest 300-game winner. Randy Johnson will not be the last 300-game winner. No way.

The fact that rarely is there a pitcher nearing 300 wins when the latest pitcher turns the milestone means nothing, and while we acknowledge that winning 300 is one of the hardest things to do in baseball, Randy Johnson became the 24th pitcher to do so in a 5-1 victory over Washington Thursday night.

If you divide 24 pitchers over 133 years of Major League Baseball, a pitcher gets to 300 wins about every 5.5 years. While there's merit in the belief that it is growing harder and harder to earn that many victories over a career, Maddux, Glavine, Johnson and Roger Clemens each got to 300 over a period of six seasons. That's one 300-game winner every 1.5 seasons. If anything, the milestone is getting reached more often than ever before.

While the past handful of years is a small sample size and not necessarily a fair measure of pitching history or of the future, greatness will always be greatness. Great pitchers will always dominate, and the best ones will do it for a long, long time. While it will be hard to predict whom will become the next 300-game winner, it's even more difficult to predict the last of anything.

Remember when the 49ers would be the last football dynasty due to the use of a salary cap in the NFL? Along came the Patriots. Remember when Villanova was the last legitimate Cinderella to crash the Final Four? Along came George Mason. Remember when Randy Johnson was considered as possibly the last 300-game winner? We'll look back at that argument and laugh.