Alright, let me tell you about this thing I was messing around with the other day, trying to figure out which Texas Rangers pitchers have racked up 20 wins in a single season. It started out kinda simple, but then, you know, it got a little hairy.
First off, I was just curious. I remember Nolan Ryan being a beast, but I wasn’t sure if he ever hit 20 wins for the Rangers. So, I hopped online, figuring I’d find a list somewhere. Nope. All sorts of “best Rangers pitchers” lists, but nothing specific about 20-game winners.
So, I was like, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” I started digging through *. That site’s got everything, but it’s also easy to get lost in all the data. I went to the Rangers’ team page, then started going through year by year, looking at each pitcher’s stats.
Tedious? Oh man, you have no idea. I basically had to manually scan through each season’s pitching stats and check the “W” column. If anyone had 20 or more, I wrote it down. Otherwise, kept going.
Here’s what I found. I think it’s only two guys that ever did it. Ferguson Jenkins back in ’74, and Kevin Brown in ’98. I thought for sure Nolan Ryan might have done it, but nope. His best was 16 wins in ’89.
I double-checked everything, just to be sure. Went back through those seasons, made sure I hadn’t missed anyone. It’s easy to do when you’re staring at numbers all day.
After that, I just kinda wanted to see how their seasons compared. Jenkins went 25-12 with a 2.99 ERA back in ’74, and Brown went 18-7 with a 2.30 ERA in ’98.
It took way longer than I thought to find this out, but hey, now I know. Maybe someday I’ll automate this with some Python scripting, but for now, good old manual labor did the trick.
