Some records are chased throughout an entire career. Others emerge almost by accident, when longevity and consistency carry a player to a place no one from his generation had reached before.

Gerrit Cole is three wins away from one of those places.

The New York Yankees right-hander has 159 career Major League victories. If he reaches 162, he will become the winningest pitcher in MLB history among players selected No. 1 overall in the Draft.

The significance becomes even greater when you consider who currently holds the record: Mike Moore, selected first overall by the Seattle Mariners in 1981, finished his career with a 161-176 record.

Cole, then, isn't simply approaching a round number. He is three wins away from surpassing a mark that has belonged to a pitcher selected three decades before him. And the curious part is that he almost certainly never began his career thinking 162 would become a meaningful number.

A record that has survived generations of talent

The MLB Draft began in 1965, and over the decades, several organizations have used the No. 1 overall pick on pitchers who appeared destined to become cornerstones of their rotations

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The history, however, has been far more complicated.

David Clyde, Floyd Bannister, Tim Belcher, Andy Benes, David Price and Stephen Strasburg are among the pitchers selected first overall in their respective Drafts. Some put together outstanding careers. Others never lived up to the expectations that came with being the first name called.

Moore's case is particularly interesting. The right-hander was selected by Seattle in 1981 and went on to win 161 games, a total that still leads all pitchers who were taken No. 1 overall.

David Price came close with 157 wins, while Andy Benes finished with 155 and Tim Belcher with 146.

Even among more recent No. 1 picks, there is a considerable gap. Casey Mize, selected first overall by Detroit in 2018, has 27 career wins, while Paul Skenes, Pittsburgh's top pick in 2023, has 30. Both still have plenty of career ahead of them, but the road to 162 wins is a long one.

And that's what makes Cole's pursuit so unusual.

List of pitchers selected in the first round of the MLB Draft

Fuente: Baseball Reference

Gerrit Cole got here in a way few could have anticipated

When the Pittsburgh Pirates selected Cole with the first pick of the 2011 MLB Draft, they were betting on one of the most coveted college pitching prospects in the country. MLB confirmed that Pittsburgh made him the No. 1 overall selection on June 6, 2011, after his standout career at UCLA.

His career ultimately became much bigger than that prospect label.

Cole spent time with Pittsburgh and Houston before becoming one of the faces of the Yankees. He won the American League Cy Young Award in 2023, led MLB in strikeouts twice and established himself as one of the most dominant and consistent starting pitchers of his generation.

Now, after returning in 2026 from Tommy John surgery, he has put himself back in the middle of a piece of baseball history. Cole reached 159 career wins and 2,343 strikeouts, according to data published this week.

His comeback season has also seen him recently reach 1,000 strikeouts as a Yankee and earn his third consecutive win in a start — another indication that there may still be important chapters left to write.

He needs three more.

If Cole wins No. 160, No. 161 and No. 162, he won't simply add another milestone to an already elite career. He will become the first pitcher selected No. 1 overall in MLB Draft history to win 162 Major League games.

And perhaps that's the most interesting part of the story: a record that has stood for 45 years, held by Mike Moore since 1981, is now within reach of a player who, when Pittsburgh selected him in 2011, probably had no idea that one day he would be chasing it.