Some Records May Never Be Broken

Baseball Almanac may be the coolest website on earth. One of the most fun things to do while drinking a morning coffee is to search through their databases of all time leaders. While doing so, some of the lists show that some records will probably never be broken. Here is a sampling:

Batting

• At Bat/RBI Ratio - Babe Ruth: 26.35%. Nobody else comes close.
• At Bats - Pete Rose: 14,053. No one is within 1700. Omar Vizquel is the only active player in the top 30.
• Walks - Barry Bonds: 2558
• Batting Average - Ty Cobb: .366
• Grounding Into Double Plays - Cal Ripken, Jr.: 350. A dubious honor
• Home Run Percentage - Mark McGwire: 9.42%
• Isolated Power - Babe Ruth: .348. The active leader is Albert Pujols at .289
• Career On Base Percentage - Ted Williams: .482. One of the most incredible stats of all! Williams was on base nearly 50% of the time for his entire career.
• Outs - Pete Rose: 10,328. That's a lot of times making an out! To put into perspective, that's more times making an out than all but 18 players in history have ever had for At Bats for a career!
• Runs Produced - Ty Cobb: 4066. Runs produced is runs scored plus RBIs minus home runs.
• Strikeout Percentage - Joe Sewell: 1.6%. Amazing statistic!
• Triples - Sam Crawford: 309. No active player is even in the top 100.
• Doubles - Tris Speaker: 792. All the active players in the top 100 are in the twilight of their careers.

Pitching:

• Walks Allowed - Nolan Ryan: 2795. No one is within 900 of him. Two ancient active pitchers are 1500 behind him.
• Complete Games - Cy Young: 749. One of the safest records in sports. Young also owns the record for innings pitched, wins, losses, runs allowed and games started. All will never be broken.
• Hit by Pitch - Chick Fraser: 219. Randy Johnson is the active leader with 188.
• Shutouts - Walter Johnson: 110. Another of the safest of all records.
• Winning Percentage - Spud Chandler: .717