Sunday, February 15, 2009

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

3 comments:

Josh Borenstein said...

No one will break DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.

Someone MIGHT be able to beat Hack Wilson's 191 RBIs.

Koufax pitched 323 innings in 1966 without hitting a batter. That's a record that will probably never be broken.

William J. Tasker said...

Good ones, Josh. DiMaggio's streak may get broken some day. You are right about the Koafax record. I didn't cover any seasonal records. I think Hack Wilson is pretty safe.

Josh Borenstein said...

If we're talking about career marks, I also don't see anyone passing up Henderson in steals.