Hardest record to break in baseball?

[tkenm356]

As much as Rickey's 130 steals in a season is amazing, the more outrageous stat is that he attempted to steal 172 times that season. There are plenty of guys who aren't even on base 172 times in a season. That's insane.

 

Touché, nice stat

[Wilson A2000]

Hack Wilson's 191 RBIs!

 

:D

 

What's AROD on pace for?

[OleMissCub]

Hack Wilson's 191 RBIs!

 

:D

 

What's AROD on pace for?

 

About 160

[bhogg]

I'm going with anything by Cy Young.

 

When I went to see Ryno get inducted into the HoF in '05, I saw Cy Young's 500 win ball. For some reason, seeing that ball brought it all home to me --- it actually brought a tear to my eye (not the only thing in Cooperstown to do that.)

 

I was floored at the thought of 500 wins

[MidoreX]

Hack Wilson's 191 RBIs!

 

:D

 

What's AROD on pace for?

 

About 160

 

Actually at the RBI/games pace he's goin he'd end up at 177. And while it still isn't 191, it isn't terribly far off. But since RBI's are so team dependent, this information doesn't really do us any good. All we can say is that he has an outside chance if his team mates keep giving him opportunities.

[OleMissCub]

I'm going with anything by Cy Young.

 

When I went to see Ryno get inducted into the HoF in '05, I saw Cy Young's 500 win ball. For some reason, seeing that ball brought it all home to me --- it actually brought a tear to my eye (not the only thing in Cooperstown to do that.)

 

I was floored at the thought of 500 wins

 

Pretty hardcore.

 

I don't like the disrespect that I see some modern baseball fans showing to earlier era's in baseball, as if people back then didn't play the type of bang-bang, in your face, sport.

 

Some say "well, they didn't throw as hard." That's bullcrap. Sure, some people with conditioning these days might be able to throw harder than some guy back then, but people on the most part threw just as hard. If guys out of 1A highschools in Podunk, Mississippi can throw 90+, then so could full grown men back then if they just had the talent for it.

 

Hell, they obviously threw hard enough to kill a man, since Chapman got killed by Mays.

 

I think some people just have rubber arms and they are born that way. Back then guys with weak arms would have been weeded out because of the stress and so the only guys who made it to the bigs and could deal with the stress of constant pitching were guys like Livan Hernandez or Zambrano or Randy Johnson. I could almost guarantee you that Zambrano could throw every third day.

[soccer10k]

Some say "well, they didn't throw as hard." That's bullcrap. Sure, some people with conditioning these days might be able to throw harder than some guy back then, but people on the most part threw just as hard. If guys out of 1A highschools in Podunk, Mississippi can throw 90+, then so could full grown men back then if they just had the talent for it.

 

Very few high schoolers can hit 90 on the gun and even fewer can do it consistently. They might top out at 90 but they aren't hitting it all the time.

 

But I do get the point you made.

[XZero771679666304]

Young's 511 will never be topped, simply because no one will get enough starts. A pitcher would have to average 35 starts over 23 seasons just to have a shot at it, and even then would be hard pressed to equal Young's 12 25+ win seasons, 15 20+ win seasons and 5 30+ win seasons.

 

DiMaggio's 56 game streak will probably never be topped.

 

Ripken's consecutive games streak is probably safe.

 

Cobb's .367 career average will be bested at some point. Just a matter of time.

Edited June 18, 2007 by XZero77

[Andy]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Rogers Hornsby's .424 batting average in a single season.

 

(Which I only became aware of when Mark Bellhorn of all people broke it with me in MVP Baseball 2003)

[chuckywang]

Let me add Nolan Ryan's 7 career no-hitters and 5,714 career strikeouts to this list.

[Drew Doughty]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Rogers Hornsby's .424 batting average in a single season.

 

(Which I only became aware of when Mark Bellhorn of all people broke it with me in MVP Baseball 2003)

 

bellhorn was a monster in that game. him and sammy were a wrecking crew on my WS-winning team in the only full season I played with that game.

[XZero771679666304]

I'm going with anything by Cy Young.

 

When I went to see Ryno get inducted into the HoF in '05, I saw Cy Young's 500 win ball. For some reason, seeing that ball brought it all home to me --- it actually brought a tear to my eye (not the only thing in Cooperstown to do that.)

 

I was floored at the thought of 500 wins

 

Pretty hardcore.

 

I don't like the disrespect that I see some modern baseball fans showing to earlier era's in baseball, as if people back then didn't play the type of bang-bang, in your face, sport.

 

Some say "well, they didn't throw as hard." That's bullcrap. Sure, some people with conditioning these days might be able to throw harder than some guy back then, but people on the most part threw just as hard. If guys out of 1A highschools in Podunk, Mississippi can throw 90+, then so could full grown men back then if they just had the talent for it.

 

Hell, they obviously threw hard enough to kill a man, since Chapman got killed by Mays.

 

I think some people just have rubber arms and they are born that way. Back then guys with weak arms would have been weeded out because of the stress and so the only guys who made it to the bigs and could deal with the stress of constant pitching were guys like Livan Hernandez or Zambrano or Randy Johnson. I could almost guarantee you that Zambrano could throw every third day.

 

I know you're going to battle me on this (because you have before), but while I'll concede that pitchers back then probably threw as hard (a la Bob Feller), I just can't believe the hitters were as good on the whole.

 

With the advances in nutrition, conditioning and sports "medicine", the average hitter now is much bigger, faster and stronger than even 20 years ago, not to mention 50. With new training techniques, even hand-eye is probably much better.

 

This makes it more difficult for today's pitcher to maintain great stats, and while a pitcher in 1920 might have been able to produce on shortened rest, I find it unlikely in the extreme that they could do so against today's offensive beasts. Rather than your theory that weak armed pitchers were weeded out, I think great pitchers could get by with only a fraction of their stuff on a regular basis because the average batter really wasn't that great. And its counter intuitive; logic dictates that the overall talent pool todays is far, far greater than it was in the time of Cy Young, but somehow there aren't as many durable arms today?

 

Add the dead ball into the mix. Another factor to consider is that there are more pitches available to pitchers today. Decades of innovation have seen new pitches developed, giving today's pitchers more weapons. And even so, modern hitters produce much more on average than the hitters of yesteryear.

 

Now before you get too upset, let me clarify - I mean the average offensive player. If you look back over the years, you will find that there was much more disparity between the greats - Ruth, Cobb, etc. - and the rest of the league than there is between the stars of today and their peers. And while guys like Ruth and Cobb may have been able to produce at similar levels in today's league, they almost certainly would not have while indulging in the lifestyles they did when they were playing.

 

While guys like Young, Walter Johnson and company would still have had to deal with awesome talents, there was a lot more chaff in between. Could Zambrano pitch every third day now? Probably. Would he be effective? Almost certainly not. The game is played on a different level than it was 80 or 70 years ago. Developments in science, as well as innovation and the influx of huge talent pools from Latin America, Asia and our own African American population have seen to that. Players today are bigger, faster and stronger. The balls are livelier, the parks smaller and the bats better.

 

These are the main reasons that records like Young's 511 will stand.

[soccer10k]

Gotta go with most of Cy Young's pitching records that have been listed here.

 

I think DiMaggio's streak will be broken at some point. Same as Hack's 191 RBI's. Nolan Ryan's 7 no-hitters and strikeout record aren't likely to be broken, but they could. That's the difference between those recrods and Cy Young's.

[Warren Brusstar]

There are a lot of records that will never be broken, but the 56 game hitting streak isn't one that I label as unbreakable. Maybe it will never be broken, but guys can at least come close to breaking it compared to Cy Young's career wins.

 

There have been a few mentioned here as "unbreakable" that are not so, including:

 

Ripken's consecutive games

Hack Wilson's 191 RBI

Dimaggio's 56 game hitting streak

 

The truly unbreakable records:

 

Cy Young's win, loss, innings pitched, and complete game records

Sam Crawford's 309 triples

[Banedon]

Mcgwire hitting 70 home runs will NEVER be broken...I mean, he passed the previous record that stood for 37 years.

 

Wait, what happened?

[Derwood]

All of Cy Young's records need a huge, 95-point font asterisk by them. I mean come on.....higher mound, shorter distance to home plate, virtually not scouting, enormous ball parks, etc. That would be like someone setting the record for fastest marathon in a time when it was only 20 miles, it's just not comparable.

 

I'll also reiterate my belief that if you time warped Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens back to Cy Young's days, they would absolutely murder those hitters.

[OleMissCub]

All of Cy Young's records need a huge, 95-point font asterisk by them. I mean come on.....higher mound, shorter distance to home plate, virtually not scouting, enormous ball parks, etc. That would be like someone setting the record for fastest marathon in a time when it was only 20 miles, it's just not comparable.

 

I'll concede most of those except the pitching distance. Young had only been pitching 3 years when it changed from 50 feet to 601/2.

 

 

I'll also reiterate my belief that if you time warped Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens back to Cy Young's days, they would absolutely murder those hitters.

 

Probably, but I think the same could be said for the hitting greats of their time. You bring Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, or Honus Wagner up to today's ballparks and they'd destroy. First off, the usually only played with one ball the entire game which pitchers were ALLOWED to scuff up, spit on, grind in dirt, etc. So by the later innings it is said that the pitch looked like a knuckleball but at the speed of a fastball.

 

Second, their bodies weren't taken care off like the players of today. They had to be tough or they wouldn't play. Hell, Cobb had his tonsils removed with anesthetic minutes before a game against the White Sox in like 1915 and still had like 3 hits.

 

I think in the end it's all relative. Great talents are great talents regardless of the era. People like inflated averages like Cobb's or Hornsby's and they'd naturally want to say "well, I guess everyone had averages like that", which isn't true. League BA's are the same back then as they are now.

 

But indeed, respect or not, Cy Young's records are just absurd and his era should be taken into consideration, but I don't think an asterisk is fair.

[OleMissCub]

Add the dead ball into the mix. Another factor to consider is that there are more pitches available to pitchers today. Decades of innovation have seen new pitches developed, giving today's pitchers more weapons. And even so, modern hitters produce much more on average than the hitters of yesteryear.

 

If anything the dead ball era helped pitchers, not hitters. They used the same ball throughout most of the game. If a ball was hit foul the fans had to throw it back onto the field.

 

Interesting note: Ty Cobb has the highest lifetime BA of anyone against Walter Johnson and the only reason he did was because he knew that the Big Train was such a nice guy that he was scared to hit people with his fastball. So Cobb, knowing that Train was such a perfect control pitcher, crowded the inside of the plate, forcing Train throw pinpoint on the outside corner from fear of hitting Cobb. Apparently at the first Hall of Fame banquet Cobb admitted the secret of his success to Train to which he responded, "then I should have drilled your ass every time."

[Wheelimus]

I think there are two different beasts of records. There are the kind which are near impossible to see broken, but with the right mix of luck and skill could. And then there are the kind which are just about guaranteed that nobody reading this board will see broken in their lifetime.

 

In the first group I'd put things like the consecutive games hit streak, the consecutive games played streak, Henderson's stolen base record, etc. In the second obviously most of Cy Young's awards and those type.

 

Sure, in a hundred years a pitcher might come along who can break the all time win record. He'll probably be so artificial that they discuss putting astericks on the records of our lifetimes, but still, someday someone will break that record. They may be 83 and just thinking about retiring when they do it, but hey, it'll get broken.

[radarluv1]

obviously there has been a lot of changes in technology and conditioning in the last 100 yrs, but i would contend they have all helped hitters more than pitchers. with the exception of arm surgery and new pitches developed. use of video and weight training are a benefit to both sides but much moreso to batters, imo.

i dont see why ripkens streak couldnt potentially be broken. at some point, who knows how early, he was only playing everyday because of the streak.

[illiniguy]

All of Cy Young's records need a huge, 95-point font asterisk by them. I mean come on.....higher mound, shorter distance to home plate, virtually not scouting, enormous ball parks, etc. That would be like someone setting the record for fastest marathon in a time when it was only 20 miles, it's just not comparable.

 

I'll concede most of those except the pitching distance. Young had only been pitching 3 years when it changed from 50 feet to 601/2.

 

 

I'll also reiterate my belief that if you time warped Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens back to Cy Young's days, they would absolutely murder those hitters.

 

Probably, but I think the same could be said for the hitting greats of their time. You bring Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, or Honus Wagner up to today's ballparks and they'd destroy. First off, the usually only played with one ball the entire game which pitchers were ALLOWED to scuff up, spit on, grind in dirt, etc. So by the later innings it is said that the pitch looked like a knuckleball but at the speed of a fastball.

 

Second, their bodies weren't taken care off like the players of today. They had to be tough or they wouldn't play. Hell, Cobb had his tonsils removed with anesthetic minutes before a game against the White Sox in like 1915 and still had like 3 hits.

 

I think in the end it's all relative. Great talents are great talents regardless of the era. People like inflated averages like Cobb's or Hornsby's and they'd naturally want to say "well, I guess everyone had averages like that", which isn't true. League BA's are the same back then as they are now.

 

But indeed, respect or not, Cy Young's records are just absurd and his era should be taken into consideration, but I don't think an asterisk is fair.

I agree, Young pitched well and dominated against Anson. He then pitched well against the same guys Mathiewson did. Chirsty pitched great against the same guys that Walter Johnson did. Walter did the same with the guys that Dizzy Dean faced. Dizzy with the guys that Warren Spahn faced. Spahn with the guys that Bob Gibson faced. Gibson with the guys that Nolan Ryan faced. Ryan the same guys Clemens faced. Sure the game changed, but it progressed and the players did along with it.

[Brendan]

56 game hitting streak

 

i think this for sure

[Brendan]

511 wins is never going to be topped. Virtually impossible.

 

Really long term, it's a lock to be broken with advances in medical technology. I wouldn't bet against players regularly playing until they're 50 or 60, if not indefinitely in 200 years.

 

i was thinking along these lines myself

[illiniguy]

511 wins is never going to be topped. Virtually impossible.

 

Really long term, it's a lock to be broken with advances in medical technology. I wouldn't bet against players regularly playing until they're 50 or 60, if not indefinitely in 200 years.

 

i was thinking along these lines myself

So you think people won't die?

[Wheelimus]

I don't think it's a question of whether people will die or not, it's a question of whether they'll start to live to be much older and be able to play to a much later age. In 1900 the average life expectancy was 47. A hundred years later it was 77. I don't believe it's out of the question that it could be 107 by the year 2100. And with advances in science becoming more and more dramatic than they were a hundred years ago, it's not out of the question for that lifespan to go up even more.

 

So, it's pretty safe to assume that as people begin to live much longer, players will stick around longer. And when we get to the point that a player can still be playing at 60 years of age, all bets are off.

 

Nevermind that crazed day when some rich nut buys a collection of game used jerseys and creates a clone hybrid of all of the greats. Much like Serpentor on GI Joe. :lol: