What is Major League Baseball's most unbreakable record?

[tedzan]

The way the game is played nowadays, I do not think Joe D's exciting 56-game streak will be broken. Furthermore, I will venture to say that it will not
even be approached.

Another single-season record that may never be broken is one that was achieved the same year Joe did his streak, 1941......Ted Williams batting .406

Most good-hitting ballplayers don't WALK much any more. To hit for a .400 BA you have to do a lot of Walking. In fact Ted had 147 WALKS in 1941.....
which reduced his official AB's to only 456.





TED Z

[itjclarke]

Originally Posted by tedzan

The way the game is played nowadays, I do not think Joe D's exciting 56-game streak will be broken. Furthermore, I will venture to say that it will not
even be approached.

Another single-season record that may never be broken is one that was achieved the same year Joe did his streak, 1941......Ted Williams batting .406

Most good-hitting ballplayers don't WALK much any more. To hit for a .400 BA you have to do a lot of Walking. In fact Ted had 147 WALKS in 1941.....
which reduced his official AB's to only 456.

Another thing that will make both these hitting records really tough to match/exceed are the difference in fielding gloves. Today's gloves give infielders, and to a degree outfielders much more effective range than they had back then. I've shagged flies many times with an old Mel Ott model glove and know it limits the type/range of catches that can be made. I obviously can't watch full games from the pre-war era, but I suspect there were far fewer clean diving stops, or back handed stab and throws from the hole at short or behind 2nd, or outfielders leaping to rob homeruns at the wall. These things still happened back then, but much less often, and those few hits make all the difference when chasing .400... however if both Brett and Gwynn can hit .390 plus post 1980, I've got to think it can be done again.

Still vote Cy's as most unbreakable though.

[oldphil]

How about a pitcher, Tony Cloninger hitting 2 grand slams in the same game. Tough to beat this one.

[oldjudge]

No suspense today. Aaron Judge extended his consecutive game with a strikeout streak to 31 today in his first at bat.

[CMIZ5290]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

No suspense today. Aaron Judge extended his consecutive game with a strikeout streak to 31 today in his first at bat.

And people are comparing him to Mantle...Yea, right.. Even thought he did strike out at times, Mantle had more career walks than strike outs....

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Auravisions...

[oldjudge]

Judge's streak continues--three Ks, 0-4, and a dropped fly ball in right. I think we can put the MVP chatter to rest.

[Topnotchsy]

I decided to try and take a little closer and more "technical" look at the question:

Bonds hit 73 home runs. The highest home run total in a single season since 2010 was 54, or 74%

Cobb's career average was .366. The highest current total is .318 shared by Jose Altuve and Miguel Cabrera. While .318 is roughly 87% of .366, no one would say that current hitters are hitting 87% as high as Cobb. If we drop the first digit and compare .018 and .066, they are 27% of the way to Cobb.

Walter Johnson had 110 shutouts. The current active leader is Clayton Kershaw with 15, or 14% of the total.

Joe DiMiggio had a 56 game hitting streak. The longest streak since 2010 was Dan Uggla at 33 games, or 59%.

Cal Ripken played 2632 conecutive games. The longest active streak is Alcides Escobar with 286. He's just 11% of the way.

Rose had 4256 hits, while Adrian Beltre, the active leader has 3019, making his 71% of the way to Rose.

Ryan had 5714 K's. CC Sabathia has 2806, good for 49% of the total.

Cy Young had 511 wins. Bartolo Colon has 237, good for 46%.

And the longest win streak ever is 26 (with a tie in there). This season there were 2 streaks of 11 games, for 42%.

Looking through this list there were a couple of things that I noticed:

1) Playing consecutive games is simply not something that is focused on anymore, and the reason is simple. It is the only thing on this list that could easily be argued is not a positive stat. While not getting injured is great, there are almost definitely diminished returns from playing every single game season after season. It was hard to even find out the player who is leading this category and it proved to have the lowest percentage (albeit in a discussion where the percentages mean different things in different cases). I can imagine a player who prides himself on playing every day combined with the right type of manager could mean that we see longer streaks over the years than we are seeing now and though Ripken's mark will be a tall task, if someone played 1,000 games straight, it could become the kind of streak that people push for, and so the player gets put out there every game, even if a break might have been a better idea.

2) Many people view Cy Young's win total as the hardest to ever pass. But it was not that long ago that Maddux and Clemens each had 350+ wins, good for 70% of Cy Young's totals. With the way rotations are structured it would seem almost unimaginable for someone to approach 511, but I think there are other records that are much tougher.

3) Not only do I not think that Ryan's record is the hardest, I think in an era with such huge increases in strikeouts, we may see it broken sooner than people think. Consider the seasons when the top 4 in career strikeouts retired: 1993 (Ryan), 2009 (Johnson), 2007 (Clemens), 1988 (Carlton). While we have moved away from other stats, K's are more recent records.

4) While ultimately the lowest percentage was tied to active games, I felt that the shutout streak would be the hardest to approach. The active leader Clayton Kershaw is only 14% of the way there, and the highest pitcher on the list who did not pitch in the deadball era is Warren Spahn, whose 63 shutouts is still only 57% of Johnson's total. (On a separate note, it would be crazy to consider what Spahn's career numbers would have been had he not missed 3 seasons to the military.) Career shutouts are a function of games pitched, complete games and a league where few runs are scored. Today's league is none of those. This can be illustrated by the fact that Kershaw's career ERA+ (ERA compared to the league is 162, which is 15 points higher than than Johnson's, and is by far the best for any starting pitcher (although to be fair, retired pitchers have the back end of their career included and Kershaw is still currently in his prime.)

There are a number of records that won't be broken, but I think that Johnson's shutout record is just about the safest of the group.

[Louieman]

DiMaggio's streak no doubt, compounded by the pressure added on by the "everything now" age we live in, and the revolution of specialty relievers.

[CMIZ5290]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Judge's streak continues--three Ks, 0-4, and a dropped fly ball in right. I think we can put the MVP chatter to rest.

+1....Can you say Dave Kingman??

[darwinbulldog]

Streak's broken. 3BBs + 1PH will do that.