Baseball's Hallowed Records

The Coffee Shop
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With Bonds about to break the record, let’s take a peak at some of the most hallowed records in baseball. Our paper had this list Sunday, including chance of being broken.

I think the home run record is the only one that could be surpassed by ARod, and maybe Griffey, if he can stay healthy. After that, I think the season RBI record. Other than that, IMO they all should be 0.
All-time home run record
Our guess is that Bonds will end up with around 775 homers. So can anyone break that record? Ken Griffey Jr., 37, has 586, but he still needs four more 50 homer seasons, and we don’t see that. No, the best chance is by Alex Rodriguez. He has 494, and say he ends up with 510 or so by season’s end. He turns 32 this month. If A-Rod can play another 10 years and average 26 1/2 homers, he’ll be at 775. If he averages 30 for nine seasons (that seems very doable), that would put him around 780.
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 75% Season home run record
Bonds, of course, holds this record with 73 in 2001. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa are the only others to hit at least 65 in a season, and we know the rumors surrounding all three. Ryan Howard hit 58 last season. A-Rod’s best is 57 in 2002. That’s still 16 homers short. Bottom line is that no one, aside from 1998 when McGwire and Sosa played home run derby with each other, has really come close.
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 5% Career victories
There’s a reason baseball’s best pitchers each season win an award named after Cy Young. The guy won 511 games. Of course, it came in an era (1890-1911) when they pitched until their arms were about to fall off. Young started 815 games. By comparison, 44-year-old Roger Clemens has started fewer than 700 and has 350 wins. Think about this: If someone pitched for 25 seasons and averaged 20 victories, he would still be 11 shy of Young.
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 0% Hitting streak
Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game streak is one of baseball’s magic records, mostly because it has stood since 1941 and has never really been threatened. Pete Rose came the closest in 1978 with a 44-game streak. Other than that, no one has broken 40 games. We’re not sure why more haven’t come close to this record. We’re guessing the expanding use of relief pitchers has made this record tougher to break. But you would think that a speedy contact hitter such as Ichiro Suzuki, who can leg out infield hits and bunts to keep a streak alive, might have a chance.
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 15% Career hits
When Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb’s hits record and ended with 4,256, most assumed that Rose’s record would never be broken. But Derek Jeter has more hits at this stage of his career than Rose did at the same point of his. Jeter, in his 13th season, has 2,267 hits. He’s only 33. By season’s end, he will be about 1,900 hits short. That’s another 10 years of 200-hit seasons, so it’s possible. But two things: Will Jeter still have the desire to play at, say, age 42? Also: There is no way he will break the record if he keeps playing shortstop. He’ll eventually have to move to first base.
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 50% Career stolen-base record
Rickey Henderson holds the record with 1,406. Kenny Lofton is the active leader, and he has only 619. People just don’t steal bases anymore. Jose Reyes led the majors last season with 64. Henderson had more than that 10 times, including six seasons of 80 or more.
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 5% Consecutive games streak
Baltimore shortstop Miguel Tejada had the fifth-longest streak in major-league history when he recently went down with a broken wrist, snapping his streak at 1,152. And he wasn’t even halfway to the record of 2,632 by Cal Ripken. The longest active streak? No one is even at 400. Some said Lou Gehrig’s record of 2,130 would never be broken. Well, we’re saying Ripken’s mark will never be broken.
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 0% 30-win season
Detroit’s Denny McLain was the last to win 30 when he went 31-6 in 1968. Those were the days of four-man rotations, so McLain had 41 starts that season. Compare that with, say, Greg Maddux, who has never started more than 37. With 162 games and five-man rotations, pitchers, at most, will get around 34 starts. (That’s how many Minnesota’s Johan Santana had last season when he went 19-6.) Could a pitcher win 30 of 34 starts? Statistically, it’s possible. Realistically?
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 5% Another .400 hitter
Like the hitting streak, there hasn’t been a .400 hitter since Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941. Again, relief specialists have made this a tough number to crack. The guys with the best chance are speedy contact hitters. Problem is, they usually hit near the top of the order and simply bat too many times in a season. The only chance a guy has is if he’s like George Brett in 1980 when he hit .390. Brett only played 117 games that season because of injury, and there was a question if he would get enough at-bats to qualify.
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 10% Season RBI record
Hack Wilson’s record was made even more unbreakable just a few years ago when baseball research discovered a missing RBI. So his record of 190 RBI in 1930 jumped to 191. Of the top-25 RBI seasons, only two have occurred in the past 50 years: Manny Ramirez with 165 in 1999 and Sammy Sosa with 160 in 2001. Any hitter cleaning up like that probably won’t be pitched to in crucial situations. With so many more teams hanging in the pennant race because of the wild card, teams need to win and simply will pitch around big run-producers.
CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 5%

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CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 50% Career stolen-base record

Should that not have been 5%?

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When I was a kid, the records I never thought would get broken were total HR’s, Single season HR’s, and consecutive games. And I’ve watched them all fall.

So now the only record I think well never be broken is consecutive no-hitters. I can’t remember the guys name, but someone actually pitched back-to-back no-no’s. I don’t think anyone will do three in a row.

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CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 50% Career stolen-base record

Should that not have been 5%?
Sure doesn’t seem like there’s too many more Henderson’s, Vince Coleman’s or Willie McGee’s

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CHANCE OF BEING BROKEN: 50% Career stolen-base record

Should that not have been 5%?
The original post appears to need some editing. The “CHANCE IF BEING BROKEN: 50%” is for the category above this one, then “Career stolen-base record” should be the next line. And yes, it should be 5%.

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You’re thinking of Johnny Vandermeer, he threw back to back no-no’s for the Reds in 1938.

I think Nolan Ryan’s 7 no-hitters should in that list as well.

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How about Ryan’s career strikeout record as well?

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Ahh, yes, re-reading the article it does appear the “Chance of being broken” appears after the description of the record.

My bad.

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Sure doesn’t seem like there’s too many more Henderson’s, Vince Coleman’s or Willie McGee’s

Your going to list Coleman and McGee and leave Lou Brock off of your list?? McGee was a horrible base stealer, very fast, but he got picked off a lot and just never had the ‘‘knack’’ for stealing bases. Coleman was a good enough hitter to be a real threat to the record; you can’t steal first base.

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Brock was way before my time. You’re right, McGee was not as proficient as I thought he was (I was very young at the time!). Maybe Tim Raines would have been a better choice, it seems I remember him getting close to 100 SBs in his prime.

Those Cardinal teams were awfully fast. Back when Busch stadium was a graveyard. Coleman, McGee, Ozzie Smith…I think they had Lonnie Smith too…those teams could fly.

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Yep, Whitey sure built those teams around the old stadium. They were fun to watch.

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Stephen Jay Gould once compared baseball and evolution. He noted that the average (year-to-year) batting average for baseball hasn’t changed that much, but the extremes (guys hitting .426, for instance) have lessened quite a bit as batters and pitchers have “evolved”. One could take from that that shorter term records (like single game, or season records) are less likely to be broken. It takes the equivalent of a “mutation” to fundamentally change the game or break these records. Rickey Henderson was such a mutation, so focused as he was on stealing (and the tools to do it). The steroid era was another “mutation”, as it were, that led to the HR records we saw. You aren’t ever going to see someone get 380 strikeouts or even 300 innings pitched again: the game has changed too much. Hell, just look at career shutouts: only Clemens is in the top 50 (at 26), and his total isn’t going to change.

Although I’m biased for the Mets, Jose Reyes has a shot at two of those career records: hits (a long shot) and stolen bases. At age 24, he already has more hits than Jeter did at that age (with half a season to go), and he’s becoming a better hitter every year. He’s on track for over 200 hits this year. This is the third year in a row he hasn’t been injured, too. Yeah, he’d have to keep it up into his early 40s, and it’d be tough being a shortstop. He’s on track for 80 stolen bases this year, he’s only 24, and his new first base coach is Rickey Henderson.

Also, don’t count Griffey out for that career HR title. He’s good for 40 HRs a year when healthy, he’s only 37, so by age 42 he could be close.

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I thought about Reyes for the stolen bases record…but in the end, I don’t think he’ll get there. At the end of this season he’ll have 225-250 stolen bases. He needs to do 100/yr for 14 seasons to break the record. I just don’t think that’s doable. Do you think that his position (shortstop) is harder on him than Rickey’s (outfield) was? Although I guess Jeter has stayed pretty healthy…

Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him have a few years of 100+ steals. But don’t you think it would take a few 130+ steal seasons for him to have any shot at all at the career record? In this day and age, I just don’t see that happening.

I hadn’t even thought of him for the hits record.

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I agree on Griffey…he’s looked really, really good this year. If he wants to get serious about it though, he needs to workout in the off-season, and keep his body young. He’s put on a lot of weight over the years. He could go DH in a few, but not sure how he’d hit as a DH only.

Don’t forget money also has an impact on long term records. Bottom line is guys just don’t need to play that long to secure themselves for life. The guys that play 20 years (e.g., Clemens, Franco) are the few who probably are playing for the love of it.

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I thought about Reyes for the stolen bases record…but in the end, I don’t think he’ll get there. At the end of this season he’ll have 225-250 stolen bases. He needs to do 100/yr for 14 seasons to break the record. I just don’t think that’s doable. Do you think that his position (shortstop) is harder on him than Rickey’s (outfield) was? Although I guess Jeter has stayed pretty healthy…

Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him have a few years of 100+ steals. But don’t you think it would take a few 130+ steal seasons for him to have any shot at all at the career record? In this day and age, I just don’t see that happening.

I hadn’t even thought of him for the hits record.

No, he’s not likely to get 100 steals in a year, mainly because his job is to be on base when Beltran/Delgado/Wright come up. But I think he’s good for 60-80 every year. If Ripken can stay healthy for that long, maybe Jeter & Reyes can, too.

Reyes is a special player. A radio guy was telling how, when Reyes first came up, he drew a walk in June or July. The crowd gave him an ovation, because it was like his first walk of the year. Now, he has more walks than strikeouts this year. All of his stats have improved each of the last three years. Throw in a cannon of an arm, great range, and the occasional home run, and you have one hell of a player.