The Most Unbreakable Career Baseball Records

in an earlier video we looked at six career records that could be broken by someone playing today today we're gonna look at nine records that may never be broken how do we determine something may never be broken well did a test taken the league leader in a stat in 2019 adding the league leader in 2018 2017 and so on until the record was broken doing this method the six breakable stats in the previous video all ranged from 11 years in the case of sacrifice flies to 19 years in the case of walks to set a new record but what stats took over 20 years what records in today's game are the most difficult and in some cases impossible to break counting down the top 9 most unbreakable career records in baseball after the intro [Music] number nine coming in at 20 years 4 256 hits by pete rose if someone were to have a 20-year career they would have to average 213 hits a year to break a record in the last seven seasons a player has only reached 213 hits three times 213 by charlie blackman in 2017 mookie betts with 214 in 2016 and jose altuve with 216 in 2016. the days of players getting over 220 hits in a season something we saw with players like wade boggs tony gwynn michael young and paul molitor may have ended with the retirement of ichiro suzuki one may make the argument well ichiro wasn't that long ago if a player like kim came into the majors at earlier age instead of age 27 like ichiro did they could break the record to illustrate how ichiro may not have reached rose's numbers from his debut at age 27 until he got 3 000 hits in his age 42 season ichiro had 3030 total hits from age 27 to age 42 pete rose had 3091 hits looking at even the most prolific hitter that we've seen in the last 35 years someone who is leaps and bounds ahead of his contemporaries and getting a hit he still comes up short to rose's production when controlling for age with the focus on home runs and getting on base through walks taking over in today's game it's question wolf will ever see someone rack up hits like itro let alone have the extreme longevity of pete rose i don't know if anyone will ever reach four thousand hits again something only done by pete rose and ty cobb in the 150 year history of baseball let alone pass roses 4256. number eight at 21 years is pitching strikeouts held by nolan ryan with 5714 this one is a little strange because unlike pitching strikeouts hitting strikeouts is one of the most breakable records strikeouts are happening at higher rates than we've ever seen so you'd think this one would be in reach however on the pitching side while strikeout rates are higher than they've ever been pitcher usage is way more specialized than it's been in the past this is something we'll see a lot as we get further along on this list but pitchers don't pitch nearly as many innings season to season like they did when nolan ryan was pitching nolan ryan had 367 strikeouts in 322 and two-thirds innings in 1972 compared to the league leader in strikeouts in 2021 robbie ray had 248 strikeouts in 193 and a third innings he had 119 fewer strikeouts in 119 and one-third fewer innings added nolan ryan's extreme longevity and good health where he had over 20 starts in 25 different seasons and you have veteran pitchers like max scherzer justin verlander and zach granky all over the age of 36 still over 2 500 strikeouts away from ryan's record to put that in perspective john lester who has had a very good 16-year career still hasn't reached 2500 strikeouts clayton kershaw made news in 2015 as the first pitcher to reach 300 strikeouts in a season since randy johnson and kurt schilling in 2002. he would have to do that for 19 seasons straight to pass nolan ryan since then garrett cole max scherzer justin verlander and chris sale also had seasons with 300 strikeouts but none of them have managed to do it twice let alone 19 seasons in a row this record is safe for the foreseeable future if not forever number seven at 22 years is 309 triples by sam crawford this is unbreakable today mostly due to the changes in how stadiums are built back in the early 1900s when sam crawford played stadium dimensions were downright wonky nearly half his career triples came at bennett park and later navin field in detroit both had some irregular shapes in the outfield that created an odd 420 foot left center field dimension in bennett park and a ridiculous 440 center field distance at navin field he also had a number of triples at comiskey park in chicago which opened with 362 foot distance down the lines and 420 in center these early stadium dimensions absolutely dwarf stadiums today with only coors field coming close at 347 feet down the line and 415 feet in center but that is due to the elevation in denver creating thinner air meaning the deep fences are counteracting that the ball flies further there there are still a couple oddities like triples alley in san francisco but nothing like the extreme dimensions that were commonplace in the early days of baseball especially after the removal of talus hill in houston add in that the game has changed the players valuing home run power over triples and it makes sense that the active leader in triples dexter fowler with 82 is only a fourth of the way to crawford's mark number six at 23 years is 1406 stolen bases by ricky henderson d strange gordon is the active leader with 333 career steals here's ricky henderson from 1980 to 1983 he had 394 steals in a four year period he played for another 21 seasons putting his career total here even for his time period henderson absolutely blew away the competition with almost 500 more stolen bases than the second place spot lou brock with 938 add in that stolen bases have gone way down the last two decades and you get facts like ricky henderson's 130 stolen bases in 1982 were more than any team in 2021 with the royals coming the closest at 124. since henderson retired in 2003 the highest single season total has been jose reyes with 78 in henderson beat that mark six times in his career nobody has passed 50 stolen bases in the last four years unless there are some drastic changes to the rules of baseball to encourage stolen bases i don't know if anyone will ever reach half of henderson's stolen base mark again number five at 24 years is 511 wins by cy young this is going to be a theme for most of the remaining stats but pitcher usage in baseball today is completely different than cy young's era sai young had over 20 wins 14 years straight with four seasons over 30 wins the last time someone had 30 wins in a season was danny mclean in 1968 over 50 years ago 20 win seasons still happen sporadically with verlander wainwright and kershaw all with two in their careers but we haven't seen back-to-back 20-win seasons since kurt schilling and randy johnson 20 years ago wins has an archaic stat that is highly dependent on how often a starter pitches which sai young used to pitch on three days rest today's pitchers pitch on a minimum of four days rest wins are also dependent on how deep into games a pitcher goes cyoung averaged 8.63 innings per start the leader in 2021 and wins julio urias only averaged 5.8 innings per start interestingly if a team wanted to get a player to break the record it could happen with how winds are assigned a team could switch to an opener strategy with a dedicated follower that only pitches when the team is leading someone did an experiment in out of the park with phil koch's career where they did just that they outlined their strategy here i will then manually play each game if a team has the lead with two outs in the fifth inning i will pull the starting pitcher and insert coke for the third out and that's it as long as the bullpen doesn't blow the game phil coke gets the win doing this strategy they were able to get phil coke 577 wins in only 14 seasons with the highest season reaching 54 wins now it's fun to do that now to the park but no team would ever conceivably implement a strategy like this not only would it be a sub-optimal strategy but it would probably piss off their starting pitchers quite a bit the closest we have had to this is the tampa bay rays with ryan yarborough in 2018 and 2019. the rays were the first team to really run with an opener strategy and yarbrough was their main long relief guy to come in if the game was either close or the rays were winning in those two seasons yarborough had 22 wins and only 46 relief appearances now he still started 20 games as well those seasons so the rays weren't fully committed to this type of usage but assuming they were and the rays pitch yarborough like this every fourth day or so you could easily have a 20-plus win season with a reliever however no team is likely to ever commit a player to this type of usage let alone for a whole career so it's probably just going to remain a hypothetical way to reach 512 wins since it isn't going to happen and since starter usage is so different from saiyong's era his record will most likely remain safe forever number four at 29 years is 512 sacrifice hits by eddie collins this is another record that is safe due to the changing strategy in baseball the sacrifice bunt has nearly been eliminated from the game other than when pitchers are batting in fact the active career leader in sacrifice hits as a pitcher clayton kershaw with 110 the analytics have spoken and in the vast majority of cases if you have a somewhat respectable hitter at the plate giving up an out simply to move runners just isn't worth it now there are some exceptions especially with the implementation of the manfred runner and extra innings that have increased sacrifice hits slightly but the days of guys like eddie collins a second baseman with the career 142 ops plus having 40 sacrifice hits in a season are gone even saying that stat right now just sounds ridiculous to ask a player with a career 424 on base percentage to willingly create an out 512 times the players that do the bunty now are either pitchers who only play every 5th game and usually only see 2 or 3 played appearances when they do play or guys that aren't very good with the bat who don't tend to have very long careers if the universal dh is implemented we may see another drastic decrease in sacrifice bunts i can't see any conceivable way any player in the future even comes close to eddie collins's mark number three also at 29 years is 110 shutouts by walter johnson it's going to sound redundant but the last three records on this list are all related to starting pitcher usage the game has just changed that much that there's no way these records will ever be reached the methodology to get 29 years to break the shutout record also ignores that shutouts were way more common in the 90s and early 2000s than they are today you would see pitchers with 4 5 or six shutouts a year in those seasons now in 2021 the league leader was two in 2019 the league leader was two in 2018 the league leader was one walter johnson had 11 in a single season only one active player has more than 11 in their career clayton kershaw with 15. i'm gonna lump the last two records together as they're related number two at 30 years is 7 356 innings pitched by sai young and number one at a staggering 52 years his 749 complete games by cy young i'm going to sound like a broken record but starting pitcher usage just isn't the same as it was in saiyan's era saiyong had 48 complete games in 1892 the last time a player even started that many games in a season was wilbur wood in 1973. adam wainwright leads all active players with 27 career complete games which is only 3.6 percent of the way to the record zach greinke is the active leader in his pitch with 3110 which is only 42 percent of the weight of the record i don't even know what else to say sai young along with having an award named after him is going to remain in the record books for multiple career marks till the end of baseball itself wins innings pitched and complete games really have no chance of ever being bested so what are your thoughts leave a comment subscribe turn on notifications eat a well-balanced diet exercise and stay in shape call your mother all those good things but most importantly subscribe thanks

Channel: Baseball's Not Dead

Views: 299,155

Keywords: Cy Young, rickey henderson

Id: p0fzedRoeyg

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 21 2022