There are a couple of interesting posts today about baseball statistics (both via Baseball Musings) that I thought bore some discussion. First up is The Baseball Crank's list of the most impressive records in baseball history. Cy Young tops the list with his 511 wins, 7354.2 innings pitched and 749 complete games. Barring a major change in the way the game is played there isn't going to be anyone challenging those marks but what's most impressive is that there isn't anybody close to Young in the history of baseball. Next up is new Mets hitting coach Rickey Henderson's 1406 steals. He's 468 steals ahead of Lou Brock, a number that's good enough for 42nd on the All-Time list all by itself. That's another mark that no one's going to touch nor will anyone be breaking Nolan Ryan's strikeout total nor Mike Marshall's relief workload.
Most of the records are either untouchable (59 wins in a season)or unlikely (Joe D's 56-game hitting streak) which makes Hank Aaron's 6856 career total bases the most interesting entry to me. He's more than 700 ahead of Stan Musial and 900 ahead of Barry Bonds. Bonds has walked 1115 more times than Hammerin' Hank, though, which would put him comfortably in the lead if total bases included walks. I'm not quite sure why they don't include walks, a base is a base after all, but it does devalue it somewhat in my mind.
One assailable record that makes The Crank's list is Chief Wilson's 36 triples in 1912. In fact there's a player this season who has an outside chance at making a run at the ol'Chief in Curtis Granderson. FanIQ points out that Granderson has 15 triples entering the second half and it's not that ridiculous to ponder whether or not he could make a run at one of the oldest records in the game. No one has had more than 26 since Kiki Cuyler in 1925 so even if Granderson does fall short of the all-time mark he stands a good chance at the best triple total since Prohibition. Elsewhere on the list of baseball stats to track are Magglio Ordonez's run at the single-season doubles mark. He's got 35 and the record is 67, set by Earl Webb in 1931. A-Rod has a reasonable chance to set a new American League home run record and Jimmy Rollins should set the at-bat record. The former would make a lot of news because of the steroid cloud on top of Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa while the latter is more a product of a refusal to walk and staying healthy than anything else.
Just after you posted this, Granderson quits hitting triples. Who could've seen that coming eh? He's still got a great shot at one of the best triple totals in the last 80 years
Posted by: Devon Young | July 27, 2007 at 01:38 PM