My thoughts.


I think it’s safe to say that nobody will ever break Cy Young’s career 511 wins or Jack Chesbro’s 41 wins in a season… When Chesbro won his 41 games, he started 51 games and threw 48 complete games… current day pitchers first of all don’t start 41 games in a season and there’s no chance a reliever does that. As for 511 career wins… A pitcher would have to win an average of 25 games a season over a 20 year career… not going to happen. The closest anyone has come anywhere close to be recent was in 1990, Bob Welch had 27 wins


Batting Avg, career .366 by Ty Cobb and a single season of .426 by Nap Lajoie. I think both of these are safe as well… I could see someone breaking the .366 average in a single season… but not in a career. Chipper Jones is having an outstanding season this year and his batting average is only .359. The last time anyone came even remotely close to breaking Lajoie’s record was in 1994 when Tony Gwynn hit .394

when they are too old to be considered as modern day records… say , maybe in the year 2050 they will say that modern day records only include records from 1950 and on… and then you will see these dissappear from some lists.

Doubles in a season

Runs in a season

Extra base hits in a season

I’d think career doubles

should fall

hard to break – 41 wins in a season – although Steve Carlton may have done it IF he had played for a decent team instead of the Phillies in a bad period for them..

I don’t think Career wins, career triples or season triples will ever be broken.

Is 5714 possible in the foreseeable future?

I could see the single season record for doubles falling. Guys like Corey Hart and Ryan Braun from Milwaukee are already at the top of the NL in XBH, and both have the ability to turn deep singles into doubles, esp. Hart. Ian Kinsler is another guy that gets on base a ton, gets a ton of AB’s and plays in a hitters park. Matt Holiday comes to mind based on his home park alone. Chris Young, if he can ever figure out how to up his average has a good shot as well in my mind, as he’ll probably finish with around 40-45 doubles even though his average is around .240, and his OBP is probably .300 or so.

Stadiums in the old, old days were so big, and had such deep alleys, outfielders must have had a terrible time covering all that ground. Balls that would normally be doubles would turn into triples only because the players couldn’t get to the balls quickly enough. I don’t have any proof of this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of stadiums in the late 1800s had outfield walls in certain areas, letting the ball roll for longer than it wouldve had a wall been in place.

- they mean something, but not nearly as much as modern records do. But the records of yesteryear are inevitably colored by the fact that players in the past are worse than those of today. More players are scouted than in the 1920s, more have access to better training, and only the best players make the majors.

The reality is that records that depend on longevity – career hits, homers, etc. – will be broken. Training and medicine will continue to improve. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in twenty years, playing well into one’s forties becomes much more common. That won’t mean that mediocre players will be shattering records simply because they played twenty years. It’ll mean that the best players of tomorrow will be able to play well for another three or four seasons.

Add that to the fact that society’s taboos on artificial enhancement are liable to gradually be lost, and it won’t be surprising if a forty-five year old Jay Bruce is still smashing pitches like he’s thirty.

My bet would be the single season RBI record. We’ve recently seen a couple of guys get half way to 191 at the all-star break.