Tourtellotte: Baseball’s unbreakable records

From SABR member Shane Tourtellotte at The Hardball Times on May 23, 2018:

Baseball is built on history. Baseball also is built on numbers. Where the two meet, with the most remarkable and extreme performances in the game’s history rendered into numbers, we get records.

We baseball fans love those records. We love seeing them stand, unchallenged through the decades, and we love seeing them fall, toppled by some fresh burst of brilliance or long campaign of sustained excellence. Or sometimes the opposites of those traits: failure can be as compelling as success.

Some records are simply beyond reach, either due to changes in the game or the sheer incredible performance that produced them. The reason why nobody will topple Cy Young’s mark of 749 complete games is different from the reason why nobody will surpass Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, while the security of Nolan Ryan’s 5,714 career strikeouts is probably a meld of the two. (Your estimates may vary. Indeed, I’d be surprised if they didn’t, at least a little.)

Read the full article here: https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/the-unbreakable-records-volume-two/



Originally published: May 25, 2018. Last Updated: May 25, 2018.