It’s pretty safe to assume that Ty Cobb was one of the best hitters to ever play Major League Baseball. If you’re not convinced, you can take a look at the statistics that he put up during his 24-season professional career:

.367 average (1st all time), 2246 runs scored (2nd all time), 4191 hits (2nd all time), 723 doubles (4th all time), 297 triples (2nd all time), 1938 RBI (6th all time), and 892 stolen bases (4th all time).

Ty Cobb and his amazing career has been discussed at length on this post in the past; we talked about his .367 career batting average and his induction into the MLB Hall of Fame in 1936, but we haven’t talked about the record that displays his ability as a hitter the most; the Georgia Peach hit over .300 each year in his baseball career from 1906 to 1928, including 21 years with the Detroit Tigers and the last two years with the Philadelphia Athletics. The only year that Cobb didn’t hit over .300 was in 1905, his rookie year with the Tigers. In 150 at-bats and 41 games played, Cobb hit .240 with one home run and 15 RBI. When he became an everyday player the next season, he never had another season where he struggled and hit under .300…that’ just absolutely amazing.

During this streak of 23 consecutive years hitting over .300, Cobb did not squeak by to keep the streak alive by any means. With a career batting average of .367, it’s pretty safe to assume that he safely hit above that mark quite easily. He never finished a year below a .316 batting average, won 12 batting titles, eclipsed the .400 mark three times, and hit over .320 in 22 different seasons (which is also a record). What is most amazing to me is that he only won one MVP award during his career, when he led the league in runs, hits, triples, doubles, RBI, stolen bases, batting average, slugging percentage, and OPS. I would say that’s a pretty good year. However, he was known not to be the nicest person on the field, which could have led to one of the reasons why he wasn’t voted to win more MVPs. Also, playing in the same era as Babe Ruth didn’t help either.

Will this record be broken? Not in a million years. Not only is it tough to hit .300 on a consistent basis, it’s even tougher to be in the Major Leagues for 23 years to even the chance to do so. There haven’t been many ballplayers in today’s era that have hung around and been an everyday player at that point in their careers. So, I think that reason alone will be the sole reason why Cobb’s consecutive .300 season streak will never be broken; compared to players back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, players today are made of tissue paper and aren’t durable enough to stay productive for that amount of time.

This type of record is definitely something that all MLB hitters should strive for; experiencing sustained success throughout an entire career and building a reputation that you’re one of the all-time best at what you did as a player, but Ty Cobb was a very special player that doesn’t come along very often, so I’m confident in saying that this record is 100% safe.

After a pitcher holds opposing teams hitless for nine innings, what is the biggest storyline that the media plays up in that pitcher’s next start? They ask that question that everyone thinks: can he do it again? Well, no one has done it since Johnny Vander Meer did so in June 1938 for the Cincinnati Reds. He had some bright spots in his 13-year MLB career, but not all of his stats are very eye-popping. He finished his career with a 119-121 record, 3.44 ERA, and 1,294 strikeouts in 2,104.3 innings.

However, getting batters to swing and miss was his specialty. Only Vander Meer, Tim Lincecum, Randy Johnson, and Warren Spahn have led the league in strikeouts three years in a row since 1940. Why is it so hard for a pitcher to throw two no-hitters in a row? Come on; it’s hard enough to fool hitters for a 1-2-3 inning, let alone for nine innings in a row. Also, I think that pitchers always think about continuing their dominance that they had previously in their next start. Most of the time, that type of dominance only happens once or twice in a lifetime, so it’s pretty tough to do that in consecutive appearances, especially when you consciously try to do it.

If you read my post about Nolan Ryan’s 7 career no-hitters, you can see how often no-hitters have taken place in MLB history. There have been only 26 pitchers in Major League Baseball that have been able to no-hit opposing teams on multiple occasions, with Justin Verlander, Roy Halladay, and Mark Buehrle being the only active players.

Why won’t this record be broken, you ask? Well, that’s easy. To break Johnny Vander Meer’s mark, a pitcher would have to throw no-hitters in three consecutive starts; I’ll only believe that this would ever happen if I saw a pitcher throw two in a row. Until then, I’m convinced that we will never see perfection like Johnny Vander Meer’s in 1938 ever again.

Rickey Henderson said it the only way Rickey would on the day he stole his 939^th base, passing Lou Brock for first on the All-time list: “Today, I’m the greatest of all time.” Mind you, Lou Brock was standing right next to Henderson when he proclaimed that over the PA system, but that’s besides the point. That statement showed the amount of confidence that Rickey had in his baseball abilities. He was the only player that could turn a base on balls into a triple. When Henderson reached first base, everyone in the stadium knew he was stealing, he went anyways, and more often than not, was safe with a career stolen base percentage of 81%. The top-ten list for career stolen bases looks like this:

1. Rickey Henderson: 1406
2. Lou Brock: 938
3. Billy Hamilton: 912
4. Ty Cobb: 892
5. Tim Raines: 808
6. Vince Coleman: 752
7. Eddie Collins: 745
8. Max Carey: 738
9. Honus Wagner: 722
10. Arlie Latham: 707

The gap between the top base stealer and the 10^th best base stealer is quite appalling; the 699 difference is half of Henderson’s total, which shows you how often he was stealing bases. For a player to match this mark in a 25-year career, they would have to average about 56 stolen bases per year.

The highest ranked active player on this list is Carl Crawford, sitting in 58^th place with 427 career stolen bases. In order to reach Rickey Henderson’s record, he needs to swipe 979 more bases. Crawford is currently 30 years old, so let’s say for argument’s sake that he plays ten more years. He would need to average about 97 stolen bases per season. That ain’t happening.

When thinking of elite base stealers today, three names come to mind: Jose Reyes, Michael Bourn, and Jacoby Ellsbury. Reyes currently has 367 stolen bases at the age of 28; if he plays until he is 40, he would need to average 87 stolen bases per season for the next 12 years. With his hamstring issues, I doubt that will happen. Michael Bourn has been at the top of the list of base stealers over the last three years. At the age of 28, he has 229 stolen bases and would need to average 98 swipes per year until he turned 40 to approach the record. Ellsbury is 27 years old and currently has 173 steals, meaning he would need to average 95 steals a year until he is 40 to approach Henderson’s record.

The morale of the story is that this record is not getting broken any time soon, mostly because no player was able to swipe a bag when everybody knew he was going to like Rickey Henderson. The only way Henderson was able to do that was because of his self-confidence. Nowadays, managers handcuff a lot of base stealers and throw up a red light in certain situations. The game has changed since Rickey was running all over the place, and since the game has changed, his record will be safe for a while.

Nolan Ryan impressed Major League Baseball fans in more ways than one. Was it because he was throwing a mid- 90s fastball while he was 46 years old? Yeah. Was it because of his 324 wins, 3.19 career ERA, and MLB record 5,714 strikeouts? Hell yeah. The most impressive part of Nolan Ryan’s MLB career was his seven no-hitters, another record. How hard is it to throw a no-hitter? Let’s put it into perspective by looking at the 2000 season to the 2009 season.

During this time, 162 games were played by each team, each year, which equals approximately 48,600 games over that ten-year span. During that time period, 20 no-hitters were thrown. For all of you stat freaks out there, that means that between 2000 and 2009, only .0412% of games included a no-hitter. That’s pretty insane. Only 19 active pitchers have thrown a no-hitter, with Roy Halladay, Justin Verlander, and Mark Buehrle being the ones that have thrown two.

The pitchers who have three or more career no-hitters are as follows:

• Nolan Ryan: 7
• Sand Koufax: 4
• Larry Corcoran: 3
• Bob Feller: 3
• Cy Young: 3

This is a very exclusive club, much more so than most offensive categories. Records set for hits, home runs, RBI, walks, etc. are much different than throwing a no-hitter because hitters have more than one opportunity to build up their totals. Whereas for pitchers, they have to continue to dominate the opposition and not allow any hits for all nine innings and 27 outs. That’s really hard to do and the fact that Nolan Ryan did this seven times is a feat that I don’t think will ever be matched.

One of the things that analysts and fans evaluate in a professional athlete is their physical and mental toughness. This is also important to an athlete because their reputation for being on the field on a regular basis also contributes to their legacy. Teams are still interested in Javier Vasquez every time he hits the free agent market because he consistently eats up innings; it has been documented that he can’t pitch in the “big game,” but teams love it when they have a pitcher that they can depend on every fifth day.

Cal Ripken Jr. is the ultimate iron man; obviously, most baseball fans are well aware of his long journey to break Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games streak of 2,130. As you will see in a moment, Ripken and Gehrig are in a league all by themselves when talking about the all-time list of consecutive games played. The top-ten streaks of all time are:

1. Cal Ripken, Jr.: 2,632 games
2. Lou Gehrig: 2,130
3. Everett Scott: 1,307
4. Steve Garvey: 1,207
5. Miguel Tejada: 1,152
6. Billy Williams: 1,117
7. Joe Sewell: 1,103
8. Stan Musial: 895
9. Eddie Yost: 829
10. Gus Suhr: 822

It’s pretty plain to see that the top two on this list are head and shoulders above the rest on this list. Pete Rose had two different streaks in the top-15 (745 and 678 games) before Miguel Tejada knocked him off a few years ago; however, if you add both of those streaks together, Rose doesn’t even come within 1,000 games of Ripken. His 16-year run of playing every game for the Orioles was unbelievable, considering his Hall of Fame career, which includes: .276 batting average, 431 home runs, 1,695 RBI, and 3,184 career hits, while transforming the position of short stop into what it has become today.

When Baltimore won a World Title in 1983, Ripken also became the first player in Major League history to play in every game possible that season (regular season, league championship series, and World Series). Will this record be broken? Not a chance; I think it’s safe to assume that this record will stand the test of time. The longest active streak of consecutive games played is held by the Dodgers’ Matt Kemp, who currently stands at 365 consecutive games played. To approach Cal’s record, Kemp would have to play in every game for the next 14 years. I mean, that could happen, but let’s just say that I’ll believe it when I see it.

Being labeled as being the most valuable in any aspect of life is a pretty special occurrence. It’s not every day that you or I get an honor like that, and the same goes for professional sports. There have been plenty of players in Major League Baseball that have extraordinary careers and get elected to the Hall of Fame, yet either fail to win an MVP award or possibly just win one. When a player has the honor given to him more than once, then we have a special athlete on our hands.

There have only been 29 players in Major League history that have won multiple league MVP awards, with only 10 of those 29 winning the award three or more times. Barry Bonds is in a club by himself since he won the NL MVP award an astonishing seven times. The three-time winners include: Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, and Mike Schmidt.

Even though I’m from the school of thought that Barry Bonds took performance enhancing drugs during the later part of his career, being named the best player in your respective league for 31% of your entire career is pretty amazing, especially since the last four times he won the award, he did so consecutively.

I can only imagine what it would be like if Bonds accomplished all that he did in his career without using performance enhancing drugs. He is the all-time and single-season home run leader, with 762 and 73 home runs, respectively. He finished with a .298 career average, 1,996 RBI, 514 stolen bases, 2,935 hits, 2,227 runs scored, and 2,558 walks (another record). Along with his seven MVP awards, he holds 12 silver slugger awards, eight gold gloves, and was selected to the All-Star game 14 times.

If I look at these statistics without knowing the name of the player and I was asked whether this player is a Hall of Famer, I would say yes without a hesitation. However, with the PED cloud following him for the rest of his days on this Earth, I’m quite positive that he won’t even come close to getting the necessary 75% vote needed to be inducted into the Hall- and I don’t want him in there.

Being in the Hall of Fame is an honor and those who cheated to get ahead of their competition (McGuire, Sosa, and Clemens also come to mind) don’t deserve to be honored with the best players in the history of the game. It’s too bad because before Bonds started putting up these ridiculous power numbers, I would have considered him a Hall of Famer anyways. Do you think he should be inducted in Cooperstown?

The last question I ask every week is a simple one: can this record be broken? I actually think there is a small chance. I don’t think A-Rod will be winning anymore of these as he’s entering his late-30s and is already showing signs of slowing down. However, Albert Pujols has the opportunity to challenge this record because he’s such an amazing player that he is somehow involved in MVP discussions on a year-in-year-out basis. Who do you think has a chance to challenge this record?