The Tuesday Discussion: Unbreakable Records
- SSTN Admin
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
February 10, 2026
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Yesterday Cary Green published an article listing some of baseball's unbreakable records.
We then asked our writers which records they see as unbreakable.
Here are their replies...
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Derek McAdam - Cy Young’s 511 career wins are never going to be touched. With pitchers not going as deep into games and rarely reaching the 20 win mark annually, this is a record that I would be surprised if anyone even came within 200 wins of over the course of their career.
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Paul Semendinger - I agree with Derek and will add Walter Johnson's 110 shutouts. The highest modern day pitchers were Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver with 61. Of current players, the leader is Justin Verlander with 9. Nine. Amazing.
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Tim Kabel - I think it would be easier to say which record or records would be broken than to say, which ones won’t be broken. I think all of those records are safe with one exception. I think the record of 62 home runs set by Aaron Judge will be broken. I think it will be broken this season and I think it will be broken by Aaron Judge.
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Cary Greene - Permit me to also vote for two more, besides Hack Wilson's 96-year-old single season RBI record. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe a few more of the records we're looking at today will never be broken, but I feel there is a chance for each record to one day fall, save for the three I've now voted for.
54 HR/59 Steals, Single Season -- Shohei Ohtani. I just don't see any player ever again being able to do what Ohtani did during the 2024 season. Think about how great Mickey Mantle was, and how blazingly fast he was. The Mick "only" hit more than 50 home runs twice and the highest total of steals he recorded was in 1960, when he had 14.
383 Strikeouts, Single Season, Modern Era -- Nolan Ryan. Pitchers simply don't throw enough innings in todays game, so nobody will ever even sniff a chance to break this record ever again. The Ryan Express is the forever leader in K's for a single season, so buy a ticket and hop on board!
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Andy Singer - This is quite a list! I think the game boasts as much talent as we've ever seen right now, so feats of athleticism will be possible. I think power statistics, speed statistics, and strikeout statistics are within reach. Due to the quality of pitching and struggles for durability caused by the modern game, I honestly don't think Ichiro's 262 single-season hits record will ever be broken. Luis Arraez has had the best hit tool in the modern game, but he's barely eclipsed 200 hits twice. I don't think anyone will reach Ichiro in a single season.
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Ethan Semendinger - Rickey Henderson's stolen bases record. Rickey had 1, 406 steals. No other player ever reached 1,000.
Starling Marte is 36 years old. He has 361 steals. He is the active leader.
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Mike Whiteman - I actually can see a world in which all of these records could be broken should the exactly right player come along at the exactly right time. Baseball works that way sometimes.
Of these listed, the closest I see to unbreakable is Ryan's 383 strikeouts. Thinking about it a bit, the record for strikeouts per nine innings over a full season is Gerrit Cole's 13.8 for the Astros in 2019. That's about a strikeout and a half per inning, and it would need to be stretched over just a bit more than 250 innings to get to 384 K's. Barring an epiphany in the development/usage of pitchers, I'm not seeing starters taking on that level of workload any time soon, if ever.
