All-Time Records

No one in the AL or NL has hit .400 since Ted Williams in 1941 — 85 seasons and counting. Every serious flirtation with .400 after June is a national story.

Batting title requires 3.1 plate appearances per team game (502 over a full season).

The ladder every slugger climbs: 50 makes a season famous, 60 touches Ruth and Maris, 62 is the 'clean era' AL mark (Judge, 2022), and 73 is Bonds' summit no one has approached since 2001.

200 hits defines an elite contact season; 262 is Ichiro's 2004 record, which broke a mark that had stood for 84 years. Nobody has reached 240 since.

Hack Wilson's 191 RBI in 1930 may be the safest record in baseball — no one has driven in 170 since the 1930s. But 130+ still headlines an MVP case.

Earl Webb's 67 doubles in 1931 has survived nearly a century. 50 doubles is a star season; 60 has happened only three times since World War II.

The most extinct stat in baseball: Chief Wilson's 36 triples in 1912 is untouchable in the modern game, where leading the league takes about a dozen. Anyone at 15+ is doing something genuinely rare.

Rickey Henderson's 130 steals in 1982 defines a lost style of baseball. Since the bigger-bases era began in 2023, 70+ steals is back in play for the first time in decades.

Ruth crossed the plate 177 times in 1921. In the modern game 120 runs wins most league titles, and 130+ signals a historic offensive engine.

Total bases is the purest measure of a complete offensive season. Ruth's 457 in 1921 has never been seriously threatened — 400 has happened just twice since 1950.

300 strikeouts is the modern pitching unicorn — it has happened only a handful of times this century. Nolan Ryan's 383 in 1973 is the live-ball record.

ERA/rate titles require 1 inning pitched per team game.

Francisco Rodriguez's 62 saves in 2008 required both dominance and a season's worth of perfect opportunities. 50 saves remains the closer's benchmark.

Pitcher wins are scarcer than ever in the bullpen era: 20 wins now leads baseball most seasons, which makes any run at 25+ a throwback story.

116 wins — the 1906 Cubs and 2001 Mariners — is the team-season summit. The 2026 pace question: can anyone join the four teams ever to top 110?

Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA in 1968 was so dominant MLB lowered the mound the next season. In the modern game, a sub-2.00 ERA over a full year is a generational season.

ERA/rate titles require 1 inning pitched per team game.

Pedro Martinez's 0.74 WHIP in 2000 — fewer than three baserunners per four innings, in the loudest offensive era ever — may be the best rate season a pitcher has had.