27 MLB records that will never be broken
. Will White. 1879. 680 Innings in a Season. 6. player. 61
In 1879, Will White pitched in 76 games for the Cincinnati Reds. He started 75 of them, completed them all, and racked up a record 680 innings pitched. White is one of 13 pitchers in big league history to record more than 600 innings in a season, and none of those occurred after 1890.
The record for innings in a season during the 20th Century was Ed Walsh in 1908, which ranks 105th in the record books. Jack Chesbro is the only other pitcher in the 20th Century to record more than 450 innings in a single season, when he amassed 454.2 in 1904. And it’s been 42 years since Wilbur Wood put together a marathon-like 376.2 frames in 1973. Walter Johnson, Mickey Lolich and Bob Feller are the only other pitchers to throw 369 innings or more in the last 100 years.
In today’s game of five-man pitching staffs, pitch counts often capped around 100 pitches per start, and rampant Tommy John surgery, 200 innings is a hefty workload. Thirty-three pitchers hit the 200-inning mark in 2014, led by David Price’s 248.1. The last pitcher to throw more than 250 innings was Justin Verlander in 2011, and no one has hit even the 275-inning mark since Dave Stewart in 1988.
It’s safe to say that as long as humans play baseball (and not robots, like in The Jetsons), White’s record will never, ever be broken.
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