Top 10 MLB Statistics That Just Can’t Be Right

There are some recognizable MLB statistics and records that are hard to believe. Many think Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak may never be broken. Pete Rose came the closest to breaking the record but still only hit safely in 44 straight games.

Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s record of consecutive games played. Ripken played in 2,632 straight games, the equivalent of over 16 MLB seasons. As of April of this season, the Braves Matt Olson has the longest current playing streak at 798 games. To even come close to Ripken’s record, Olson would have to play another 11-plus seasons. He’s currently 32 years old.

The hit streak and the consecutive games played streaks are two records that may never be broken. They aren’t the only ones. Here’s a look at some very unique baseball statistics and records that almost seem impossible.

2 Grand Slams in the Same Inning

Fernando Tatis, the father of current Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr., pulled off a feat in 1999 that we may never see again. In a typical MLB season, we may see around 100 total grand slams. In 2000, the Oakland A’s set a single-season team record with 14 grand slams.

In the entire history of Major League Baseball, there have been approximately 4 million innings pitched. Only once has a player ever hit two grand slams in the same inning. Tatis hit two off of Chan Ho Park in April of the 1999 season. The odds of it happening again are somewhere around 1 in 130 million.

Back-to-Back No-No’s

The no-hitter is rarer than the grand slam. In a typical MLB season, we may see two to three no-hitters. In the 2026 MLB season, we just recently saw our first no-hitter, a combined effort by Houston pitchers as they did not allow a single hit by the Texas Rangers in a 9-0 Astros victory.

Has a pitcher ever thrown a no-hitter and then come back and thrown another one in his next start? Well, yes, that has happened. It was a long time ago, back in 1938. A Cincinnati Reds pitcher named Johnny Vander Meer pitched a no-hitter against the Boston Bees and four days later he threw another against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the first night game ever played at Ebbets Field.

Best Hitter Ever?

The game of baseball is different from 10 to 20 years ago. Hitters are encouraged to hit for power and, as a result, players strike out a lot more these days. Back in the 1980s and all the way through the 1990s, Tony Gwynn proved that he may have been the best hitter to play the game.

Gwynn played his entire 20-year MLB career with the San Diego Padres. In those 20 seasons, he struck out 434 times. That’s an average of about 22 per season. Otto Lopez, who currently leads MLB in batting average, has already whiffed 36 times in just 56 games this season.

A Baseball Hall of Fame member, Gwynn had 10,232 plate appearances in his MLB career. He played in 2,440 games. His 434 strikeouts means he struck out just 0.04 percent of the time. Gwynn could have played another two-plus seasons and never recorded another hit and he still would have a batting average above .300.

Open .247

If Khris Davis is remembered for anything, it shouldn’t be the odd spelling of his first name. It should be this: Davis hit exactly .247 four seasons in a row. From 2015 to 2018, Davis wound up with the exact same batting average every season.

It was during those years that Davis came into his own as a power hitter. He hit 42 homers in 2016, 43 in 2017, and then led all of MLB with 48 in 2018. Those were the only three seasons that Davis ever hit more than 27 homers. He ended his career with a batting average of .242.

Best Pitcher Ever?

When a pitcher gets behind in the count, specifically, 3-0, things don’t usually turn out very well. What if a pitcher could limit the number of times he went 3-0 on a batter? Well, one Hall of Fame member did exactly that. He did it so well that it’s almost hard to believe.

Former Braves ace and four-time Cy Young winner Greg Maddux faced 20,421 batters in his 23-year MLB career. Of those hitters, only 310 ever saw a ball-strike count of 3-0. Of those 310, 177 of those 3-0 counts were because of an intentional walk. 

That means that less than 1 percent of all the hitters Maddux faced in his career ever saw a 3-0 count. Don’t expect that to happen again anytime soon. By the way, Maddux won 355 career games, had 3,317 strikeouts, and finished his career with a 3.16 ERA.

Immaculate … Twice!

The Immaculate inning is extremely rare. If you’re not familiar, the feat is achieved when a pitcher strikes out the side on nine pitches. It’s been done just 120 times in the history of Major League Baseball.

It has happened once this season. Michael Soroka of the Arizona Diamondbacks struck out Javier Baez, Kerry Carpenter, and Gleyber Torres on nine straight pitches on March 30 in a game against the Detroit Tigers. 

In 2022, the Houston Astros actually completed the Immaculate Inning twice in the same game! Starting pitcher Luis Garcia struck out three Texas Rangers in the second inning prior to Houston reliever Phil Maton striking out the side in the seventh. This is the only time this has happened in a MLB game.

373 vs. 376

In 2004, Barry Bonds reached base safely 376 times, but he only had 373 at-bats. To understand this feat, one must understand the difference between a plate appearance and an at-bat.

A plate appearance is recorded every time a batter steps into the batter’s box to face an opposing pitcher. An at-bat is a subset of plate appearances. At-bats exclude things like a batter being hit by a pitch or a batter who hits a sacrifice fly. We don’t punish the batter for something that directly affects his batting average.

That season, there was a huge discrepancy in Bonds’ at-bats versus his plate appearances. That’s because Bonds walked 232 times, 120 of which were intentional. Bonds had 617 plate appearances but just 373 at-bats. 

More Grand Slams

Well, kind of. Don Mattingly, who has taken over as the interim manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, was an outstanding hitter in his day. He finished his career with over 2,100 hits and a batting average of .307.

Mattingly was not a true power hitter, though he did finish with 222 career home runs. He hit 6 grand slams in his career. From 1982 to 1986, Mattingly recorded zero grand slams. From 1988 to the end of his career in 1995, Mattingly also recorded zero grand slams.

All six of Mattingly’s career grand slams came during the 1987 season. It just so happens that Mattingly’s feat is the MLB all-time record for grand slams in a single season.

How to Lead Both Leagues in Shutouts

The complete game shutout is almost becoming extinct in modern baseball. In 2008, CC Sabathia started the season pitching for Cleveland. He recorded two complete games, both of which were shutouts. 

Before the trade deadline, he was shipped to Milwaukee where he went 11-2 with a 1.65 ERA. Sabathia threw three more complete games for the Brewers. All three of those were shutouts. In the end, Sabathia ended up leading both the American League and the National League in shutouts.

How Can That Be?

If you took every single player that has ever played in a MLB game and gave them a ticket to attend a game at MLB’s smallest capacity stadium (Progressive Field in Cleveland), you would think the stadium would be full (and Sutter Health Park is out because it’s a minor league stadium).

Progressive Field seats 34,820. If every single MLB player ever filed in and took a seat, the Guardians home field would be a two-thirds full. Only a little over 22,600 have ever suited up and played in a MLB game. Of those, only 3 percent are in the Hall of Fame.