A balk in baseball is an illegal motion by a pitcher with runners on base. There are 13 official balk rules in the MLB rulebook (Rule 6.02a), and any one of them — caught by an umpire — automatically advances every runner one base. The most common balk is failing to come to a complete … Read more
The greatest closer of all time is Mariano Rivera — a debate so settled that he became the first unanimous Hall of Fame selection in baseball history (425 of 425 votes in 2019). Rivera retired in 2013 with 652 career saves, the all-time record. Behind Rivera, the top closers ever include Trevor Hoffman (601 saves, … Read more
The fastest MLB player ever measured by Statcast is Tim Locastro, who recorded a 30.8 feet-per-second sprint speed in 2019 — the highest single-season average since Statcast began tracking in 2015. The current active sprint speed leader is Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals at 30.5 ft/sec. The all-time stolen base leader is … Read more
The most home runs ever hit in a single MLB season is 73 by Barry Bonds in 2001 — the official record set during baseball’s PED era. The “clean” home run record is held by Aaron Judge, who hit 62 home runs in 2022 to break Roger Maris’s American League record of 61 set in … Read more
The greatest pitcher of all time is Cy Young — a fact so settled that baseball named its annual best-pitcher award after him. Young won 511 games between 1890 and 1911, completed 749 of his starts, and threw 7,356 career innings. All three are records that will never be broken. Behind Young, the all-time pitching … Read more
The greatest Yankee of all time is Babe Ruth — a debate so settled it barely qualifies as one. Ruth hit 659 home runs in pinstripes from 1920 to 1934, won seven World Series, and single-handedly transformed baseball from a singles-and-bunts game into the modern power era. Behind Ruth, the top five typically includes Lou … Read more
The shortest MLB player in history is Eddie Gaedel at 3 feet 7 inches — a 60-pound performer hired by St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck for a 1951 publicity stunt who walked on four straight pitches in his only career at-bat. The shortest active MLB players are Jose Altuve and Tony Kemp, both 5’6″. … Read more
The MLB Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System lets pitchers, catchers, and batters challenge ball and strike calls by tapping their helmet immediately after a pitch. Each team gets two challenges per game and keeps successful ones. Introduced league-wide in the 2026 season, ABS uses 12 Hawk-Eye cameras and T-Mobile’s 5G network to review pitches against … Read more
The MLB pitch clock is a 15- or 18-second timer that limits how long pitchers can take between pitches, plus a 30-second timer between batters. It was introduced in the 2023 MLB season after years of minor league testing and immediately cut the average game time by 28 minutes — from 3:04 in 2022 down … Read more
The odds of a high school baseball player ever appearing on an MLB roster are approximately 1 in 1,135 — about 0.09 percent. That’s the honest, math-based reality, even before you factor in how brief most MLB careers actually are. Out of roughly 472,598 high school baseball players in the United States in 2024-25, only … Read more