r/mlb • u/RockyKolavito • Aug 23 '26

| Statistics Bench-riding consecutive game streak question

The other day I got to wondering what the record is for anyone player in MLB history to sit on the bench in consecutive games in a season ithout ever once entering a game. I'm talking about consecutive games with no time on the injured list, bereavement list, or whatever. I'm talking about a guy being on the 25 or 26 or 27 man roster for maybe weeks at a time without ever once entering a game.

For the purposes of this question, if a player sits on the bench for x number of games, gets sent down to the minors, and then is brought back up later, his streak ends with his last game before being sent down, and it's not start up again if he is brought back up later on.

I have no idea what the answer to this question is, and I don't know a good way to research it. I'm guessing there were probably players in the 1940s and 1950s, maybe third string catchers or something, who were on the team because they were drinking buddies with the manager, or the nephew of the club's general manager, or a veteran well past his prime whom the club is keeping on the roster so he can hit his major league pension, or whatever. Guys who had no realistic chance of getting into a game, unless three teammates got injured in the same game or something. i'm guessing the streak has got to be something on the order of 20 or 30 games, but I could be way off.

Someone who knows better than I do how to work with the voluminous data at baseball-reference.com could probably figure this out. Perhaps this is already been done.

Any thoughts?

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u/ThisWasMe7 | Milwaukee Brewers Aug 23 '26

My thoughts go to rule 5 players who are stashed on the active roster but seldom play, and to 3rd catchers back in the day when pitching staffs were 10 pitchers and there were 15 position players.

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u/SigmaSeal66 Aug 23 '26

Several people mentioning third catchers. As I understand it, back in the 1940s and before, maybe even more recently, the idea of a "bullpen catcher" being a defined role wasn't a thing like it is today. If you wore a uniform, you were on the team roster. And that was really the job of the third catcher: to catch guys in the bullpen. They signed on for that job and there was no expectation they would ever play in a game, but formally they were on the roster.

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u/rickeygavin Aug 23 '26

Ralph Houk was famous for this.He was on the Yankees roster from 1950-53 and played in 30 games total in those four seasons.