Last night Jose Altuve got his 980th career hit. He is on pace to finish his 6th MLB season with 1,059 career hits. I did some research with the help of baseball-reference.com to compile every 3000 hit club member's stats through each of their first 6 seasons. Now some players, including Altuve, didn't play an entire season when they first entered the MLB and in the late 1800's/early 1900's seasons didn't have as many games, so I took into account how many games and ABs each player had. Below are the numbers, filtered by hits: Ichiro Suzuki - 1354 hits, 957 games, 4096 ABs, .331 BA Paul Waner - 1237 hits, 897 games, 3505 ABs, .353 BA Wade Boggs - 1178 hits, 872 games, 3329 ABs, .354 BA Hank Aaron - 1137 hits, 886 games, 3524 ABs, .323 BA Pete Rose - 1109 hits, 908 games, 3674 ABs, .302 BA Honus Wagner - 1024 hits, 772 games, 3015 ABs, .340 BA Carl Yastrzemski - 1012 hits, 903 games, 3454 ABs, .293 BA Derek Jeter - 1008 hits, 786 games, 3130 ABs, .322 BA Eddie Murray - 997 hits, 888 games, 3376 ABs, .295 BA Stan Musial - 995 hits, 760 games, 2910 ABs, .342 BA Tony Gwynn - 988 hits, 769 games, 2953 ABs, .335 BA [*]Jose Altuve - 980 hits, 774 games, 3138 ABs, .312 BA Ty Cobb - 959 hits, 735 games, 2773 ABs, .346 BA Nap Lajoie - 953 hits, 623 games, 2635 ABs, .362 BA Cal Ripken - 927 hits, 830 games, 3210 ABs, .289 BA Willie Mays - 903 hits, 762 games, 2899 ABs, .311 BA Paul Molitor - 899 hits, 752 games, 3080 ABs, .292 BA Al Kaline - 880 hits, 768 games, 2857 ABs, .308 BA Robin Yount - 871 hits, 845 games, 3224 ABs, .270 BA George Brett - 870 hits, 731 games, 2850 ABs, .305 BA Roberto Clemente - 861 hits, 771 games, 2989 ABs, .288 BA Ricky Henderson - 850 hits, 791 games, 2916 ABs, .291 BA Rod Carew - 845 hits, 727 games, 2736 ABs, .309 BA Lou Brock - 821 hits, 741 games, 2900 ABs, .283 BA Rafael Palmeiro - 805 hits, 727 games, 2662 ABs, .302 BA Craig Biggio - 799 hits, 800 games, 2890 ABs, .276 BA Dave Winfield - 796 hits, 796 games, 2842 ABs, .280 BA Alex Rodriguez - 791 hits, 642 games, 2572 ABs, .308 BA Tris Speaker - 769 hits, 616 games, 2297 ABs, .335 BA Eddie Collins - 667 hits, 560 games, 2013 ABs, .331 BA Cap Anson - 533 hits, 313 games, 1486 ABs, .359 BA So as you can see, Altuve is already 12th in hits, and if he finishes 2016 with 1,059 hits, he would be 6th on the list. He is 14th in games played, 10th in ABs, 14th in BA, and 12th in Hits per game. Some other interesting thoughts regarding the rest of the players: Ichiro, who will officially join the 3000 club soon, started his career in his prime with insane numbers Cap Anson is 1st in Hits per game and 2nd in BA, yet he had by far the fewest games and hits of anyone Craig Biggio is the only player to have less hits than games played through 6 seasons Wade Boggs had a fantastic starts to his career, but couldn't maintain the pace and ended up with just 3,010 hits If Altuve finishes season 6 with 1,059 hits and plays 18 seasons at the same pace he would be 38 years old and have 3,177 total hits. Just some crazy numbers to see what Altuve is doing consistently at a young age. What are your thoughts on all these numbers? How many hits will Altuve end up with?
Ichiro defies these stats because his first six seasons in the MLB were during his age 27-32 years. Essentially, his prime. A proper comparison should be Altuve's next six seasons against Ichiro's first six. Either way, he's a beast.
I think 3,000 is in his future, provided relatively good health. I don't expect power numbers to be like they are this year many more times but his hand/eye co-ordination is fantastic and despite his diminutive size looks pretty well built as an athlete. What I would say though, is that he's what...26/27 years old? As awesome as he's been the last 2-3 years I would think his prime is just beginning. I still think he has room to grow into a superstar, not just a free-swinging hit machine. Not to mention he is a pretty good fielder....we could be watching greatness happen for the next few years. Building off of him, Correa, Springer should be easy. Should be.
Altuve is badass. That said, one more telling stat I'd like to see is how many other players had at least 1000 hits in their first 6 seasons and failed to reach 3000? I think it will be hard for Altuve to keep playing at his current level through age 38. He takes good care of himself and playing 2B is probably better than SS, 3B, C, or CF, but I still think the odds are stacked against him reaching 3000. Either way I think he will be remembered as one of if not the greatest contact hitter of this decade (2010-2020).
Only 2 guys ahead of Altuve never won a batting titles... and everyone else won 2, minimum. Hope Jose wins his second this year and continues being great.
45 had 1,000 hits in first 6 seasons. 8 have made 3,000. So, 37 guys had 1,000 hits in first 6 season, but failed to make it to 3,000.
Miggy is one of those players and will get there. Of those 45, only 15 were as young as Altuve (one being Miggy).
A while back I spent some days looking up old baseball players. People like Paul Waner, Tris Speaker and Nap Lajoie are criminally underrated when talking about the all-time greats. I don't care the era they played, they were unbelievable. Speaker is arguably the greatest defensive center fielder of all-time. 5th in hits, 6th in BA, all-time leader in doubles. Nap has the all-time AL batting average at .426 over a season Waner doesn't have any all-time records, I just liked what i've read on the guy.
Honus Wagner comes to mind with those guys. Known as the game's first star player IIRC. He entered the league 8 years before Cobb. Wagner is 8th in career hits. Rogers Hornsby was a certified beast, but ended with 2930 hits. This guy may've been the first real power hitter.
Not only this, but also perhaps the most unlikely all time great. The dude just grinds for everything.
Judging by the way the Blue Jays we're seeing the ball I would say this guy can be a number one or two guy. Change up to lefties is filthy and he maintains same arm slot on all 4 of his pitches. He's a juiced up Colin MCHugh. Edit: wrong thread.
Career slash line of: .344/.482/.634/1.116 And he missed 3 seasons (age 24-26) to fight in WW II. And he missed the better parts of his age 33-34 seasons fighting in the Korean war. All things remaining equal (i.e. he would have played a normal number of games in those 5 seasons) he would have easily had 3300+ hits, 600+ home runs and 2000+ RBIs. Of course, Babe Ruth could also be considered. He was just such a dominant pitcher, it cost him some offensive stats as well.
This is the problem when trying to project a 26 year old's career out to 38 years old or whatever. The whole "at this pace" stuff is irrelevant because there is a near-zero chance of maintaining his current pace. He may get better or he may get worse, but the odds of him being the same player he is now 5 or 10 years from is virtually nil.
You should read the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. It's a beast of a book, but in spurts it's great reading. He gives out all kinds of love for Craig Biggio, or at least he did when I read his latest version in 2004. But yeah the gist of any good all-time baseball discussion is, how can you compare the numbers of people of the past to today? The stats of yore dwarf a lot of what we've seen in our lifetimes, but a lot of caveats need to be made: 1. Prior to 1893, the pitching mound wasn't even in existence. The distance to home plate wasn't fixed at 60ft 6 inches until this time. 2. Prior to the turn of the 20th century, pitchers didn't even pitch that hard. Guys like Old Hoss Radbourn could start half the games of their team's season, and record complete games in most of them. 3. After 1968 (and mostly because of Bob Gibson), the pitching mound was reduced in height from 15 inches to 10 inches. 4. Before the 1950's, BLACK PEOPLE COULDN'T PLAY IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES. Kind of a big one there. 5. And finally, like all other sports, before the 1970's there really wasn't much in the way of sports science and integrated training regimens. People just did their own things, some able to succeed exclusively by virtue of genetics (and hot dogs in the case of Babe Ruth). I'm sure there are a bunch of other little changes to the game that were made that allowed for crazy pitching eras like the 1910's and crazy hitting eras like the 1930's that made a mockery of all other eras, the steroid era included. But when it comes time to talk about all-time greats, it's up to you how much you want to account for the factors above. If you account for all of them like I do, then it's entirely possible to argue that the greatest hitter of all time is Barry Bonds (pre-roids version since we know pretty much when he started juicing, around 1998 or so when watching what mediocre human beings like McGwire and Sosa could do while on it), and that the greatest pitcher of all time is one among Clemens (again, pre-roids), Maddux, or Tom Seaver. And the undisputed greatest pitching season of all time would belong to Pedro Martinez--who in the absolute peak of the Steroids Era, in a hitter's park in Fenway--put up a 1.74 ERA/0.74 WHIP/284 K/291 ERA+ season in 2000. If you don't account for 3-5 as listed above, then you could be like Bill James and argue that the best hitter of all time is Babe Ruth, and the best pitcher Walter Johnson. That seems to sit well with most baseball purists.
