Chasing Rose: Who'll Be the Next All-Time Hit King?

Only two players in the history of the game have ever reached the 4,000 career-hit milestone: Ty Cobb (4,189) and Pete Rose (4,256). It's hard enough to get to the 3,000 plateau, which is evidenced by the fact that only 25 players have ever reached it in MLB history. In fact, Pete Rose's record is one of those that some people think will never be broken. Or will it?

Think for a minute how Rose accomplished it:


Pete Rose

• Played until age: 45
• Full MLB Seasons: 24
• Total Hits: 4,256
• Average Hits per full Season (henceforth, "HPS"): 177

So, not only did he hit 4,256; he hit an average of 177 every season for 24 full MLB seasons, playing until age 45. These days, most hall-of-fame-quality players are done by age 40, retiring somewhere around their 20th MLB season. Breaking this record means one not only has to get hits consistently: one has to do it for a loooooong time, longer than most players envision themselves playing (add to that the aggresiveness with which Rose played, and you will easily see Rose was an extraordinary player!).

So, who fits the bill? Who can put up the career-hits totals that Rose put up? Who can hit 177 hits every season for 24 seasons, or some other combination?

Just to see exactly what we're dealing with, let's take a look at Todd Helton, who has maintained a career .330 AVG throughout 10 full MLB seasons, getting an average of 183 HPS (higher than Rose).


Todd Helton

• Age as of today: 34
• Full MLB Seasons: 10
• Career Hits: 1,831
• Rose's career-hit total at his age: 2,547
• HPS: 183
• To pass Rose, will need to maintain that average until: 2021 (age 47 = 24th MLB season)
• Will he do it? -No. No one makes it to age 47 with consistent numbers.

This gives you an idea of how tough it is to get to 4,256 career hits!!! If he has a higher HPS than Rose, why won't he make it? Why would he still need to play until age 47 (with consistent numbers) to make it? The answer is that, whereas Rose was 22 years old during his first full season, Helton had to wait until age 24 to play full-time in the Majors. Although Helton's HPS is higher, it is not significantly higher (only 6 more hits per season than Rose). Over a 24-season span, 6 hits per season does not make a significant difference. So that means Helton, like Rose, would still have to play at least 24 total seasons in the majors to reach Rose but, having started at the relatively-late age of 24, he would be 47 or 48 by the time he got there. Breaking the record requires not only a high HPS, but also considerable longevity, consistency and health--meaning, you have to start early, and keep consistently strong numbers until you're quite old. So Helton is not likely to break the record. In fact, the difference between his current career hits (1,831) and Rose's at age 34 (2,547) gave it away. (However, I wouldn't be surprised if Helton got well into the 3,000 hit club and, therefore, ended up in the Hall. He's that good!)

So Helton won't make it, but, amazingly, there are at least 4 active players who have about as many career hits as did Rose at their respective ages. And if you're thinking Ichiro is one of them, you're wrong.

Why not Ichiro? Althought Ichiro has maintained in his 7 MLB seasons a mind-blowing average of 220 HPS (compared to Rose's 177), Ichiro made his MLB debut at the very-late age of 27. So it's the same problem that Helton is experiencing, except its more extreme:


Ichiro Suzuki

• Age as of today: 33
• Full MLB Seasons: 7
• Career Hits: 1,544
• Rose's career-hit total at his age: 2,337
• HPS: 220
• To pass Rose, will need to maintain that average until: 2021 (age 46 = 19th MLB season).
• Will he do it? -Probably not. Sounds impossible.

The 220 HPS actually takes into account only his current numbers--as if he ended the 2007 season today, with only 190 hits. (God forbid Ichiro hit fewer than 200 hits in a season!) He will most likely reach 230 hits or so this season, at the rate he's going. So his career hit total will be somewhere around 1,580 by October. This means his HPS is going to be somewhere around 225. But still, at 225 HPS, he still needs a total of 19 seasons to pass Rose--and this would keep him playing at least until age 46 (later if he spends time in the DL, or if he "slumps" below the 225 HPS).

In short, at age 33, he's only one-third of the way to the record. To get there he would have to do what he's done so far two more times. Ichiro may sometimes seem almost super-human, but this would be asking too much.

Now, what about the guys who could make it? The most obvious, perhaps, is:


Derek Jeter

• Age as of today: 33
• Full MLB Seasons: 13
• Career Hits: 2,316
• Rose's career-hit total at his age: 2,337
• HPS: 193
• To pass Rose, will need to maintain that average until: 2016 (age 42 = 22nd MLB season)
• Will he do it? -Yes, he is likely to stay healthy and consistent until age 42.

Currently, Jeter is only 20 hits below Rose at age 34, but he is likely to add 20+ hits to his carer totals before the end of the season, which means he, too, will pass Rose in hits at age 34. In other words, the only reason Jeter appears to be behind Rose is that I'm comparing Rose, at the end of the 1975 season, when he was 34, with Jeter, who has not yet finished this season, at age 34. If you let Jeter finish the season, then the comparison will be fair, and Jeter will end up passing Rose's career-hit totals at the age of 34.

Another way to look at it is the way ESPN put it. I heard on Baseball Tonight earlier this season that if you boil down their ages to the exact amount of days lived, Jeter, at his exact age (to the day), does have more hits than did Rose at the same exact age (to the day).

But here I'm treating both as just being "34 years old," without being precise as to the amount of days, etc., and I'm treating Jeter's current totals as representing 13 full seasons--in other words, as if his current seasons totals were final. This makes Jeter appear slightly behind, when in reality he is ahead of Rose in terms of career hits vs. age.

Anyway, the basic idea is that their numbers are comparable, and that Jeter is likely to break Rose's record, not only because Jeter actually has a higher hps, but because he also began his career earlier (at age 20) than Rose did (who began at age 22), so he has more time to get there. Whether or not Jeter can get there has been discussed elsewhere.

Who would be next in line, after Jeter? Perhaps surprisingly (though not really), his teammate:


Alex Rodriguez

• Age as of today: 32
• Full MLB Seasons: 12
• Career Hits: 2,213
• Rose's career-hit total at his age: 2,152
• HPS: 184
• To pass Rose, will need to maintain that average until: 2018 (age 43 = 23rd MLB season)
• Will he do it? -Yes; he's always been healthy and consistent; he can make it to 43.

A-Rod is 60+ hits ahead of Rose at his age! He also has a higher HPS and began his career earlier, finishing his first full season at age 20. A-Rod has always stayed healthy; that's why he's the only one to hit 35 homers and drive in 100 runs in 10 consecutive seasons. He's not Ripken--he has missed some games due to minor injuries--but he's never missed most of a season. The most he's missed was 32 games in '99--although he still managed to get 142 hits, 42 HR, and 111 RBI. Since then, he's never missed more than 14 games in a season.

Vladimir Guerrero

• Age as of today: 31
• Full MLB Seasons: 10
• Career Hits: 1941
• Rose's career-hit total at his age: 1922
• HPS: 194
• To pass Rose, will need to maintain that average until: 2020 (age 43 = 22nd MLB season)
• Will he do it? -He is likely to do it as long as he stays healthy.

Vlad is amazing, needless to say. Since his first full major league season he has never hit any lower than .302. His carreer average is .325. He seems to reach the 200-hit plateau every other season. (And all the while he usually hits 30+ HRs and 100+ RBI every season.) A simple way to look at him is this: at 31, when he is almost at the midpoint of his career, he is also at the midpoint in the long road towards the record, with almost 2,000 hits. It's a matter of continuing what he has been doing for a little more than twice as long as he's done it. He has been known to miss around 40 or 50 games due to injury; it all depends on his consistency and on his staying healthy.

Albert Pujols

• Age as of today: 27
• Full MLB Seasons: 7
• Career Hits: 1306
• Rose's career-hit total at his age: 1109
• HPS: 187
• To pass Rose, will need to maintain that average until: 2023 (age 43 = 23rd MLB season)
• Will he do it? -It is likely, although it is still too early to tell.

Albert is just out of this world. None of the other players has such a marked advantage over Rose at their age in terms of hits than Pujols. He is 200 hits ahead of Rose at age 27! He has either flirted with or reached the 200-hit mark every year of his career. He has never ended a season with a batting average lower than .314. He has a career average of .330. (And all the while he just made it to his seventh straight 30+ HR season.) He has never missed more than 19 games in a season (last season, when he hit 49 HRs!), so we know that he tends to stay healthy and that he's not prone to injury. But he's only 27, and he's less than one-third of the way to the record. It's too early to tell. Maybe in about or four years, when his career is roughly halfway through, we can make a better judgment. But it would sure be nice to see a power hitter of his magnitude break a record which, for the longest time, has been almost identified with an entirely different kind of player.

We don't know the future and we don't know if any of these players will end his career early due to injury. The important thing is that, even if most of these players don't end up breaking Rose's record, chances are that at least one will.

Ichiro: Half-Way to Hall of Fame Numbers

It's now becoming pretty obvious that Ichiro will do it again this season... for the seventh time.

200 hits, that is. He will soon become only the second player in the 20th century to have seven consecutive 200-hit seasons. The other was Wade Boggs, from 1983 to 1989. Willie Keeler has the record, with 8 consecutive 200-hit seasons. (Ichiro will have to wait until the later months of the 2009 season to take a shot at that one.)

Ichiro is surely an amazing player. He will make it into the Hall of Fame, no doubt. But what kind of career numbers will get him there is not as clear.

"Will Ichiro ever reach 3,000 career hits?" is a question that is often asked on ESPN. In most cases, this question is almost equivalent to asking whether he will enter the Hall of Fame. That is the normal way we judge whether a player is worthy of being inducted or not: his numbers: whether he hits 3,000 hits; whether he hits 500 homers; whether he steals 700 bases; whether, as a pitcher, he wins or saves 300 games, or records 3,000 strikeouts.

But this method doesn't work well with Ichiro. He is not your average player. He did not enter the majors through the ordinary route. He was not drafted like almost everyone else. He did not play in the minors like almost everyone else. He did not make his major league debut in his early twenties like almost everyone else... Therefore, predicting his career numbers, and particularly how many hits he will end his career with, is quite difficult. Ichiro is perhaps the most exciting and complex example of the problem of Japanese players and their induction into the American Hall of Fame.

Had Ichiro been the ordinary rookie in his early twenties, he would have easily ended up breaking Pete Rose's record of 4,256 career hits. You do the math: 200+ hits in 20+ seasons = 4000+ career hits. Make that 220 hits (Ichiro's current yearly average) in 25 seasons (Rose's career-span), you get the astronomical number of 5,500 career hits!!!

But Ichiro is never going to reach 5,000 hits. He will never brake Rose's record. In fact, he will probably never even reach 4,000 hits. (To reach 4,000 he would have to keep up his pace of 220 hits per season at least until he's 44.) He will never do any of this because he began playing in the Majors at age 27.

The question is whether he will enter the 3,000 hit club. So, will he or will he not? Ichiro is 33 years old this season (2007), which is his seventh in the majors. This year he reached the 1,500 career-hit plateau: halfway to 3,000. To reach the 3,000 hit club, he will have to repeat what he has done so far. Therefore, if he plays equally consistently for another seven years, he will reach the milestone at age 40. Therefore, 3,000 hits is a definite possibility for him. He normally stays healthy; he is probably one of the most consistent baseball players in history. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if he plays well into his forties.

Let's do the math. First, here are his current numbers (as of 8/24/07):

• G: 1,083
• AB: 4,627
• R: 765
• H: 1,542
• 2B: 173
• 3B: 56
• HR: 66
• RBI: 413
• TB: 2,025
• BB: 319
• SO: 437
• SB: 271
• CS: 60
• OBP: .379
• SLG: .438
• AVG: .333

This took him seven years. If we assume he produces the same numbers for another 7 years, we get a 40-year-old Ichiro who will be within, or at least close to, the following statistical plateaus after the 2014 season:

• G: 2,000
• AB: 9,000
• R: 1,500
• H: 3,000 (27th all-time; an automatic ticket to the Hall)
• 2B: 350
• 3B: 100
• HR: 130
• RBI: 800
• TB: 4,000
• BB: 600
• SO: 850
• SB: 550 (25th all-time)
• CS: 120
• OBP: .370
• SLG: .430
• AVG: .333 (tying Cap Anson, Paul Waner, and Eddie Collins for 18th all-time)

These numbers are very possible and they will definitely put them in the Hall (especially the 3,000 hits, although the stolen bases are impressive as well).

Now, just for fun, say he actually plays longer and equally well. More specifically, let's multiply his current numbers by a factor of 3! In other words, let's imagine he plays another 7 seasons after age 40 (yes, until age 47--Ryan, Franco, and many others have done it; why not Ichiro?), that is, until the 2021 season--thereby extending his career to 21 seasons, which is average for a Hall of Famer. Also, assume he keeps the same consistent numbers every season (particularly keeping the 220-hit-per-season rate) during those years as well. Let's see what happens, just for fun:

• G: 3,000 (passing Mays for 9th among all-time games played leaders)
• AB: 13,000 (passing Aaron for 2nd among all-time career at-bat leaders)
• R: 2,200! (passing Aaron for 4th among all-time career runs scored leaders)
• H: 4,500!!! (breaking Pete Rose's all-time record of 4,256 career hits leaders!!!)
• 2B: 525 (tying Ted Williams for 33rd among all-time career doubles leaders)
• 3B: 170 (passing Rogers Hornsby for 25th among all-time career triples leaders)
• HR: 200 (not bad for a skinny leadoff hitter!)
• RBI: 1,250 (very decent!)
• TB: 6,000 (passing Bonds for 4th among all-time career total bases leaders!!!)
• BB: 950
• SO: 1,300
• SB: 813! (passsing Tim Raines for 5th among all-time career stolen base leaders!!!)
• CS: 240 (giving him a superb stolen base-percentage of ca. 80%)
• OBP: .379
• SLG: .438
• AVG: .333 (tying Cap Anson, Paul Waner, and Eddie Collins for 18th among all-time career batting average leaders)

This is not just empty speculation. Although these numbers are not likely to happen, they still show what he would have done, had he played the average career-span of your average Hall of Famer. If he had come in like the rest of 'em, his career numbers would have ended up being astronomical!!!

Now, although his career numbers will probably end up a bit short of being astronomical, when he retires, do look for other possible, impressive credentials, such as:

• His having been the only player in history to hit 200 hits in his first n-teen seasons (he already holds the record with 6, and is obviously going to extend it to 7 this year).
• His having again broken the single-season hits record by hitting more than 262 in one season (he hit that many in 2004).
• His having again broken the all-time record consecutive steals without a caught-stealing (he already did it earlier this year by stealing 45 consecutive bases).
• His having broken Willie Keeler's record for most consecutive 200-hit seasons, which may happen by the end of 2009.
• His having broken Brooks Robinson's record of 16 consecutive Gold Glove awards.
• His having broken Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.
• His having become the first player since Ted Williams (in 1941) to hit .400.
• Finally, look for more of this, and this, and THIS!

These potential Ichiro records show that it's not his career numbers that we should look for: maybe it's his day-to-day prowess, his season-to-season stats, his consistency. And then there's the odd-yet-terribly-exciting, un-American way of playing the great American Pastime.