3000 hits club

[bravesfanforlife88]

With Ichiro reaching a milestone today with 4,256 hits combined between Japan and MLB, I thought it would be cool to look at the list of active MLB players with the most hits and to see who might be the next members of the 3k hit club. Based off of the list from Baseball-reference, there's very few.



Rank Player (yrs, age) Hits Bats
1. Alex Rodriguez (22, 40) 3098 R *
2. Ichiro Suzuki (16, 42) 2977 L
3. Adrian Beltre (19, 37) 2828 R
4. Albert Pujols (16, 36) 2722 R
5. Carlos Beltran (19, 39) 2516 B
6. Jimmy Rollins (17, 37) 2455 B
7. Miguel Cabrera (14, 33) 2406 R
8. David Ortiz (20, 40) 2375 L
9. Robinson Cano (12, 33) 2093 L
10. A.J. Pierzynski (19, 39) 2015 L
11. Matt Holliday (13, 36) 1957 R
12. Carl Crawford (15, 34) 1931 L
13. Jose Reyes (13, 33) 1904 B
14. Adrian Gonzalez (13, 34) 1853 L
15. Victor Martinez (14, 37) 1848 B
16. Mark Teixeira (14, 36) 1813 B
17. Nick Markakis (11, 32) 1784 L
18. David Wright (13, 33) 1777 R
19. Joe Mauer (13, 33) 1763 L
20. Brandon Phillips (15, 35) 1761 R
21. Chase Utley (14, 37) 1705 L
22. Jhonny Peralta (14, 34) 1684 R
23. Prince Fielder (12, 32) 1623 L
24. Ian Kinsler (11, 34) 1599 R
25. Hanley Ramirez (12, 32) 1565 R
26. Dustin Pedroia (11, 32) 1562 R
27. Juan Uribe (16, 37) 1553 R
28. Justin Morneau (13, 35) 1550 L
29. Marlon Byrd (15, 38) 1534 R
30. Coco Crisp (15, 36) 1514 B
31. Ryan Braun (10, 32) 1504 R
32. Melky Cabrera (12, 31) 1501 B
33. Yadier Molina (13, 33) 1488 R
34. Curtis Granderson (13, 35) 1486 L
35. Ryan Zimmerman (12, 31) 1461 R
36. Hunter Pence (10, 33) 1460 R
37. Aaron Hill (12, 34) 1442 R
38. Billy Butler (10, 30) 1434 R
Ryan Howard (13, 36) 1434 L
40. Omar Infante (15, 34) 1427 R
41. Matt Kemp (11, 31) 1412 R
42. Howie Kendrick (11, 32) 1380 R
43. Adam Jones (11, 30) 1371 R
44. Andre Ethier (10, 34) 1354 L
45. James Loney (11, 32) 1347 L
46. Edwin Encarnacion (12, 33) 1344 R
47. J.J. Hardy (12, 33) 1343 R
48. Nick Swisher (12, 35) 1338 B
49. Jeff Francoeur (12, 32) 1334 R
50. Jayson Werth (14, 37) 1331 R
Rank Player (yrs, age) Hits Bats
51. Brian McCann (12, 32) 1330 L
Alexei Ramirez (9, 34) 1330 R
53. Yunel Escobar (10, 33) 1323 R
54. Martin Prado (11, 32) 1300 R
55. Joey Votto (10, 32) 1278 L
56. Shane Victorino (12, 35) 1274 R
57. Jose Bautista (13, 35) 1264 R
58. Erick Aybar (11, 32) 1252 B
59. Troy Tulowitzki (11, 31) 1238 R
60. Justin Upton (10, 28) 1228 R
61. Ben Zobrist (11, 35) 1212 B
62. Andrew McCutchen (8, 29) 1210 R
63. Evan Longoria (9, 30) 1206 R
64. Melvin Upton (12, 31) 1198 R
65. Jacoby Ellsbury (10, 32) 1196 L
66. Michael Bourn (11, 33) 1192 L
67. Nelson Cruz (12, 35) 1189 R
68. Russell Martin (11, 33) 1178 R
69. Elvis Andrus (8, 27) 1177 R
70. Alex Gordon (10, 32) 1170 L
71. Asdrubal Cabrera (10, 30) 1167 B
Shin-Soo Choo (12, 33) 1167 L
73. Denard Span (9, 32) 1161 L
74. Josh Hamilton (9, 35) 1134 L
75. Chase Headley (10, 32) 1119 B
76. Adam Lind (11, 32) 1109 L
77. Kelly Johnson (11, 34) 1095 L
78. Jay Bruce (9, 29) 1078 L
79. Stephen Drew (11, 33) 1062 L
80. Pablo Sandoval (9, 29) 1061 B
81. Daniel Murphy (8, 31) 1054 L
82. Starlin Castro (7, 26) 1053 R
Carlos Gonzalez (9, 30) 1053 L
84. Angel Pagan (11, 34) 1040 B
Rickie Weeks (13, 33) 1040 R
86. Mark Reynolds (10, 32) 1017 R
87. Kurt Suzuki (10, 32) 1013 R
88. Alcides Escobar (9, 29) 1006 R
Chris Young (11, 32) 1006 R
90. Ian Desmond (8, 30) 996 R
91. Gerardo Parra (8, 29) 984 L
92. Austin Jackson (7, 29) 971 R
93. Mike Napoli (11, 34) 964 R
94. David Murphy (10, 34) 950 L
95. Dexter Fowler (9, 30) 943 B
96. Carlos Gomez (10, 30) 938 R
97. Clint Barmes (13, 37) 932 R
98. Rajai Davis (11, 35) 921 R
99. Jose Altuve (6, 26) 919 R
100. Michael Brantley (8, 29) 918 L

[DirkPiggler]

Why isn't AJ bolded? He's got another five or six years worth of starting in him. Especially if Fredi gets hired somewhere.

[The Chosen One]

Frenchy baby!

[msstate7]

I didn't realize beltre was so close

[thewupk]

I didn't realize beltre was so close

super underrated career. if he didn't spend 5 years in Seattle his career numbers would be monstrous.

[Carp]

LOTS of former Braves on this list. Several of them home grown.

[bravos4evr]

hits is the most overrated record in baseball. It tells us nothing about a player other than "they played a long time" Pete Rose? Hit King? don't make me laugh! when you need 3000 more plate appearances to beat Cobb, I'm not impressed....

and the media trying to wedge Ichiro's japanese stats into MLB is effing retarded. They don't mean anything. gonna count Cobb and Rose's minor league stats too?

[cajunrevenge]

If we are going to Include Ichiro's hits in Japan then shouldn't we also count Rose's minor league hits?

[Knucksie]

Damn. Swisher's not going to make it.

[weso1]

super underrated career. if he didn't spend 5 years in Seattle his career numbers would be monstrous.

It was a weird career.

[praeceps93]

hits is the most overrated record in baseball. It tells us nothing about a player other than "they played a long time" Pete Rose? Hit King? don't make me laugh! when you need 3000 more plate appearances to beat Cobb, I'm not impressed....

and the media trying to wedge Ichiro's japanese stats into MLB is effing retarded. They don't mean anything. gonna count Cobb and Rose's minor league stats too?

I think it's really how you personally define "hit king", honestly. I choose to think of Ichiro as the hit king because I think Pete Rose committed the absolute worst action any professional athlete can possibly commit, and I won't willingly think of him in a positive capacity if another avenue is available to me. I completely acknowledge that yes, he has the most MLB hits of any player in history. We can debate endlessly where the quality of Japanese baseball falls, where we could draw the line to acknowledge a "hit king", whether the shortened Japanese seasons make up for the difference in quality between MLB and NPB players, how time has affected the significance of reaching these numbers as overall baseball quality improves, who Ichiro would have been had he been in the MLB from the start. That debate, while interesting, doesn't really mean anything. Pete Rose has the most MLB hits of all time, but Ichiro is the hit king in my opinion, and I'm sure millions of other people believe that as well.

[The Chosen One]

Ichiro would be the first to get 5k hits if he started in the league at 20-21.

[thewupk]

If we are going to Include Ichiro's hits in Japan then shouldn't we also count Rose's minor league hits?

The obvious reason is that Ichiro played in Japan until he was 26 so they don't really correlate. That being said it doesn't really matter as it's not a MLB record. Pete Rose agrees with you though but he's a bitter man and nobody cares about his opinion anymore.

[thewupk]

Ichiro would be the first to get 5k hits if he started in the league at 20-21.

Yeah. Ichiro is just the perfect combination of a player to get a large number of hits. Great contact rate, left handed, super fast, leadoff hitter, doesn't walk, rarely hits fly balls. Put all that together and you get a hit machine.

[bravesfanforlife88]

As I noted, of course it does not count, nor should it count. However, getting that amount of hits in professional baseball is note worthy in my opinion. And I agree, if he had played here an additional 5 years at the beginning of his career, he'd likely be on the door step to Rose's record.

[bravesfanforlife88]

This is just crazy overall

2001 - age 27 242 hits
2002- age 28 208 hits
2003- age 29 212 hits
2004 age 30 262 hits
2005- age 31 206 hits
2006- age 32 224 hits
2007- age 33 238 hits
2008- age 34 213 hits
2009- age 35 225 hits
2010- age 36 214 hits
2011- age 37 184 hits
2012- age 38 178 hits
2013- age 39 136 hits
2014- age 40 102 hits
2015- age 41 91 hits
2016- age 42 44 hits

[bravos4evr]

I think it's really how you personally define "hit king", honestly. I choose to think of Ichiro as the hit king because I think Pete Rose committed the absolute worst action any professional athlete can possibly commit, and I won't willingly think of him in a positive capacity if another avenue is available to me. I completely acknowledge that yes, he has the most MLB hits of any player in history. We can debate endlessly where the quality of Japanese baseball falls, where we could draw the line to acknowledge a "hit king", whether the shortened Japanese seasons make up for the difference in quality between MLB and NPB players, how time has affected the significance of reaching these numbers as overall baseball quality improves, who Ichiro would have been had he been in the MLB from the start. That debate, while interesting, doesn't really mean anything. Pete Rose has the most MLB hits of all time, but Ichiro is the hit king in my opinion, and I'm sure millions of other people believe that as well.

Cobb is the hit king really. He did it in far fewer plate appearances than either of them and was the far better hitter than either of them. true it was dead ball era for the most part, but we are talking about one of the 4 or 5 best players of all time!

[praeceps93]

Cobb is the hit king really. He did it in far fewer plate appearances than either of them and was the far better hitter than either of them. true it was dead ball era for the most part, but we are talking about one of the 4 or 5 best players of all time!

Like I said, it's your own opinion on how you define a hit king.

[cajunrevenge]

I would bet Ichiro could play until he is 50 as a 4th outfielder.

[bravesfanforlife88]

I would bet Ichiro could play until he is 50 as a 4th outfielder.

If he wanted to I think he could