Miguel Cabrera, last to reach 3,000 hits?

Miguel Cabrera hit the 3,000 hit mark on a weekend afternoon, in front of fans at the Detroit Tigers stadium. A moment worthy of accomplishment.

This may well have been the last time in quite some time that we witnessed this.

In a time when strikes are up and offensive averages are down, there don’t seem to be many players anywhere close to hitting 3,000. In fact, the first few weeks of the season are a reminder of how current trends can affect what heights the best baseball players can reach.

Among active players, the closest to Cabrera is Robinson Cano, with 2,631 hits. Cano had a good shortened 2020 season with the New York Mets, but missed the entire 2021 season due to a doping suspension. He will be 40 in October.

Among the players closest to his peak, Houston Astros’ Jose Altuve may have a chance to hit that plateau with his 1,783 hits at age 31. But he hasn’t hit 170 hits in a season since 2017, the season he also hit the 146-game mark. His name has just been added to the injured list due to a hamstring problem.

Part of what helped Cabrera reach that milestone was that he made the Majors at age 20. This is also the case for young Tampa Bays Rays star Wander Franco. He has 103 hits in 85 games, but even if Franco has a Hall of Fame career, it’s not tomorrow that he can flirt with 3,000 hits.

Predictions look better for a mark like 500 homers. Nelson Cruz is at 451 and while the 41-year-old hitter is off to a slow start to the season, the Washington Nationals member is unlikely to be eliminated from this run. When the 2008 season ended, Cruz was 28 years old and had only 22 career home runs. The fact that he’s so close to 500 shows how he hasn’t lost his power even as he gets older.

Among pitchers, the threshold of 300 wins seems like a mirage these days. Even the strikeout marks seem out of reach as starters aren’t pitching as many innings as they used to. Max Scherzer of the Mets and Justin Verlander of the Astros, on the other hand, both have over 3,000 strikeouts on their watch. Scherzer, the younger of the two at 37, had 236 last year with the Los Angeles Dodgers and is now 3,043.

It may take a long time for him to hit 4,000 outs – something that only Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens and Steve Carlton have achieved – but the plateau of 3,500 seems realistic, which would put him in the top 10 in the league.