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July 20, 2006
And A-Rod Makes Nine
If he gets two hits tonight, Alex Rodriguez will have 2,000 hits in his career. By rough count, the only other players to get 2,000 hits in a career by the season in which they were 30-years-old are the following:
Ty Cobb
Hank Aaron
Rogers Hornsby
Mel Ott
Jimmie Foxx
Robin Yount
Vada Pinson
Joe Medwick
If you play with the Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, you'll see that A-Rod matches up best to Hank Aaron in this group:
No right-handed batter has more career hits (3,771) than Aaron. At his current pace, A-Rod could pass Aaron around the year 2015 - when Rodriguez will be 39-years-old.
I would say that there's an excellent chance that A-Rod will be the all-time hit king for RH batters.
Alex would have to play until he was 42-years-old (at the least) to have a shot at the all-time hit record (held by Pete Rose). I do not think Rodriguez will play that long.
Posted by Steve Lombardi at July 20, 2006 01:42 PM