After Ichiro, who's next to 3,000 MLB hits? Three players have a great chance

Ichiro is in the 3,000 hit club, and he may have company fairly soon

Did you know that Ichiro Suzuki (Ichiro!) recently registered his 3,000th career hit in MLB? This is both actual and factual. In doing so, Ichiro became the 30th recognized member of the 3,000 hits clubs, which raises the matter of who among active ballplayers will soon join him.

Barring unimaginable short-run absurdities, no one's going to reach that threshold this season. However, a number of veteran batsmen are within hailing distance of the hallowed number in question and still at an age that lends itself to making a serious run ...

Hitter	Age	Career hits
Adrian Beltre	37	2,878
Albert Pujols	36	2,774
Carlos Beltran	39	2,570
Miguel Cabrera	33	2,459
Robinson Cano	33	2,146

This is not, however, a list of the non-Ichiro/non-A-Rod active hits leaders. Jimmy Rollins is seventh with 2,455 hits, and David Ortiz is eighth with 2,416. However, neither of those guys is going to play long enough to threaten 3,000 hits (barring a Big Papi change of heart, at least). A.J. Pierzynski is the other active who's north of 2,000 hits (2,036, to be exact), but he's not going to be adding much more to that tally.

So the five guys above are the ones with the best chances, at least among those who've already reached 2,000 hits. You can certainly argue that Beltran is a stretch, but the strength of his 2016 season may allow him to extend his career by a handful of seasons should he choose to do that.

To get a quick-and-dirty idea of how likely these hitters are to reach 3,000 hits, we'll turn a Bill James concoction called "The Favorite Toy." Using a player's age and recent performance history, the Favorite Toy can give you a somewhat crude idea of a player's chances to get to a certain counting-stat benchmark. One of the inputs is for the most recent season's total, so for 2016 we'll use each player's projected final hit total. Since we're already in August, these will be very reasonable projections. So here's what comes out of the mix ...

Hitter	Projected career hit total	Chance of getting to 3,000 hits
Adrian Beltre	3,334	97%
Albert Pujols	3,294	97%
Carlos Beltran	2,837	7%
Miguel Cabrera	3,299	97%
Robinson Cano	3,051	56%

As you can see, the system strongly expects Beltre, Pujols, and Cabrera to reach 3,000. That's understandable, of course. The system projects Pujols to play for three more seasons, but he's under contract through 2021 -- i.e., five more full seasons. As such, Pujols -- barring serious injury, quicker-than-expected decline, or early retirement -- could be in line to become just the sixth player in the annals of MLB to register 3,500 or more hits. It probably won't be pretty toward the end, but benchmarks at the far reaches rarely are. Elsewhere, Beltran is expected to play just 1.5 more seasons, so adjust his chances upward if he, say, winds up signing a three-year deal this offseason. As for Cano, feel free to bump those odds up quite a bit. The Favorite Toy pegs him to play 4.5 more seasons, but the Mariners will be paying him for seven more seasons. Even so, he's already a good bet to get to 3,000.

Taking the longer view, Jose Altuve may be one to watch. He'll almost certainly reach 1,000 hits this season (he's at 985 right now), and he's just 26 years of age. He's too far out to make projections regarding 3,000, but it's worth noting that all-time hits leader Pete Rose didn't notch his 1,000th hit until he was 27. If current paces hold, then Altuve will reach 1,000 hits about 10 months sooner, in terms of age, than Rose did. On that point, it's worth noting that Mike Trout will almost surely reach 1,000 hits in 2017 -- i.e., his age-25 season. Keep your eyes on both those hitters in the years to come (as though you weren't already going to do that).

For now, though, it looks like we don't have much of a wait until Messrs. Beltre and Pujols join the exalted ranks of the 3,000 hits club. Chances are, we'll be throwing Beltre a party some time next season.