Reexamining the 3000-Hit Club

Today is the one year anniversary of Ichiro Suzuki's 4000th professional baseball hit, a feat that caused people to recall their basic math skills and begin researching which players in baseball history stood on top of the hit plateau along with Ichiro.  Scott Simkus of SABR.org put the total number of club members at nine after adding not only MLB and minor league hit totals but also hits from the postseason, Negro League play, and other professional leagues throughout history.  

So in trying to find yet another 4000-hit club entrant, I thought of an interesting way to honor Ichiro's anniversary: I added up the hit totals of all 28 players with 3000 or more MLB hits using statistics from baseball-reference.com.

The most important result of my addition is that Tris Speaker was astoundingly close to being the tenth member of the 4000-hit club. He notched 3987 hits in 25 seasons in professional baseball, just 13 knocks shy of joining Ichiro, Derek Jeter, Minnie Minoso, and others as brothers in hitting. 

A second and much less significant finding of my addition is that many players got monstrous boosts from their minor league seasons. For example, in the three seasons he spent with the San Francisco Seals, Paul Waner amassed 609 hits, including 280 in his age-22 season with the Double-A club.  

There are some players on this list whose professional hit totals are not quite complete.  They have a listed season on baseball-reference.com with no hit totals for that season and are marked with an asterisk (*).  Hank Aaron's hit total is marked with two asterisks (**) because his hit totals as added up by me differ from those relayed by Scott Simkus.  Finally, some members of this list have no minor league seasons listed at all.  

So perhaps there is still some work to be done here since not all hit totals are 100% complete, but I think this is a pretty good start on a brand new way of looking at the 3000-hit club.

Name	Number of Professional Hits	Number of MLB Hits
Pete Rose	4769	4256
Ty Cobb	4379	4189
Derek Jeter	4192	3438
Hank Aaron**	4120	3771
Stan Musial	4023	3630
Tris Speaker	3987	3514
Carl Yastrzemski	3806	3419
Wade Boggs	3776	3010
Rickey Henderson	3768	3055
Paul Waner	3792	3152
Eddie Murray	3747	3255
Nap Lajoie	3709	3243
Honus Wagner*	3696	3420
Cal Ripken	3684	3184
George Brett	3535	3154
Willie Mays	3500	3283
Cap Anson	3451	3435
Paul Molitor	3448	3319
Tony Gwynn	3420	3141
Eddie Collins	3379	3315
Rod Carew*	3349	3053
Rafael Palmeiro	3343	3020
Craig Biggio	3270	3060
Lou Brock*	3238	3023
Robin Yount	3233	3142
Dave Winfield	3131	3110
Roberto Clemente	3072	3000
Al Kaline	3023	3007