NEVER AGAIN?

 

               It was a nothing-special hit—a groundball single to right field—early in a nothing-special late-April game, but it stopped the baseball world. Fireworks exploded, people rose to cheer, the hitter’s wife, kids and mom raced to the field to embrace him. The ball was sent off to Cooperstown, presumably to rest in display with others like it.

               It was, of course, a very-special statistical hit, the 3,000th in the illustrious career of Detroit Tiger player Miguel Cabrera, putting him among the 33 men who have reached that level among the almost 20,000 who have played in the U.S. Major Leagues. At age 39 he’s not quitting yet and will go on to add to that total.

               Cabrera’s achievement well might stand out in a more singular way. He certainly will be the last to notch hit number 3,000 for a good many years and maybe he’ll be the last to do it—ever. Yes, ever is a long time and many unlikely things will happen in such a span; the rule “never say never” rightly applies to feats like his. But trends in the game are moving the wrong way for such a thing to occur.

That also is true about other hallowed numbers in the diamond sport, one that leans more than any other on round-numbered statistical feats to measure greatness. It used to be that 3,000 career base hits, 500 home runs, 300 pitching wins and 3,000 pitching strikeouts guaranteed Hall of Fame immortality. That no longer applies to players who stopped in juice bars along the way (Barry Bonds, ARod, Roger Clemens), or went out of their way to be offensive (Curt Schilling), but the standards held nonetheless. Now, not only the hits mark looks old fashioned, but the career-pitching-wins measure does as well.

Indeed, changes to the game seem to have permanently removed 300-win pitching careers from the above list containing 24 names, ending with Randy Johnson in 2009. One major obstacle besides the sheer difficulty of averaging 15 wins a season for 20 seasons has been the move to five-man starting rotations from four starting in the 1970s. Another has been the increasing role of teams’ bullpens beginning at about the same time. In 1974 there were 1,089 complete games pitched in the Major Leagues, or 28% of the total. Last year there were 14, six of which were no-hitters, and even taking a perfect game through seven innings doesn’t protect a starter from the hook. That’s what happened to Clayton Kershaw a couple of weeks ago, and he left the mound smiling.

Among active pitchers Justin Verlander leads in career victories with 227 as of last Thursday, followed by Zack Greinke with 219, Max Scherzer with 193, Kershaw with 188 and Adam Wainwright with 186. Kershaw is the youngest of the group at 34 but his annual starts have dipped into the 20s from the 30s the last half-dozen years. Verlander still is going strong at age 39 but another 70-plus wins seem undoable. Greinke is on his last legs at 38, Scherzer is 37 and Wainwright is 40.  Seems that 250 is the new 300.

Two members of the 3,000-hit club currently are active—Albert Pujols in addition to Cabrera—but from here it’s hard to see where another will come from. Under different circumstances Robinson Cano would be preparing to join them but he flunked a drugs test and lost 80 games of the 2018 season and then tied ARod for the all-time-dunce award by flunking another and losing the entire 2021 campaign. He had 2,631 hits through Thursday but at age 39 is hitting just .184 this year (7-for-38), and this season appears to be his last.

After Cano the decline in the active-hits department is steep. Yadier Molina, 39, is next at 2,116 but he’s already announced his retirement after this season and given his bruising position (catcher) and early-career struggles at the plate it’s remarkable he’s hit as well as he has. Joey Votto is next at 2,035 but he’s 38 and doesn’t have another 1,000 in him.  Jose Altuve has 1,783 in 12 seasons and Freddie Freeman has 1,726 in 13, but both are 32 years old and 3,000 seems a bridge too far.

A good measure of how great an achievement 3,000 hits is can be seen by the examples of Mike Trout, Nolan Arenado and Mookie Betts, the first three players I’d pick if I were choosing sides in the playground. In 12 seasons neither Trout, Arenado (10 seasons) nor Betts (9) is halfway to 3,000.   

Any foreseeable-future Mr. 3,000 would have to surmount just about every playing-field trend in the game. Just as fewer individual pitching starts and more bullpen emphasis is thwarting possible 300-game winners, it’s also making it tougher on hitters, fresh pitchers being more-formidable foes than tired ones.  Further, the guys trotting to the mound today are bigger, stronger and better coached than those of any previous era.  Computer tracking helps managers put their fielders where hitters are likely to hit.

Hitters are contributing to their own problems by trying to please chicks who dig the long ball, strikeouts be damned. The All-MLB batting average has dipped below .260 annually since 2009 and bottomed at .244 last season. Through 500 games this year it’s dropped to .231, which if it holds would be a record since they started keeping track in 1871. That would be worse than the .237 of 1968, “The Year of the Pitcher,” and the “Dead-Ball Era” low of .239 in 1908.

The cry of “Help!” you hear comes from the fans as well as the hitters. We want to see more guys getting hits, running around the bases, scoring runs. In 1969 MLB answered a similar plea by dropping the pitchers’ mound to 10 inches from 15. Another drop is in order, and an anti-shift rule as well.

And how about requiring batters to choke up at least an inch?

OK, maybe that’s too much.