Jose Altuve realistic path to 3,000 Hits

I did the math for what it would likely take for Altuve to hit 3,000 hits.

He doesn't seem like as much of an "he will easily hit it" candidate as he once was, but I still think he is statistically likely to do it.

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In his prime Altuve's average was 20%-30% higher than someone his age, with 2 years almost 40% above batters his age.

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This is important because I base his % above the average for his age to project his totals.

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He could very well easily out perform these numbers, that is OK. This is more of a conservative projection.

*** Note my average player BA may be off by a point or 2 because I am eyeballing it off of a graph. 1 or 2 points shouldn't have a major outcome on this chart***

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Age	AVG Player BA	Altuve BA	Altuve % Better than AVG
21	.218	.276	26.6%
22	.225	.290	28.8%
23	.233	.283	21.5%
24	.239	.341	42.77%
25	.244	.313	28.3%
26	.248	.338	36.3%
27	.251	.346	37.8%
28	.253	.316	24.9%
29	.254	.298	17.3%
30	.250	.219	(-)12.4%
31	.247	.278	12.6%
32	.244	.286	17.2%

Now, this is only BA, Altuve seems content hitting for more power these days, he has an OPS of 149 this year, meaning he is still 49% better than average, but his BA is 17.2% better than average for a 32 year old.

Altuve is on Pace for about 137 games this season, and 520 ABs, lets round to 150 Hits

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That would give him 1927 Career hits. Now, Pujols' ABs stayed relatively consistent through age 37, so I will assume that's what Altuve's do also.

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Excluding, Rookie Year, Current year, and Covid year Altuve averages 148 games a season and 3.755 AB per game. Lets dial it back to 145 games, which gives us about 545 ABs a year through age 37.

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If we assume Altuve is able to stay 15% better at putting the ball in play through age 37 on average then we get

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Age	AVG Player BA	Altuve Projected BA	Projected Hits at 545 ABs
33	.240	.276	151
34	.235	.270	147
35	.229	.264	144
36	.221	.254	139
37	.215	.247	135

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This means I project 716 hits between ages 31 – 37

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That would give him a projected 2643 through age 37. Still pretty good.

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Now, Based again off Pujols Ages 38 & 39 will drop 10% of ABs per year, while ages 40-42 will drop 16.67% of ABs per year.

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I will also relax to 10% better than the average player his age due to aging curve and speed loss.

Age	AVG Player BA	Altuve Projected BA	Projected ABs	Projected Hits per year
38	.208	.229	495	114
39	.200	.220	450	99
40	.192	.211	386	82
41	.185	.204	331	68

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This gives him 363 hits from ages 38 – 41. That results in 3,006 Hits in his career.

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That's a realistic conservative path to 3,000 for Jose Altuve that leaves him retiring at the same age as Craig Biggio did.

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I honestly don't think Altuve will taper that hard either, but I didn't want a large bias to influence this.

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The shift being reduced next year also helps Altuve's chance of getting some extra hits before he starts to get into the back end of age regression.