Major MLB career milestones are reached every year. Here are five that stand out most for the 2017 season as the new campaign approaches.
With the Winter Meetings firmly planted in the rear-view mirror and the Hot Stove cooling down to something less than a boil, baseball fans must look forward to what is coming next. There are free agents left to sign and trades to be consummated, but as we roll towards the holiday season, we start to focus more on rosters as they currently stand as opposed to what they could be. While it may be a little early to start making on-the-record prognostications for the upcoming season, we can still look ahead and make some guesses regarding what we might be able to see in 2017.
Baseball is a numbers game, but sometimes the meanings of those numbers change. For example, 500 home runs does not mean as much as it used to, but 300 wins in today’s climate of five-man rotations, pitch counts and deeper bullpens might mean more than it did in past generations. Milestones are nonetheless still fascinating to track. There is something alluring about round numbers players can accumulate over the course of a career.
There are bound to be certain milestones crossed each season. In 2016 we saw Ichiro Suzuki reach 3,000 hits and Albert Pujols surpass 100 career wins above replacement (per Baseball Reference’s calculations). 2017 should bring an interesting collection of achievements for some great players in various stages of their careers. Let’s take a look at some of the more noticeable accomplishments we may see during the upcoming season.