SEATTLE, WA - MAY 04: Albert Pujols #5 of the Los Angeles Angels celebrates after hitting a single in the fifth inning against the Seattle Mariners to reach 3,000 career hits during their game at Safeco Field on May 4, 2018 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images)
SEATTLE, WA – MAY 04: Albert Pujols #5 of the Los Angeles Angels celebrates after hitting a single in the fifth inning against the Seattle Mariners to reach 3,000 career hits during their game at Safeco Field on May 4, 2018, in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images) /
Los Angeles Angels first baseman Albert Pujols got his 3000th career hit and joined an exclusive 500 home runs/3,000 hits club.
With a soft line drive to right field off Mike Leake on Friday night in Seattle Albert Pujols notched the 3000th hit of his career, which puts him, in the exclusive 3,000 hits club. Not only is Albert Pujols just the 32nd player ever with 3000 hits, but he’s also just the sixth with 3000 hits and 500 home runs.
The other five members of the 500 HR/3,000 hits club are Hank Aaron, Alex Rodriguez, Willie Mays, Rafael Palmeiro and Eddie Murray. All of these players consistently banged out hits and home runs for many years, averaging nearly 3000 games played in their careers. Pujols has played just a few more than 2600 games.
Two players who came close to joining this exclusive 500 home run/ 3,000 hits club were Barry Bonds and Frank Robinson. As every baseball fan knows, Bonds had well over 500 career home runs. He’s the all-time leader with 762. He came up short in hits, though, with just 2935.
He missed out on the 3,000 hits club in part because he walked 2558 times in his career and in part because no MLB team wanted to sign him after he hit .276/.480/.565 and was worth 3.2 WAR in 2007 collusion .
Frank Robinson also had more than 500 career homers (586) but didn’t quite get to 3000 hits. Unlike Pete Rose, when Robinson was a player-manager in his final two seasons he didn’t write himself in the lineup in order to chase a milestone.
He was still an above-average hitter in 1975, at the age of 39, when he hit .237/.385/.508 in 149 plate appearances. Heading into the 1976 season, he needed 72 hits to reach 3000. That year, he only had 15 hits in 67 at-bats and finished with 2943.
It’s very rare for a player to amass enough hits and home runs to reach the historical milestones Pujols just reached. More than half of the 32 players with 3000 career hits had fewer than 300 career home runs.
This includes some all-time great players, like Ricky Henderson (297 career homers), Roberto Clemente (240), Ty Cobb (117), and Honus Wagner (101). As a group, with Pujols now included, the 32 members of the 3000 hits club hit .309/.380/.472 and averaged 189 hits per 162 games played, with 101 runs scored, 89 RBI, 18 homers and 20 steals per season.
The 27 members of the 500 HR club have a different look. This group averaged 167 hits per 162 games played, along with 104 runs scored, 112 RBI, 37 homers, and nine steals per season. All together, they’ve hit .292/.391/.548. Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds are in this group, along with Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, and Mike Schmidt.
The five players to amass 3000 hits and 500 home runs include Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray. Another member, Rafael Palmeiro, was on the ballot four times but fell below the five percent of the vote needed to remain on the ballot.
The most recent member, Alex Rodriguez, will be eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2020. It will be interesting to see how he does in the voting. Let’s take a closer look at the members of the exclusive 500 HR/3,000 hits club.
500 plus HR/ 3,000 hits club: Hank Aaron
3771 hits (3rd all-time)
755 home runs (2nd all-time)
When Hank Aaron singled off Cincinnati Reds pitcher Wayne Simpson on May 17, 1970, at Crosley Field, he became just the ninth player to have 3000 hits in his major league career. He was 36 years old at the time and would play until he was 42, collecting another 771 hits along the way.
Aaron is much more famous for his 755 career home runs, which ranks him second all-time, so it’s easy to forget that only two men in MLB history have more hits than he does (Pete Rose and Ty Cobb).
“I always said the one thing out of my 23 years I played baseball—the thing I am most proud of—I was able to get as many hits as I did. The most important thing in my career out of the 23 years I played is I never struck out 100 times. Getting the base hits was the greatest thrill of my life.”
Aaron’s comment about strikeouts shows how much baseball has changed over the years. His single-season high in strikeouts was 97 in 1967. He played 155 games and had 669 plate appearances that year.
Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton already has 51 strikeouts in 32 games (145 plate appearances). He’s more than halfway to Hank Aaron’s single-season high in strikeouts after a little over one month of the season.
Hank Aaron’s 500th home run came two seasons before his 3000th hit. On July 14, 1968, with the game scoreless, Aaron stepped to the plate against San Francisco Giants left-hander Mike McCormick and launched one into the seats in his home park in Atlanta.
When Aaron hit his 500th homer, only seven other men had achieved the feat, putting Aaron in the company of Babe Ruth (500th homer in 1929), Jimmie Foxx (1940), Mel Ott (1945), Ted Williams (1960), Willie Mays (1965), Mickey Mantle (1967), and Eddie Mathews (1967).
Aaron was 34 years old at the time and still more than 200 homers away from Babe Ruth’s career mark. It seemed unlikely that he would catch the Babe, but he had a strong late peak that included a 40-homer season at the age of 39.
Aaron was one of baseball’s best “older” players. He ranks fifth all-time in Fangraphs WAR for players from the age of 31 on. In addition to being third all-time in hits and second in home runs, Aaron has more RBI and total bases than any player who ever played.
500 plus HR/ 3,000 hits club: Willie Mays
3283 hits (12th all-time)
660 home runs (5th all-time)
When Willie Mays hit his 500th home run on September 13, 1965, he was just the fifth player in MLB history to get to that mark. He was also the first African-American to join the elite group of home run hitters that included Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, and Ted Williams. Mays’ historic home run was one of a career-high 52 he would hit in 1965, leading the league for the third time in four seasons.
“I wasn’t even looking to get 500 this year, to tell you the truth. I’ll have to average 40 a year to catch up with that guy [Babe Ruth]. I don’t think I can do it.”
Mays was right. He didn’t catch Ruth, but his 660 career home runs rank fifth all-time.
Five seasons after joining the 500-HR club, Mays became just the tenth player to get 3000 career hits. Hank Aaron had reached that total on May 17, 1970. Mays joined him only two months later, on July 18, when he singled off Montreal Expos pitcher Mike Wegener. Aaron and Mays were also the first two players to have both 3000 career hits and 500 career home runs.
500 plus HR/ 3,000 hits club: Eddie Murray
3255 hits (13th all-time)
504 homers (27th all-time)
When Eddie Murray singled to right field off Minnesota Twins pitcher Mike Trombley for his 3000th hit on June 30, 1995, he became just the second switch-hitter to reach that milestone. The other was Pete Rose. Murray reached the mark during his time with Cleveland, but he would be back in an Orioles uniform when he hit his 500th home run on September 6, 1996.
Not only did it fit that Murray hit his 500th home run as a member of the Orioles, the team he played for during the majority of his career, he also did it one year to the day after his former teammate, Cal Ripken, Jr., broke Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played. Murray’s 500th home run came against Detroit Tigers pitcher Felipe Lira, and it came in front of his hometown fans in Baltimore.
The home run came after the game had experienced a rain delay that lasted more than two hours. When Murray connected for the historic blast, confetti fell, and the fans cheered for more than eight minutes. He took a couple of curtain calls. The home run put him in the elite company of Hank Aaron and Willie Mays as he became the third member of the 3000 hits/500 homers club.
Murray reached 500 homers and 3000 hits despite never hitting more than 33 homers and never having more than 186 hits in a season. He did it by being incredibly consistent, just banging out 170-180 hits a season with 25-30 homers. He never led the league in either category during a full year but did lead the AL in home runs and RBI during the strike-shortened 1981 season.
500 plus HR/ 3,000 hits club: Rafael Palmeiro
3020 hits (28th all-time)
569 home runs (13th all-time)
By the time Rafael Palmeiro hit his 500th home run, some baseball fans were leery of the accomplishment because Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and Sammy Sosa had all reached the historic mark at some point in the previous five seasons.
Suspicions about home run hitters were increasing, and testing for PEDs was just beginning. Sosa actually beat Palmeiro to 500 homers by just five weeks. Palmeiro hit his on May 11, 2003, while playing for the Texas Rangers.
Two years later, Palmeiro joined the 3000 hits/500 HR club when he doubled off Seattle Mariners pitcher Joel Pineiro at Safeco Field on July 15, 2005. The hit put him in the elite company of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray, who had once been Palmeiro’s teammate in Baltimore. At the time, he was also just the third foreign-born player to amass 3000 hits (with Roberto Clemente and Rod Carew).
Then came the downfall. Palmeiro was suspended that August for violating MLB’s policy on banned substances. This came just five months after he had aggressively testified before Congress that he had never used steroids.
Palmeiro claimed the substance abuse violation was not intentional. “It was an accident. It was not an intentional act on my part,” he said. He blamed a supplement, food product or vitamin, possibly B-12. Those pesky B vitamins have often been blamed for a PED suspension.
The suspension effectively doomed Palmeiro’s chances for the Hall of Fame. He received 11 percent of the vote in his first year on the ballot and 12.6 percent in his second year, but then dropped to 8.8 percent and 4.4 percent, which bumped him from the ballot altogether.
500 plus HR/ 3,000 hits club: Alex Rodriguez
3115 hits (20th all-time)
696 homers (4th all-time)
The last person before Albert Pujols to reach the 3000 hits/500 HR club is Alex Rodriguez. He earned that distinction when he picked up his 3000th hit on June 19, 2015. The historic hit was a solo homer at Yankee Stadium off of Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander in the bottom of the first inning.
While many baseball fans across the country didn’t exactly appreciate Rodriguez reaching the milestone, his hometown Yankee fans cheered loudly for him after the blast.
Rodriguez hit his 500th home run eight years before picking up his 3000th hit. That eight-year gap is the longest gap between the two milestones of any of the players in the 3000 hits/500 HR club. Rodriguez’ 500th home run came on August 4, 2007, against Kansas City pitcher Kyle Davies. It was also hit in front of the hometown fans at Yankee Stadium and landed in the left-field seats.
At 32 years old, Rodriguez was the youngest player ever to reach 500 career home runs, and it was clear that he had the best chance of anyone of catching Barry Bonds for the career mark, which Bonds set in that 2007 season.
Rodriguez hit 54 home runs that year and had averaged 47 homers per season over the previous seven seasons.
He slowed down from that point on, hitting 35, 30, and 30 home runs over the next three years. Injuries limited him in his mid-to-late 30s, as he had just 41 homers total in the three seasons from 2011 to 2013.
He was also suspended for part of the 2013 season and all of the 2014 season for his connection to the Biogenesis clinic. He came back to hit 33 home runs in 2015 and was still an above average player at the age of 39 (2.7 WAR, per Fangraphs) — that 2015 season was his last hurrah on the baseball diamond, though.
In 2016, he struggled through the first half of the season with a .200/.247/.351 batting line. He was well below replacement-level (-1.1 WAR).
In early August, it was announced that he would be retiring from baseball and taking a job as a special advisor and instructor with the Yankees organization. He’s now working as an announcer on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball team.
Welcome to the 500 HR/ 3,000 hits club, Albert Pujols!
