The "3,000 hit club" is one of the most recognizable phrases among baseball fans. It ranks up there with "a .300 hitter", the "500 home run club" and the "300 win club).

According to the Play Index, there are 27 hitters with 3,000 career hits, the most recent being Craig Biggio. See the full list here. Or, for that matter, here. In case you're curious, I'd say there's about an 80% chance that the next guy to reach 3,000 hits will be Derek Jeter. The only other guys within 300 hits are Ken Griffey, Ivan Rodriguez, and Omar Vizquel. The only thing that would prevent Jeter from getting there first is injury. The only other guys within 500 hits are Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, and my favorite dude, Garrett Anderson.

But I'm not here today to talk about hitters. I'm here to talk about the other 3,000 hit club: pitchers who have given up at least 3,000 career hits. In history there have been 124 pitchers to yield at least 3,000 hits in their career. That's a long list so follow that link to view the whole thing. Meanwhile here are some subsets:

Here are the last 11 guys to do it:

Strictly speaking, those are the 11 guys to most recently pitch who also allowed 3,000 hits. Hernandez, Moyer, and Pettitte are the only ones who have pitched in 2010.

Here are the most career hits allowed:

Wow, Cy Young and Pud Galvin made the club twice over. Of course, when a guy pitches over 6,000 innings, that's going to happen.

The vast majority of these pitchers were excellent and they reached 3,000 hits through longevity, not because they were bad. But for what it's worth, here are the 10 pitchers with ERA+ values of 100 or worse:

These are probably the pitchers with the least impressive careers among this group but they were certainly not bad. They wouldn't have stuck around for so long. Jerry Reuss is a good example. He had a somewhat slow start to his career but then had a 7-year period as one of the top starters in baseball. He finished out with a few good seasons and a few below-average seasons mixed together. His final numbers show an ERA+ of 100 but he had plenty of very good years and at his peak was a bona fide star.

Here are the best members of this group ranked by fewest hits per 9 innings pitched:

The more I look at Charlie Hough's numbers, the more underrated I think he is. Check out his numbers as compared to the guy right above him, Bob Feller. Almost identical totals for IP, hits, walks, and even strikeouts are close. Hough was hurt by the long ball, which I think is the biggest factor for why he ended up allowing more runs and getting fewer wins.

Who might join this club next? Here are the active pitchers with the most hits allowed (who aren't already in the club):

Tough to say. If Wakefield were starting, he'd be the best bet. For now, though, he seems to be relegated to mop-up duty. Suppan has also been booted from the rotation. Vazquez is starting for the Yankees although he's getting skipped next time (supposed to be tomorrow in Boston.) Still, I'd probably say Vazquez has the best shot of getting in next.

I wonder if they'll stop the game and save the ball for him?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 9:20 am and is filed under Season Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.