Who is next? Nobody is really close (Cano, Votto, but I can't see either having the gas in the tank to get there). Before looking it up, my mind went to Freeman and Trout. Freeman would need to average 160 hits per season til he is 40 to get there (he's currently averaging 177 per 164). Trout would need to avg 157 til 40. Manny Machado and Jose Altuve might be the next best bet. Elivs Andrus wasn't even on my radar.
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Interesting question. I agree with your picks for most likely. Whoever it is will have to play 20+ seasons without much drop off at the end of their career. Not easy to do. Probably why only 33 have done it in 150 years of professional baseball.
And 2 of them were Brewers.
And Molitor had 1038 hits in 6 years after turning 36.
Molitor could have been even higher on the list if he didn't miss almost all of the 84 season and missed 50 games in a few other seasons.
Votto and Cano will both be short they are running out of gas especially Votto.
So I would agree that Freeman and Trout would be my choices.
I think the toughest part now about getting to 3,000 hits is that walks are a lot more highly valued.
Right now, Trout has 1,433 hits and 872 walks. It makes it hard to get to 3,000 if you take that many walks. Maybe the new metric should be 4,000 hits plus walks as the bar after which you are guaranteed the HOF (steroids guys notwithstanding)
I think the HOF and baseball historians should shift towards looking at the total times you get on base, rather than just hits.
Barry Bonds didn't reach 3,000 hits, but reached base 5,599 times. I know he's a steroids guy, but he's the ideal analytics guy of all time in terms of power and OBP.
Trout could easily get to 4,000 times in terms of walks, hits, and HBPs, but not get near 3,000 hits.
Contrast this with a guy like Ichiro, who basically never walked but got over 3,000 hits.
There are some older players that should be in the HOF, but aren't due to the lack of respect for walks as a metric (and defense for that matter). Dwight Evans was in the top 10 in OBP 8 seasons in his career, lead the league in OBP twice, and led the league in walks three times. He also won 8 gold gloves and was one of the best outfielders in MLB history. He only hit 272, which kept him off a lot of ballots, but his career OBP was 370 (Ichiro's was 355, Robin Yount was 342). He reached base almost 3,900 times. The other argument was that he never won an MVP and only played in 3 all-star games, but the voters back then didn't care about walks either.
We are so conditioned to think about 300/30/100 in a season or 3000 hits and 500 home runs as being the HOF metrics. The same with 300 wins and 3,000 strikeouts for pitchers.
Kershaw is a first-ballot HOF as a starting pitcher and he's at 188 wins in his career at age 34.
The voters have to adjust, but they usually struggle to do so.
