The illustrious 3,000-hit club in baseball has a new member. Miguel Cabrera’s 3,000th career hit came in the first inning of Saturday’s game against the Colorado Rockies. He is the 33rd player in Major League Baseball history to reach the 3,000-hit plateau. Cabrera had numerous outstanding seasons en route to 3,000 hits, but his best season was indisputably 2012, when he hit .330 with 44 home runs and 139 RBIs, winning the American League MVP Award for the first time in back-to-back seasons. Only ten players have earned the Triple Crown since the inception of RBIs in 1920, and Cabrera is one of them, along with Carl Yastrzemski, who also has 3,000 career hits. Cabrera has surpassed Omar Vizquel’s previous record for most hits by a Venezuelan-born player for the first time in history (2,877). Elvis Andrus of Oakland holds the league’s second-best hitting average, with 1,875 hits as of Saturday.
He joins Adrián Beltré and Albert Pujols (both Dominicans), Ichiro Suzuki (Japan), Rafael Palmeiro (Cuba), Roberto Clemente (Puerto Rico), and Rod Carew (also Puerto Rican) as the only members of the 3,000-hit club born outside the continental United States (Panama). Cabrera has 3,000 hits in 9,665 at-bats, giving in a lifetime batting average of .310, the highest in the league. Miggy’s.300 batting average, 3,000 hits, and 500 home runs keep him over the.300 mark; he’d have to go 0-for-352 to fall below it. This is Miggy’s only bunt hit in his 3,000-hit career. He was a 23-year-old Marlin playing for the Miami Marlins on June 9, 2006. It was a magnificent bunt down the third-base line against Chris Young and the Padres that sealed the deal. Cabrera then stole one of his 39 career stolen bases, stealing second base.