The 42-year-old Ichiro Suzuki keeps inching closer towards the magic number of 3,000 hits, which only 29 players in Major League history have had the talent to achieve.
Ichiro 31st on the All-Time Hit List
After recording a pair of singles against the Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday night, the Miami Marlins outfielder passed Hall of Famer Sam Crawford for 31st on the All-Time hit list with 2,963 hits for his MLB career, leaving him just 37 hits shy of 3,000.
Prior to last night, the future Hall of Famer was in the midst of a 1-for-24 slump before going 2-4 with a run scored and raising his batting average to .322 on the season. The next player in Ichro’s cross-hairs is Sam Rice, who finished his career just shy of 3,000 hits with 2,987.
Ichro’s single in the seventh inning sparked the Marlins three-run inning that helped lead Miami to a victory over the Pirates. He would later score his only run of the game on Christian Yelich‘s single to right. Ichro’s run scored ended a streak of 15 straight scoreless innings by the Marlins.
“It was good,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly told a group of reporters, as reported by Patrick Pinak of MLB.com. “It seemed like we kind of ran him out of steam last week. When everybody got hurt together, you know we lose Yelich and Giancarlo Stanton, we threw him out there.”
In the third-inning of Tuesday’s game, Ichro broke a 1-for-24 skid with a single. His slump started with an 0-5 day on May 24th against the Tampa Bay Rays. Mattingly admitted that game, which was Ichro’s fourth straight start in a row, may have fatigued the 42-year-old. To his credit though, Ichro has been one of the Marlins most consistent hitters, batting .316 in the month of May, and .322 on the season.
“It seemed like we might’ve pushed him a little bit to far there, out of necessity,” Mattingly said. “It looked like it took him a couple of days to kind of recover again.”
On May 28th, Ichro became only the seventh player in Major League history to record four or more hits in a game for a player 42-years-old or older. The other players include Sam Rice, Pete Rose, Carl Yastrzemski, Rickey Henderson, Honus Wagner and Carlton Fisk.
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