Ichiro Suzuki Passed Barry Bonds On The All-Time Hits List Last Night
Ichiro collecting a milestone hit on an infield single is the most Ichiro thing ever, but any time you pass Barry Bonds in any offensive statistical category, that’s an incredible achievement. The Marlins played a day game today, and Ichiro collected another hit to bump his career total up to 2,937 hits in the MLB. Bonds retired with 2,935 hits, but he walked a major league record 2,558 times, with 688 of those being a major league record amount of intentional walks. Of course, I’m sure a chunk of his “regular” walks, so to speak, were intentional, with the pitcher having no intention of actually coming near the strike zone.
Just for fun, let’s try a little math problem here. If you take Bonds’ career batting average — which is .298 — we can round that to 30%. Bonds got a hit in 30% of his major league at-bats. So if Bonds got a hit in 30% of the plate appearances that he was walked in, then 30% of 2,558 would be an extra 767 hits, bringing his career total to 3,702, which would put him at No. 4 on baseball’s all-time hits list. That being said, Bonds’ fantasy hit total would still be 513 hits shy of Ichiro’s hit total between the MLB and Japan (4,215). Ichiro needs 41 more hits to tie Pete Rose in career hits, if you count his 1,278 hits in Japan.
Also, just for fun, we can see how many more home runs Bonds would’ve have hit if his walks had been at-bats, too. Bonds had 9,847 at-bats in his career — divide that number by the 762 home runs that he hit, and you get one home run every 12.9 at-bats. From there, you’d divide 2,558 by 12.9, and you’d get 198.2, so 198 more home runs. If all of Bonds’ walks had been actual plate appearances, by the law of averages, he would’ve had 960 career home runs.