3,000 hits

[cjclong]

Maybe its just me, but it seems a lot of people recently have reached the 3,000 hit marker. Jeter, ARod, Ichiro in the last several years and Beltre is on a pace to reach it next year. It used to happen rarely, any thoughts on why so many recently.

[emann]

I think the easy answer is those guys are all very good and have had long careers without losing much time to injury. Three of them are legit among the greatest of all time . . .

The average MLB career in playing time is something like 5 seasons. All the guys you mention are between 15-20+ seasons. We're at the tail end of alot of guys who have had very long, consistent careers.