Wednesday, July 04, 2007

MLB 2007: Season of individual milestones

With the Major League Baseball season half over, 2007 looks like it's going to be a season of some major individual milestones:

  • Sammie Sosa, Texas Rangers, has become the fifth person to reach 600 home runs
  • Craig Biggio has reached and passed the 3,000 hits club. Notably all of his MLB games have been played for the Houston Astros.
  • Roger Clements has won his 350th game.
Still to come and a lock to happen barring injury:
  • Tom Glavine needs just three wins to enter the 300 club.
  • With two more saves Mariano Rivera will reach 425 saves and claim the third most saves all time.
  • Barry Bonds will pass Hank Aaron as the all-time home run king. If the pitchers pitch to him he could get the five HRs he needs any time.
  • Alex Rodriguez needs eight home runs for 500. With twenty-eight so far A-Rod should reach this in July or August.
  • Ken Griffey Junior needs sixteen home runs to reach six hundred.
  • Jose Mesa needs just seven appearances to make his 1,000 caree appearance.
Possible personal records to come:
  • Barry Bonds may appear in his 3,000 game. He has 2,934 going into today. Depending on days off he could reach 3,000 in September.
  • Jim Thome needs sixteen home runs to reach 500. As of today he has 484. He needs to pick up the pace a bit. He's only had twelve home runs this year.
  • Garry Sheffeld has 574 home runs. Twenty-six for the rest of the year is a bit of a stetch, he has nineteen so far.
  • Randy Johnson went back on the DL so 300 wins appears unlikely this season but should be a lock if he returns for 2008. Currently he has 284 wins.
It's been an exciting season so far regarding personal milestones. The only bad thing is that it will cause talk about the diminishing of the value of milestone levels. I suppose that's okay. Talking about baseball and baseball stats is an important part of the game.

Everyone have a nice, good day! Let's play two! - tfedge