Mike Trout isn’t the fastest to 1,000 hits, but it’s still a historic feat

Mike Trout notched his 1,000th (and 1,001st) career hits on Monday, which also happened to be his 26th birthday. You never know where a baseball player is going to take his career in this rude-as-hell sport that crushes dreams and the people who dare to have them. But racking up his first 1,000 hits before he hit 30 years old is a great use of the time Trout has been given.

He’s not the fastest to 1,000 hits, nor is he the youngest to accomplish the feat. But that’s just fine. Trout doesn’t have to be the absolute best at every single thing: He puts himself in the conversation for enough things that his candidacy to eventually be the best ever remains.

Again, baseball is rude as hell, crushed dreams, etc., but you can see the path laid out before him, and if he manages to avoid the traps and pitfalls and wild, hungry bears, maybe we’ll have something to talk about on this topic 10 or 15 years from now.

Before we stray off the path ourselves, let’s get back to that 1,000th hit. Trout turned 26 Monday, but his seasonal age is 25 — and the list of players who collected their 1,000th career hit during their age-25 season is an impressive one:

From 1901 through Monday, just 23 players have managed to reach 1,000 career hits during their age-25 campaign. Maybe 23 doesn’t sound incredible because it’s not a single-digit number of a list of one. But 10,707 non-pitchers are listed in Baseball-Reference’s database as having picked up a bat between 1901 and now. Trout is one of just 23 of those to reach 1,000 hits before their age-25 season ends. Just 0.21 percent of players have done what he’s managed. That’s as good as any single-digit rank.

Or let’s look at this another way.

Trout picked up 1,000 hits while he was, in baseball years, 25 years old. Since 1913, MLB has seen 1,449 non-pitchers make their debut on or after their 26th birthday, out of 9,815 non-pitchers who took the field in that stretch, total. Trout reached 1,001 hits before 15 percent of all baseball players of the last 104 years who had even gotten started on their own careers.

Look, too, at what the players who have done this during the more modern era of MLB have gone on to do in their careers. Miguel Cabrera is just 34, but he’d be a Hall of Famer if he retired today given his 15 years of dominance. Alex Rodriguez might irk you, but he’s also an inner-circle talent who stuck around for 22 years and finished just shy of being only the fourth player ever with at least 700 homers. Ken Griffey Jr., Roberto Alomar, and Robin Yount are all Hall of Famers.

Edgar Renteria is the only oddity in this time frame, but he also started when he was 19 and reached 1,000 hits about the same time he was any good — no one was confusing him for the rest of this bunch even as he neared 1,000 hits.

This is probably also a good time to point out that while Trout’s achievement has been more of a rarity in modern baseball — the ‘50s alone had five guys debut who would manage 1,000 hits before their age-25 season ended — Bryce Harper is right there nearing the same threshold. Given Harper’s missed time in 2014 and a down 2016, he’ll be hard-pressed to get there, as he sits at 779 hits. A strong finish to 2017, though, and a 2018 a lot like it, and we might be looking at 24 players on this exclusive list.

Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time Harper has matched a Trout feat.