Welcome; Adrian Beltre's Hall of Fame Resume

Welcome aboard! Thanks for reading.

I’m Billy, and welcome to my blog about everything and anything baseball. Just a few quick things about me before we get started.

Being born in the greater Detroit area, I must admit I am a die-hard Tigers fan. Die-hard. I have more Tigers jerseys than suits, which might not be good considering I’ll be a professional soon. But that’s part of my charm. I promise this won’t be a constant update about my Motor City Kitties, just my stream of consciousness about anything that happens in the baseball world.

What can you expect from this? Well, that’s the beauty of baseball, isn’t it? Expect anything! Cases for Hall of Fame bids, individual game recaps (past and present), bitter complaints about lineups, or random stats I find interesting. I’m not a SABRmetrics guy, and I don’t like gloves that are brighter than an unnatural hair color.

But an important disclaimer: I love Don Kelly.

Shall we?

The Case for Adrian Beltre and Cooperstown
While I was chatting with my roommate about how terrible the Tigers were in 2003 and prior, we somehow found our way to Adrian Beltre. I complimented Brandon Inge on sticking it out with the worst American League team in history, being pushed around the field from catcher to DH to third and back again. Despite one of the quietest exits in Home Run Derby history, the dude was a vacuum, which led me to say something along the lines that he should have deserved a Gold Glove because he made some of the flashiest plays that my young Tigers fan brain could remember. This led me to the realization that he had the bad fortune to play during the Adrian Beltre era of third base, when he locked down the hot corner about as good as Scott Rolen or, this is a stretch, Brooks Robinson early in his career. Beltre has won four of the last seven Gold Gloves as well as completely raking. Like Inge lived in the shadow of Beltre, Beltre has to do so in the shadow of Cabrera and his monstrous run in Motown.

But back to Beltre. As I read his Baseball Reference stats, I was more and more impressed with what he’s done for the Rangers and his career, and I’m going to say now, we’ll see his face in bronze in a few years. He enters the season with 2,426 hits, 376 home runs, and .282/.334/.478 splits. The splits could be a little better, but his career is like a rich Chardonnay, he’s only gotten better as the years have gone on. Last year, he posted 199 hits, which led the American League, and this year, with the addition of Prince Fielder and the increased playing time of the young phenom Jurickson Profar, expect that number to be duplicated if not beaten. Entering his age 35 season, if Beltre both stays healthy and can collect that number of hits in the next few seasons, he’ll hit 3,000, essentially making him a lock for Cooperstown (if I had a vote, at least). He’s also sitting pretty at 376 home runs, an average Beltre-esque season away from a respectable milestone of 400 bombs. The last time he hit fewer than 25 home runs was his 2009 injury plagued Seattle campaign, where he only appeared in 111 games. And before that, the last time he hit fewer than 25 home runs in a full season was 2005 for a Dodgers team that was 20 games below .500. The same 2005 where Derrek Lee, only four years older than Beltre, went off for .335/.418/.662.

Even though he hates his head being touched, Beltre can play. 2014, barring any injuries, will be his year to hit his 400^th. Down the road, when he likely moves to DH for the Rangers, he can collect his 3,000^th hit.

Fun fact: if Al Kaline had hit one more home run, he would have been in the club. And he still made it to Cooperstown.