Kuzul

All eyes will be on Albert Pujols for the next few days until he reports to Spring Training.

If his self-imposed deadline for a new contract comes and goes without an extension being reached with the St. Louis Cardinals, he will rule the headlines for the duration of the season.

Everywhere the Cardinals go, the top questions asked will be, “Where do you see yourself playing next season?” and “is your contract status a distraction?”

Arguably baseball’s best player, Pujols will wind up the top story of the year regardless of what happens on the field with his historic payday fast approaching.

In the meantime, there are three other historic milestones that will be reached at some point during the 2011 season that bear mentioning.

Three players will wind up breaking into some of baseball’s most exclusive clubs this season and so far on the eve of Spring Training, no mention has been given to their impressive feats.

3,000 Hit Club

At just 74 hits shy of achieving his 3,000th career hit, Derek Jeter is assured of reaching this milestone during the 2011 season.

Jeter currently averages 1.27 hits per game over his storied career. The captain of the Yankees will be remembered in history for leading the Yankees to five World Championships and three consecutive World Series Championships in 1998-1999-2000.

Jeter passed Hall of Famer and fellow Yankee Lou Gehrig to become the all-time Yankee hits leader in 2009. He also ranks as the all-time hits leader as a short stop and his career .314 batting average ranks seventh among all active players (76th overall).

Based on his career averages, Jeter should reach the 3,000 hit club around early June.

600 Home Run Club

The second most exclusive club in baseball is set to accept a new member this season when Jim Thome hits his 11th home run of the season.

Thome will be only the eighth player in Major League Baseball history to reach this milestone, behind Barry Bonds (762), Hank Aaron (755), Babe Ruth (714), Willie Mays (660), Ken Griffey Jr (630), Alex Rodriguez (613) and Sammy Sosa (609).

If Thome is able to reach 20 home runs for the season, he will match Sosa for seventh all time. Thome averages a home run approximately every 4.06 games, meaning he should reach the 600 club around mid-May.

400 Stolen Base Club

Ichiro Suzuki is sitting on 383 career stolen bases, leaving him just 17 short of reaching 400 career stolen bases.

While it is a far step away from the career record set by Rickey Henderson (1,406), it is still an impressive accomplishment.

Ichiro has played his entire Major League career in an era that does not value the stolen base compared with other statistics and on-field contributions. Although his career statistics from Japan are not combined with his Major League totals, he also has 220 career stolen bases in Japan’s professional league.

While he currently ranks tied for 80th on the all-time list in MLB steals, his combined total of 603 stolen bases would rank him 18th all time.

Ichiro averages a stolen base approximately every 4.14 games. If he maintains this average, he should reach his 400th stolen base in the middle of June.

Johnny Damon is actually two stolen bases closer than Ichiro to reaching 400 career steals. Entering the season, Damon has 385 career stolen bases.

His speed has decreased the past two seasons, however. After stealing 29 bases in 2008, Damon only managed 12 stolen bases in 2009 and only 11 last season with Detroit.

Damon will come close, but may need to wait until 2012 to celebrate his milestone.

With the three major milestones all presumably reached before the All-Star break, we will have plenty of time to focus our attention back to the Pujols saga.

For three games, however, these future Hall of Fame players deserve baseball’s full attention and ovations.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Wait he still plays?

Like many baseball fans, I am guilty of saying this expression from time to time. It seems like more than any other major sport, baseball players still tend to have the ability to produce in the later stages of their careers.

Every team seems to have that one old hitter that you thought retired five seasons ago. Often times we poke fun at them, but it is not deserved.

Most championship caliber teams are guilty of having these kinds of players. There is a lot of value in having a hitter that has aged like fine wine.

They can keep they clubhouse under control, they mentor young players, and they have the “game-changer mentality” to come up with a big hit.

In this list I will rank the best hitters from each team over 35 years old (at the start of the 2011 season) based on current skill, not career statistics.

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It’s like hitting the big red reset button.

Spring comes and players report to Arizona. Some have new looks with their hair or physical condition. Some spent the winter hibernating while others never stopped to enjoy the downtime.

You never know what you’ll get from your team heading into a new season. Unfortunately, the 2010 Mariners saw that these surprises aren’t always as sweet as the contents of a box of chocolates.

So we turn the page to 2011 and find out what surprises lie ahead. Here are 10 of those that we might (maybe, possibly, could) see.

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This week, we take a look at the best hitter-pitcher combo in the American League.

I’m one who believes total value wins championships. Not pitching, not defense and not a power bat. If you have the overall balance and more total value, you’re the best.

So, then, it would be important to have both a solid bat (who can play defense, but that’s not factored in here) and an ace on the mound. A door slammer if you will.

There are a few things I valued highly when sorting these rankings. Some of them will be viewed as unconventional to some readers, and that’s fine. I welcome any and all comments below.

For batters, I used an advanced metric called Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+). The link can explain this to you far better than I can. In a nut shell, though, wRC+ is a park and league adjusted stat that combines everything a player does to contribute to runs scored.

Why is this better than conventional stats? It’s not Player A’s fault no one is ever in scoring position when he gets a hit, so RBI is kind of sneaky in that it doesn’t tell the whole story. Same with Player B who always gets stranded at third. His run total isn’t revealing everything.

For pitchers, I went with Fangraph’s version of WAR. Pretty much every way I looked at pitchers, they shook out in the same order. I put very little stock into stats like wins for pitchers, but having to defend that became a lot less likely now that Felix Hernandez won a Cy Young with such a low win total.

For both pitchers and hitters, I made some adjustments for expected regression due to age, luck etc.

Now that we have that stuff out of the way, let’s get to the results.

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From “Mr. Mariner” to “The Bone,” there have been nicknames.

From Arquimedez Pozo’s one plate appearance to Edgar Martinez’s franchise record 8,678, there have been different lengths of stays.

Since 1977, the Mariners have employed hundreds of players. While not every team has a history rich with players like the Yankees, they all have a large pool of players where you’ll find interesting characters who defined the franchise.

The following rankings were determined by a combination of stats, longevity with team and character. Only factors we know were considered.

Without further delay, here is a look at 50 players who wore the trident or compass rose that we’ll never forget.

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It happens every year. We set our sights on a player who we think will carry us to a championship, and we overpay. Last year, I choose to ride the Ricky Nolasco express based on all the pre-season hype. I missed him in the draft but decided to pay for him via trade. I paid for the mistake by going on that bumpy ride all season long. 

Looking through some early mock drafts, I came up with a list of players that I feel are being drafted too high in these pre-season drafts. Now don’t get me wrong, I would like to have some of these players on my team as some of them are very good. The problem that I have is with the position in which they are being taken. 

Some of their average draft positions (ADP) make me shake my head with disgust knowing that people are planning to take these players at that given time. I will attempt to explain why I think these nine players are ranked too high in 2011 mock drafts. 

I will also try to provide a list of players from the same position that are being taken after that said player to prove that their are better options at a cheaper price: A true win/win scenario.

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Right Field is usually the place where the guy with the strongest arm is put so that he can throw players out going to third.

The ball is also not hit too often to right field, and in general this player is better in the batter’s box than out in the field.

So with this in mind I thought I would pick the best right fielder in each teams franchise history. In this ranking I took into account both hitting and fielding, with a slight emphasis on the first.

If you don’t agree with my opinion feel free to comment what you think.

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In professional baseball, unlike the other major professional sports, twenty years is a benchmark of sorts for a career. 

Sure, a player can go to the Hall of Fame having played 18, 15, or even 10 seasons, but 20 seasons is generally held out as the symbol of full career as a major league baseball player.

To that end, then, the 2011 season represents the beginning of the second half of the careers of three of the most unique players of all time: Ichiro Suzuki, Adam Dunn, and Albert Pujols.

It is hard to believe that it has already been ten years since the 2001 baseball season. 

With President George W. Bush only recently inaugurated, and before Barry Bonds set the world on fire and then turned it on its head, Suzuki, Dunn, and Pujols all reported to camp in the spring of that year hopeful for things to come.

For Adam Dunn, spring training 2001 was just the next step in the progression towards inevitable super-stardom. 

Drafted in the second round by the Cincinnati Reds in the 1998 draft, Dunn had ripped apart Single-A in 2000, hitting 16 home runs and scoring 101 runs in 122 games.  He also had 100 walks and 24 stolen bases.  His batting average of .281 was fine, but his .428 on-base percentage jumped off the page. 

Dunn pretty much knew he wouldn’t be joining the Reds out of camp, but he knew his days as a minor leaguer were numbered.

Ichiro Suzuki entered spring training of 2001 as a Japanese superstar and a burgeoning international celebrity.  Already a veteran of nine seasons of Japanese ball by the age of 26, Ichiro came to the U.S. with nothing left to prove in Japan but everything to prove to an excited but slightly skeptical American public.

All eyes were on Ichiro as a curious Mariners fanbase wondered what to expect.

All eyes were not, however, on Albert Pujols in the spring of 2001.

Drafted in the 13th round of the 1999 draft, Pujols an excellent season split between Single-A and A-plus ball, with a cup of coffee at Triple-A.  But at 21 years of age, Pujols came into the spring just hoping to find a spot on a team that was coming off of a division title and trip to the NLCS the previous year. 

Indeed, that spring all eyes would have been on the aging and injured Mark McGwire, who’d hit 32 home runs in just 89 games, and was hoping to be able to stay healthy for one more great season.

The rest, as they say, is history.

In his first game as a major leaguer, Ichiro went 2-for-5 with two singles, a strikeout, and a run scored.  He would end up living up to every top billing, leading in the American League in plate appearances, at-bats, hits, and stolen bases and winning the batting title with a ridiculous .350 batting average while leading the Seattle Mariners to an absurd 116 wins. 

He also became only the tenth player since 1901 to win a batting title while leading the league in plate appearances.

For his 2001 performance, Ichiro won the American League Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year Awards, the second player in history to accomplish that feat.

Dunn did, in fact, start the season in the minors, with the Reds’ Double-A affiliate.  But he wasn’t there long; in 39 games Dunn hit 12 home runs, scored 30 runs, and batted .343 with a 1.113 OPS. 

Progressing to Triple-A, he then hit 20 more home runs in 55 games with 53 RBI and 44 runs scored, while batting .329 with a 1.117 OPS.  By late July, he was in Cincinnati, where he hit 19 more home runs with 54 runs scored in only 66 games. 

Dunn had arrived.

As for Pujols, he did break camp with the big club, and in his major league debut he went 1-for-3 with one caught stealing while playing left field in an 8-0 loss to the Colorado Rockies. 

The next day he went 0-for-5 while playing right field. 

Two days later, he went 3-for-5 with a home run and two runs scored, and two days after that he was moved to third base full time. 

By the end of April, the rookie was batting .370 with a 1.171 OPS and eight home runs. 

By the end of May, he was still hitting .351 and had 16 home runs. 

The 21 year old kid no one had ever heard of stay hot all summer and into the fall, and by the end of the season he had 47 doubles, 37 home runs, 130 RBI, 112 runs scored, a .329 batting average, a 1.013 OPS, and a Rookie of the Year Award.

A new era of major league baseball had begun, just in time for the 21st Century.

Incredibly, what began as an amazing and delightful 2001 season for Ichiro, Pujols, and Dunn has essentially continued for ten years. 

Ichiro has continued to rack up hits, score runs, and hit .300 or higher at a record breaking pace. 

Dunn has become one of the purest expressions of all-or-nothing power in baseball history, hitting 38 or more homeruns for each of the last seven seasons while drawing 100 walks and striking out nearly 200 times, seemingly, every season. 

Meanwhile, Pujols has emerged as nothing less than one of the greatest overall hitters of all time, already having hit 408 homeruns in only 10 seasons, while batting .331 with a 1.050 OPS, and nearly 300 fewer strikeouts than walks for his career.

The Baseball Hall of Fame’s requires a player to have ten years of playing time at the major league level to be eligible for entry into the Hall, which means that Ichiro, Pujols, and Dunn all became eligible when they played their first game last season.

Incredibly, Ichiro and Pujols are almost certainly already slam-dunk Hall of Famers.

And so on this, their collective 11th season, it would be tempting to ask the question “Where are they going?” and to attempt to answer that question by simply multiplying their stats by two.

Incredibly tempting, in fact.  Afterall, if Ichiro, Pujols, and Dunn can do for the next ten years what they have done for the last ten years, they will put up the following staggering statistics:

Ichiro : 4,488 hits; 2094 runs scored; 788 stolen bases.

Dunn : 1,730 runs scored; 1,660 RBI; 708 homeruns; 1,980 walks; 3,264 strikeouts.

Pujols : 2,372 runs scored; 3,800 hits; 852 doubles; 816 homeruns; 2,460 RBI; 1,828 walks; 7,060 total bases.

It simply boggles the mind.

But “simply” is an appropriate word, because this kind of analysis is far too simple.

After all, we’ve all been here before.

What was it that we thought Ken Griffey, Jr., was on his way to accomplishing as he entered his thirties. 

Every statistic Sandy Koufax ever compiled came by the age of 30; he retired before he turned 31 because of a chronically injured elbow. 

Addie Joss died at the age of 30.  Dale Murphy simply stopped hitting at the age of 32.  Shawn Green stopped hitting at 31. 

Dwight Gooden went over 200 innings for the last time at the age of 28. 

Darryl Strawberry played over 63 games only once after the age of 29.

And there are, of course, other factors. 

Ichiro, for example, is already 37 years old. While we wouldn’t put it past him to play ten more years, it would certainly be surprising. 

Dunn, meanwhile, has a style of play that seems tailored to the previous power-centric era in a league that appears to be moving into a pitchers’ era.

As for Pujols, well, it would appear as though only injuries can stop this guy. 

Albert Pujols is the 21st Century’s answer to Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, and Rogers Hornsby—guys who never stopped being able to hit, and just got too old, tired, or sick to keep going to the ballpark every day. 

Pujols is Musial’s only challenger for greatest Cardinal of all time, Gehrig’s only challenger for the greatest first baseman of all time, Hornsby’s only challenger for greatest right-handed hitter of all time, and Williams’ only challenge for greatest hitter of all time.

And after that, there is only one thing left to challenge, and only one player left to challenge for it.

Might Albert Pujols one day surpass Babe Ruth as the Greatest Player of All Time?

I dunno.

Ask me again in ten years.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Baseball purists and new-age sabermetricians have argued about the existence of “clutch” hitting ever since statistical evaluation became possible. But whether you believe in the advanced metrics or not, you can’t deny that certain players have a penchant for coming through when it matters the most.

Here are the 10 last hitters than an opposing pitcher wants to see in the bottom of the ninth inning with the winning run on base.

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Winning a major baseball award is typically a big step towards fame, riches and potentially a place in the MLB Hall of Fame. But not every MVP, ROY, Cy Young or Rolaids Relief award winner is destined for greatness. Some of them simply become trade bait.

With the baseball off-season wrapping up and Spring Training just around the corner, here’s a look at 10 major award winners who could be changing teams this year.

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