Seems Like 5,000 Total Bases Is Not Considered A Major Milestone (but maybe we should be looking for Adrain Beltre to reach it next year)

Albert Pujols achieved it earlier this year and it looks like it did not get much notice.

Click here to see the career leaders in TBs at Baseball Reference.

Pujols was the 20th player to reach 5,000 TBs. 29 guys have 3,000+ hits and Ichiro Suzuki is only 10 away. It will probably get alot of media coverage when he gets there.

Click here to see the career leaders in Hits at Baseball Reference.

27 guys have 500+ HRs and usually there is some fanfare when that plateau is reached.

Click here to see the career leaders in HRs at Baseball Reference.

So it might be harder to reach 5,000 TBs yet it does not seem like a big deal when a guy gets there. Maybe it is because many of the guys who reached it have another milestone, like 3,000 hits or 500 HRs.

9 members of the 5,000 TB club have under 500 HRs and 7 members have under 3,000 hits. But only one player, Lou Gehrig, had both under 500 HRs and 3,000 hits while still getting at least 5,000 TBs.

Adrian Beltre currently has 2,852 hits, 425 HRs and 4,772 TBs. In his career, he has averaged 1.67 TBs per hit, so with 136 or 137 hits he could get to 5,000 TBs.  (at age 37 he is averaging 1.6 TBs per hit this season). If he reaches 5,000 TBs sometime next year, he will have under 500 HRs for sure since if his next 57 hits were all HRs, he would be there but have only 482 HRs. But Beltre  would probably go over 3,000 hits soon after reaching 5,000 TBs, so Gehrig will probably stay in his unique position.

There is a table at the end of the post with all the guys who had 5,000+ TBs. If they were under 500 HRs or 3,000 hits, those numbers are in red.

15 of the 20 guys with 5,000+ TBs are in the Hall of Fame. The 5 who are not are either still active or have some type of scandal associated with them: Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Pete Rose, Rafael Palmeiro and Albert Pujols.

Only 13 of the members of the 3,000 hit club have 5,000+ TBs. Only 11 members of the 500 HR club reached 5,000 TBs. So it might be that 5,000 TBs is harder to get than those other two milestones and getting either one of them does not guarantee you the TB level.

Rk	Player	TB	H	HR
1	Hank Aaron	6856	3771	755
2	Stan Musial	6134	3630	475
3	Willie Mays	6066	3283	660
4	Barry Bonds	5976	2935	762
5	Ty Cobb	5854	4189	117
6	Alex Rodriguez	5805	3111	695
7	Babe Ruth	5793	2873	714
8	Pete Rose	5752	4256	160
9	Carl Yastrzemski	5539	3419	452
10	Eddie Murray	5397	3255	504
11	Rafael Palmeiro	5388	3020	569
12	Frank Robinson	5373	2943	586
13	Ken Griffey	5271	2781	630
14	Dave Winfield	5221	3110	465
15	Cal Ripken	5168	3184	431
16	Tris Speaker	5101	3514	117
17	Albert Pujols	5098	2747	575
18	Lou Gehrig	5060	2721	493
19	George Brett	5044	3154	317
20	Mel Ott	5041	2876	511