If he had not tragically died in a plane crash, what would Roberto Clemente's chances have been to reach 3500 base hits?
Even though I grew up in Chicago, Roberto Clemente was one of my favorite baseball players. Jack Brickhouse, the legendary Cubs TV broadcaster, always made a point of discussing Clemente at length when the Cubs and Pirates played. He died after the 1972 season. Give me your best researched estimate as to if he would have amassed 500 more hits if he had survived.
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M$2 Answers
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/assessments
Using Clemente's stats, the tool projects he would have played about 2.5 more years, at an average of 142.5 hits/year. This would result in 3356 hits for his career, with a 21.3% chance to reach 3500.
However, there are a number of factors the tool doesn't take into account - one of the most significant, in this case, may be the likelihood that Clemente could continue to find employment. I think that given Clemente's hall of fame career and reputation as a generous and caring individual, along with all the community service work he did, would have made him more attractive to teams in the late stages of his career, and therefore more likely to get playing time than your average 38-40 year old.
So my best guess, taken in tandem with the projection, would be about a 35-40% chance of reaching 3500 hits.
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M$
If he averaged 166 hits a year, he could have done it in three years, but the trend in his last five years was to average only 152 hits per season.
If he averaged 125 hits a year, he could have done it in four years. This seems like the more likely scenario, given what his age would have been. You would have to assume that as he approached 40, he might have gotten injured and played fewer games, but with only having to average 125 hits, he should have easily hit 3500 hits.
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M$
