If he had not tragically died in a plane crash, what would Roberto Clemente's chances have been to reach 3500 base hits?

The Bill James Projection Tool on ESPN is a fairly simple but accurate method to project career stats. It can be found here: 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.

He was 37 when he died and would have had to play probably 3-4 more years to reach 3500. 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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