Article:Baseball Notebook: Players on Pace For 200 Hits

With the season very close to a third over this is a good time to see what players have a shot at having 200 hits this season. A player would need about 34 hits a month to finish with 200 hits so any player with 68 hits as of today has a shot.

Chipper Jones who is leading the majors with 77 hits is on a pace to have 231 hits by the end of the season but if he falls below .400 that number will be much smaller. Lance Berkman with 74 hits projects to have 222 hits. Josh Hamilton and Miguel Tejada with 72 hits would project to have 216 hits. Cristian Guzman is next with 69 hits which projects to give him 207 hits at the end of the season.

Garrett Atkins and Albert Pujols who have 67 hits project to have 201 hits. Ichiro Suzuki who has had seven 200 hits seasons is hitting .290 which is 61 points lower than his .351 average of last season when he had 238 hits. This season his 65 hits project into 195 hits so it won't take much for him to reach 200 hits again. Michael Young who has five consecutive 200 hits seasons has 62 so far this season is on a pace to have 186 hits so will have to step it up to reach 200 hits this season.

Slumps and injuries can change all these predictions so all we can do is let them play the games and see what the final numbers are at the end of the season.