What makes the nadir of the 3,000 Hit Club so jarring to a baseball fan is the newness of this phenomenon. The explosion of offense in the 1990s wasn’t just homers, but batting average as well. Even going back 10 years, there were always a lot of players with career hit totals somewhere north of 2,000.

In 2023, that number is seven, and that’s only because there were four new members this year: Freeman, Jose Altuve, Elvis Andrus, and Andrew McCutchen. (I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Evan Longoria won’t get 72 hits over the next two weeks.) Contrast that with 2004, which featured 27 active players with 2,000 career hits.

That brings us back to Freeman. While he was always good at hitting for average throughout his 20s, his hallmark was his year-to-year consistency rather than amassing batting titles. Batting average tends to peak rather early, and Freeman wasn’t at the top of the leaderboards in either hits or batting average over the first decade of his career.

As noted above, most players see big batting average dips when they cross 30. Even looking just at players who managed 3,000 hits, their batting averages in their 30s were about 20 points lower than their 20s. Freeman didn’t get the memo, however; the three best batting averages of his career have all come within the last four seasons, despite league batting average bottoming out. This year, he’s at .335, arguably a more impressive number than his .341 in the shortened 2020 season.

- Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman collected the 2,000th hit of his career Sunday, an eighth-inning, run-scoring double, drawing a raucous standing ovation from the Dodger Stadium crowd upon reaching second base during a 6-5, 11-inning loss to the Houston Astros.

Freeman, 33, became the sixth active player to reach the milestone, along with Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, Nelson Cruz, Elvis Andrus and Andrew McCutchen. Astros second baseman Jose Altuve, with 1,961 career hits, is next closest among active players.