A few more good ones:

2000 hits in reach for-
Andrus 1999
McCutchen 1949
Altuve 1935
Freeman 1905
Longoria 1884

1000 RBIs in reach for-
Arenado 971
Stanton 971
Santana 925
JD Martinez 900
Trout 896

200 wins for Kershaw (got #198 tonight) and Wainwright (195).

Joey Votto will play his 2000th game as a Red (1991 currently), but 47 homers to catch Bench won't happen this year. Similarly unlikely to get the 41 HRs needed to catch Walker for the most by a Canadian, but the 67 hits he needs are in reach.

Miggy could theoretically take the Tigers HR crown from Kaline, but it would take a Pujolsian bounceback to a 30-HR season. He'll pass Cash for second place though (373 to 369), and play his 2000th game as a Tiger (tonight was #1981).

Kershaw could catch Drysdale for 2nd on the Dodgers wins list (209 to 198), but Sutton's out of reach for this year at 233.

German Marquez only needs 14 more K's for the Rockies' all time lead, and likely to be the first to 1000 (currently behind Jorge de la Rosa, 985 to 971). Pretty unlikely to catch him in wins until next year (86 to 64), but could get into second place (Aaron Cook, 72).

Darvish will catch Nomo for most MLB strikeouts by a Japanese player if he stays healthy (130 to go), but wins are a bit out of reach (123 to 95).

I thought it was weird so much space in the article wasted on Alvarez 100 homerun pace. I don't think anyone is really caring about something like that. The rest of the article is actual milestones though, but as post 1 points out, we kinda expected bigger deal than a guy getting to 100 homeruns in few at bats, which someone who is currently active has already beat.

Yeah, it was a weird thing to focus on, but all of us who care about baseball trivia have weird stuff we like. Me, I couldn't figure out why nobody else seemed to care about the great Encarnacion-Cruz race in 2019 for the most homers of the 2010s (Cruz made it not all that close in the end), and I'm always checking to see when the next time will be that somebody gets within 1000 steals of Rickey (hard to see it happening in the next couple of years, even with the new rules. But Elvis Andrus did just make it so that at least there's an active player who's stolen more times than Rickey got caught stealing).

Darvish will catch Nomo for most MLB strikeouts by a Japanese player if he stays healthy (130 to go), but wins are a bit out of reach (123 to 95).

I read that as Ohtani somehow and thought "no way!" and was right about that. Darvish much more believable. :-) Nomo was impressive with 1916 Ks in 1978 IP (keeping a saber fantasy team I had ... actually I don't remember how that team did, strange scoring system, as long as your pitchers K'd lots of guys it didn't much matter how they performed so Nomo was excellent). Darvish has dropped to 4th on the all-time K/9 list ... also 4th on the active list. #1 is Chris Sale who has taken over first by not pitching; Robbie Ray 2nd; deGrom 3rd ... I suppose healthy and dropping might be a better state than those guys are in right now.

Wait, Sale started the other day? I gotta start paying attention. Possibly the worst start of his career -- 3 IP, 7 H, 7 R, 3 HR, 2 BB and 0 K, I hope that's not a sign of things to come.

I think the Alvarez profile was the editor telling the writer "can we do something to make the article include someone who isn't old?"

I think the Alvarez profile was the editor telling the writer "can we do something to make the article include someone who isn't old?"

Huh, didn't think about that but that could definitely be it. People do like "youngest player to hit 40 HRs" stories, but this article is about cumulative achievements, and that's just tough to do in a meaningful way while you're young. You sometimes see "most wins before age 25" kinds of things, but I can't think of any that have captured the imagination.

We did sort of follow to see if Trout could keep up with Cobb and Mantle in the "most WAR by age X" leaderboards, but WAR isn't as much fun because you never know if somebody's going to recalculate the positional adjustment or whatever in five years and retroactively change the numbers. Trout's too well rounded of a player to look impressive on the leaderboards in any primary statistic.

Stanton needs 20 more dingers for 400. Trout has an outside shot at joining him (needs 49 more), and Nelson Cruz has a very outside shot at joining the 500 club if he could just turn back the clock for one more season (needs 41).

Several players should (or at least could) reach the 300 HR benchmark:

Arenado - needs 1
Freeman - needs 8
Cutch - needs 13
Harper - needs 15
Machado - needs 17
JD Martinez - needs 17
Rizzo - needs 17
Carlos Santana - needs 22
Judge - needs 78 ;-)

It's not a big milestone (only 311th all time and less than halfway to Hank Aaron's record) but Trout has exactly 3000 total bases now.