First player to reach 3000 hits not to make the HOF?

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

None of you people who follow baseball can name the player under 30 with the most hits without looking it up?

Three names immediately come to mind. Jose Altuve, Starlin Castro and Elvis Andrus. Castro has already been named, and is wrong, so it would come down to a guess between the other two. Both guys started really, really young, and, to my knowledge, neither have ever had an injury to keep them out of a large number of games (at least, until this year, when Andrus missed a block of games. The Dallas Morning News made a big deal about how it was the first time he ever went on the DL). Altuve is a much better hitter, though Andrus started to come into his own the past two seasons, hitting around .300.

Altuve leads the league/Majors in hits like every year (he's an automatic 200 hits each season, while I don't think Andrus has ever hit that plateau), so my gut tells me to go with him. But the "surprise" factor just referenced makes me think that Andrus is the guy.

I would have never thought of him if I didn't live twenty minutes from the Ballpark in Arlington.