Inspired by an excellent post at LoHud, I wanted to ask you whether The Captain will break Pete Rose's hits record.
Through Rose's first 14 seasons, he played in 61 more games than Jeter and accumulated only 15 more hits. For the sake of argument, we can pretty much say that Jeter is about in the same position that Rose was at this point of his career.
Rose went on to play 10 more years. He played in 1,378 games in those seasons, slapping 1,494 base knocks to give him a total of 4,256. Simple math tells us that Rose averaged slightly more than 149 hits per season on the back end of his career. Rose played until the age of 45, and his production didn't begin to drop off significantly until the last four years of his career. The six seasons prior to that, he failed to have more than 170 hits only once (in 1981 when MLB experienced a work stoppage due to a player strike).
Let's assume Jeter plays 10 more seasons to give him the same amount as Rose. Let's go a step further and assume two of those seasons will be plagued with injury (let's be honest, he is getting older). In eight healthy seasons, Jeter would need to average 157 hits to reach 4,000. Should he be healthy every season, he would only need 125 per season.
This leads us to the final number to discuss - 4,256. Again, let's assume Jeter has eight healthy seasons left. He would need to average 189 hits per season. Should he remain healthy for 10 more years, he would only need 151 per year. With a current average of 196 hits per season, it is statistically possible.
So I'm asking you to speculate on Jeter's desire to play another decade. If he does, I think he breaks the record. But will he want to?