2008 Milestones

With the regular season starting just one week from today—when the Red Sox play the A’s in Tokyo—it’s time to take a look at what milestones players could achieve this year and how probable they are.

Most likely to happen...

Ken Griffey Jr.’s 600th home run. Junior has 593 jacks and is a lock for notching No. 600 this year. Plus, he needs 116 more bases to hit 5,000 total bases. He had more than 200 in each of the past three seasons, so unless he suffers a truly hideous injury, he should also surpass this mark easily.

Plus Next season or the year after he may be looking to join Hank Aaron and Willie Mays as the only players to have 600 home runs and 3000 hits, needs another 442 hits for 3000.

Manny Ramirez’s 500th home run. Manny has 490 regular season dingers heading into this year. It’s not a question of whether he’ll hit that 500th round tripper, but when.

Gary Sheffield’s 500th home run. He’s got 480 right now. He’ll knock in No. 500 sometime in August.

Chipper Jones’ 400th home run. He needs just 14 more to hit the mark, and he has never had a season in the bigs with fewer than 20.

Juan Pierre’s 400th stolen base. The man steals an average of 54 per season, and swiped 64 last year. Plus, he’s played 162 games for the last five seasons running.

Francisco Cordero’s 200th save. He needs 23 to get there.

John Smoltz’s 3,000th strikeout. He needs 25. For Smoltz, that’s, like, four mediocre starts.

Greg Maddux’s 5,000th inning. He needs 185 and two-thirds to get there. The man’s a horse. He’ll get ‘er done (and log his 20,000th batter faced in the process). He is also 3 wins shy of reaching 350 on his career.

Tim Wakefield’s 100th wild pitch. He’s just 8 away, he throws a knuckleball, and his personal catcher just got released. Enough said.

Tom Glavine’s 200th loss. He’s at 199 right now. This is as close to a lock as preseason predictions get.

Johan Satana's 100th win. Needs just 7 more. A nice milestone to reach in first year with the Mets. Met fan hope this is the first of many.

Jason Isringhausen's 300th save. Just 19 save will get him there, can he stay off the DL long enough?

Derek Jeter's 2500th hit. There is talk already of when he'll reach the hall of fame bench mark of 3000 hits, need 144 hits this season to be within 500.

Possibly Could Happen...

Randy Johnson’s 300th win. The Big Unit needs just 16 more victories to get there. Yeah, he only had 4 last year. But in the three previous seasons, when he was 40, 41, and 42, he had 16, 17, and 17, respectively.

Andruw Jones’ 400th home run. He needs 32 to get there, and has had five seasons with more than that number. On the other hand, he’s also logged five seasons with fewer. Toss-up.

Vladimir Guerrero’s 400th home run. Vlad needs 35 to get it done, which would be a very good year for him.

Omar Vizquel’s 400th stolen base. Yes, he’s lost a step with age. But the odds are even on him snagging the 20 he needs to reach the milestone.

Eric Gagne’s 200th save. Can he get 23? He hasn’t saved even 20 games since 2004

Tom Glavine’s 700th start. He needs 31, and the last time he had fewer was in 1995.

Randy Johnson’s 100th complete game. He only needs two more.

Not very likely to happen...

Barry Bonds’ 3000th hit. It seems unlikely, at this point, that Barry will find employment this season, forcing him to retire just 65 hits shy of this storied benchmark. He’ll also retire just 14 games short of 3,000 and 4 RBI short of 2,000.

Roger Clemens’ 5,000th inning. It seems that the Rocket has retired for good this time. He’s forever going to be 83 and a third from 5,000.

Johnny Damon’s 100th triple. There’s no “100 triples” club. But Damon, 33, is third on the active list of leaders in triples (after Steve Finley and Kenny Lofton) and needs just 13 three-baggers to break the century mark.

Jeff Kent’s 400th home run. Like Guerrero, he needs 35. However, Kent has only hit that many once his his career. If Kent wants to reach 400, the 40-year old will have to hang around another year.

Jason Giambi’s 400th home run. He needs 36 homers, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility. I just don’t think he’s healthy enough to get there this year.