Phillies: 8 milestones to watch for this season

Didi Gregorius: 1,000 hits

The Phillies second-biggest addition this offseason is looking for a major addition to his career milestones by going into 2020 looking for his 1,000th career hit

Didi Gregorius has 816 career hits, just 184 shy of 1,000 in his big league career.

Over 1,000 players have reached the career milestone, but it’s a nice round number that looks good on the back of a baseball card and is certainly a notable achievement that neither you or I have or will ever reach.

From 2015-18 Gregorius averaged 146 hits a season and had at least 150 hits twice during those four seasons. Just looking at those numbers makes you think Gregorius will fall just short of the milestone.

Coming off Tommy John surgery last year Gregorius had just 77 hits, though he admits he wasn’t completely recovered from the elbow surgery. Right now Baseball Reference projects Gregorius to have 102 hits this year, which feels very low regardless of how he finished last year.

It would be a lot to ask Gregorius to have 184 hits in a season. In each of the last two seasons, 184 hits would put you in the top-10 among all big league hitters. Since 2010, 184 hits would only account in the top-10 four times, proving it’s not an easy feat.

Now that he’s fully healthy and reunited with manager Joe Girardi, it shouldn’t be too much to expect Gregorius to repeat his prior success by having around 140-150 hits this season.