Much has been made about Derek Jeter for breaking Lou Gehrig's record as the Yankees all-time hit leader with 2,722 hits, and rightfully so.

Still the speculation that he is going to break Pete Rose's record of 4,256 career hits is a little premature.

Rose said it best himself when recently asked about Jeter's acheivement.

“You tell Derk the first 3,000 are easy,” the current hit king stated.

What everyone is failing to realize is that Jeter at age 35 has 2,691 hits with 43 games left this year. He's averaging 1.31 hits a game this year. If he hits at that pace for the rest of the year he will have a total of 2747 career hits.

Rose, at the season which he was 35, had 2762 hits.

Jeter is only 15 hits behind his pace. The likelihood he continues to play until the age of 45 as Pete Rose did is not good, as teams now continue to rely on younger talent compared to 70s/80s. Atop of that, there is the risk of inury.

Regardless, you need to put it into perspective before just looking at the career stats and deem Jeter to be too old to make up the difference (whereas Pete Rose was able to produce from 36-45).

CAREER STATS (Baseball-Reference.com)
--Derek Jeter
--Pete Rose

MLB pete rose, new york yankees, derek jeter, hit record