Late last season we noted in this very space that Astros second baseman Jose Altuve was closing in on 1,000 career hits and would likely reach that benchmark by age 26. That's exactly what he did. He's back at it in 2017 as he leads the AL in hits and batting average.

If paces hold, then Altuve will win his third batting title, tally at least 200 hits for the fourth straight season and lead the AL in hits for the fourth straight season.

That's not surprising when you consider Altuve's complement of skills. He's durable, he makes contact at a high rate, and he hits the ball hard. All of that adds up to a lot of safeties. Speaking of which, he'll enter Friday night's contest with 127 hits and 1,173 for his career. That brings us to this tweet by the ever-compelling Ryan M. Spaeder ...

Yep. When it comes to racking up hits, Altuve is setting a scalding pace that not even the Hit King himself can match -- that, as you can see, is the case in terms of both games played and age. So, yeah, Altuve's mounting hit tally is going to be one to watch over the years.

To be sure, he's not likely to catch Rose's record mark of 4,256 hits. Rose, after all, racked up more than 2,700 hits from his age-30 season onward, and that's just not likely to be repeated. Still, there's no ignoring Altuve's start to his career.

Just for kicks, let's look at Altuve's chances for reaching the benchmarks of note using Bill James' Favorite Toy tool. It's a quick-and-dirty way to get a quick-and-dirty idea of how likely a player is to make it to certain career thresholds. In Altuve's case, we'll project out his 2017 hit total to 217 hits, which is what's on pace for this season. Here's what comes out of the wash ...

The Favorite Toy projects Altuve to end his career with 2,866 hits (I'll take the over on that).

The Favorite Toy gives Altuve a 42.0 percent chance to get to 3,000 hits (I'll take the over on that).

The Favorite Toy gives Altuve a 4.0 percent chance of tying Rose's record of 4,256 hits (sounds about right).

Altuve's decline phase will in large part determine how high he climbs the all-time hits list. If his decline is a methodical one and he remains healthy, then he's going to be pretty high on said list by the time he retires. Will he catch Rose? Almost certainly not, but he's off to one heck of a start.