Beltre's chase for 500th home run among Texas Rangers milestones for 2018

The Texas Rangers open their 2018 season on Thursday with a four-game series against the defending World Series champion Houston Astros.

During the season, the Rangers can reach several milestones of note, led by Adrian Beltre's bid to join the 500 home run club. Here's a look at a few of those milestones:

▪ Adrian Beltre needs 38 home runs to join the 500 club. He has hit 38 or more home runs only once in his career, that came in 2004 — at age 25 — when he had 48.

▪ Rougned Odor needs 12 home runs to reach the 100 career mark. His 88 home runs are the most through an age 23 season in Washington/Texas franchise history and the most for a second baseman in MLB history with a minimum of 50 percent of games played at second base.

▪ Elvis Andrus needs 43 hits to reach 1,500 in his career. He is the franchise's all-time leader in bunt hits (49)

▪ Shin-Soo Choo needs 146 at-bats to reach 5,000 in his career. Choo has 23 leadoff home runs since the start of 2012, the fourth-most in the major leagues in that span.

▪ Bartolo Colon is four wins away from being the winningest pitcher from Dominican Republic. Hall of Famer Juan Marichal holds record with 253.

▪ Doug Fister needs 70 strikeouts to reach 1,000 in his career. He had a career-high 13 strikeouts on Sept. 5, 2011 at Cleveland while with Detroit.

▪ Cole Hamels is three wins away from 150 for his career. He has posted a 33-12 record (.733) over 68 starts since the July 31, 2015, eight-player trade with Philadelphia.

▪ Delino DeShields needs 38 steals to reach 100 in his career. He had a career-high and team-best 29 stolen bases in 2017.

This story was originally published March 23, 2018 at 11:10 AM with the headline "Beltre's chase for 500th home run among Texas Rangers milestones for 2018."