here's what's in store for ichiro...

for those who contend derek jeter's game has been dissected and/or minimized by his critics, you ain't seen nothin' yet -- just wait until ichiro nears the 3,000-hit mark. cripes, after reading this i can't help but think ichiro is the most overrated piece o' crap in baseball history. and he's not even a yankee!:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/sports/baseball/with-ichiro-suzuki-theres-less-than-meets-the-eye.html?ref=sports

have at it, seamheads....

 

Very good, easy read. Made a lot of interesting points in a short space.

 

And you can bet your ass that if he played for the Yankees, he'd be God's gift to baseball.

 

Jeter is the American Ichiro.

 

Good story, though some of the arguments have pretty big holes.

1. His OBP is good, it's just driven by hits instead of walks and a lot of statheads have a problem with that for some reason. I've seen sabers complain that a player's OBP is "hits-driven" like it's a bad thing. They're not obsessed with OBP, but walks. If Ichiro gets enough singles to make up for a lack of walks, what's the damn difference?

Ichiro is 27th on the active OBP list. Well, 26th since Manny Ramirez isn't really active anymore. Of the 25 ahead of him, ZERO are leadoff hitters.

2. Comparing Ichiro's stolen base totals to Raines and Rickey is silly and shouldn't have been included. Different eras. The Reyes comparison is interesting, though it's worth noting that Reyes is 27 and Ichiro didn't start here until he was 27. Age matters when speed is the topic.

Stolen base success rate is strange because players like Ichiro and Beltran get criticized when they're TOO successful, because they're not getting thrown out enough and should be trying more. Silly.

Ichiro is a good player, and a strange player. Statheads can't comprehend value that has no comps in baseball history so they cry overrated.

 

I think he was trying to say great defense is relative.

 

He's a first ballot Hall of Famer, and knocking Ichiro is a case study in how ideology breeds idiocy. I swear to God, there are members of the Church of Weird Acronyms and Decimal Points whose ideal player is like Walt Dropo or Rob Deer -- or, as was popular until this season, Adam Dunn.

 

I don't know the writer. Do you know if he's writing with an agenda?

 

Without a doubt.

 

If everyone could just agree that Ichiro is a "good, strange" player, then statheads wouldn't be calling him overrated.

 

And the other extreme...

http://www.theclevelandfan.com/component/content/article/7/8126