Ichiro 4000 Hits RT

That's an extremely good point. Minoso was almost universally forgotten last night. Here's more on that:

http://sabr.org/latest/simkus-ichiro-suzuki-minnie-minoso-and-4000-career-professional-hits

The list is either

1. Rose/Cobb
or
2. Rose/Cobb/Aaron/Statz/Franco/Minoso/Jeter/Musial/Ichiro

Still an exclusive list, to be sure. But there is no list of "4,000 professional hits" leaders that goes: Rose/Cobb/Ichiro. There just isn't, no matter how you want to manipulate it.

I'm fine with celebrating Ichiro's accomplishment. It's deserving recognition for an all-time great hitter. He's a lock for the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown based solely on his MLB career.

But he's not on a 4,000-hit-club list of three. He's on a list of nine (or seven, depending on the criteria you want to use.) Nippon Professional Baseball is not Major League Baseball. It's just not. But if you're going to include his Japanese stats, then you should include Jigger Statz's PCL stats of the 1930s, too, since that league was probably comparable. And if you're going to include all professional stats, then Minoso and the others simply must be included, too.

 

But then we come around to the argument that Cobb didn't face Black Americans and Cubans and people from other Caribbean countries. Different eras. Ichiro has an impressive record and is still playing well. The problem with saying Ichiro faced inferior pitching is that he didn't miss a beat when he came to the US and had 200 hits how many times.

I'm going to enjoy Ichiro playing, especially if he gets some key hits for the Yankees.

 

The Japanese league has inferior pitching, overall.
Ichiro Suzuki is a Hall of Fame-caliber hitter in any league.

Both statements are true.

 

Exactly.

 

So do you also believe Koufax doesn't merit a mention with Christy Mathewson or Warren Spahn, because like Ichiro, Koufax had a shorter career because of reasons he had no control over?

 

The 3 leading vote getters for the 2001 AL ROY were Ichiro, Sabathia and Soriano

 

Of course he had superior stats. He played against inferior competition. He played on inferior playing surfaces that undoubtedly led to 10-15 bad-hop base hits every year. He played all day games. He had no coast--to-coast travel. He didn't face specialty relief pitchers. Opponents used gloves the size of a baking oven.

 

No pitching staffs watered down by expansion. No modern training or scouting methods. Inferior playing surfaces that could have slowed him down, limiting one of his assets as a player.

 

"Pitching staffs watered down by expansion" is such BS. There is an effect, but it only lasts a year or two and then corrects itself.

The major leagues have expanded at far less than the rate of U.S. population growth since Cobb's time. And then when you add in blacks, Latinos, Asians, Carribean islanders and other international players being allowed to play in the majors, the percentage of quality pitchers in MLB now is the same --- if not better --- than it was 100 years ago.

 

Actually, I was mentioning it as a balancing factor to the lack of minorities in the game during Cobb's time. Each era has its challenges and limitations.

The funny part is the poster using coast-to-coast travel as an issue while at the same time arguing in favor of counting Suzuki's numbers in Japan with its very limited travel distances. But that's okay. The entire argument is foolish, so why not include such blatant contradictions?

Suzuki compiled a big chunk of his hits in the equivalent of a minor league. He does not have 4,000 major-league hits. Y'all need to get over that.

 

This is really kind of a pointless discussion, as no one on either side has disputed Ichiro's surefire Hall of Fame status. 4000 is just another number. Nobody rates Rose ahead of Cobb as a player.

 

Oh, it's completely silly, but you've got a bunch of Yankee fans swallowing whatever the team feeds them and Suzuki fans who can't accept that their guy really isn't part of the 4,000-hit club.