#MLBVideos: Ichiro’s MLB career was truly unbelievable (and 5 CRAZY stats that show it!) 👏

Ichiro’s MLB career was truly unbelievable (and 5 CRAZY stats that show it!) 👏

Ichiro Suzuki was a singular player in a power-p packed era. The first Japanese-born position player in MLB history always seemed to be playing a different game altogether. It made him a nearly unanimous selection for the Hall of Fame. Here are five numbers that set Ichiro apart even from the rest of his Bronx brethren in Coopertown. Let’s lead off with 27 years 162 days. That was Ichiro’s exact age at the time of his MLB debut with the Mariners on April 2nd, 2001. Coming to the United States to play at the highest level had been Icho’s dream from the time he debuted with the Orex Blue Wave of Nepon Professional Baseball’s Pacific League in 1992. With a pendulum-like motion of his leg, Ichro’s swing was unusual and so was his goal. There would be other Asian-born players to make the move prior to Ichro, but they were all pitchers. The thought that a contactoriented Japanese position player could succeed against elevated competition was unheard of and posting roles prevented Ichiro from making the move anyway. But Ichiro was no ordinary player. He had dominated Japan. He set a Pacific league record by hitting 385 as a 20-year-old and route to winning seven straight batting titles. He won the league’s triple crown at age 21 and three straight MVP honors by age 22. He had little or nothing left to prove in his homeland. It was only natural that he would want to see how he could fare against the highest level of competition. It wasn’t until after the 2000 season that the Orics club, knowing it had no chance of signing Ichro after his approaching free agency, opted to post him and make him available to MLB teams prior to his final season of contractual control. The Mariners won the blind bid it took to negotiate with Ichiro, and he arrived at an age in which most MLB players are at their fully formed professional peak. Ichiro already had 1,278 hits to his name in the Japanese league. But shifting to the states meant seeing new and different types of pitching. It was hard enough to know if he could even transition successfully, let alone have any kind of longevity in MLB. Instead, against all mathematical odds, Iro reached the 30,000 hit club in his MLB years alone. That makes his debut at 27 years, 162 days, by far the oldest for a player who would go on to reach 3,000 hits. The previous oldest had been Wade Bogs at 23 years, 299 days, or 3 years, 96 days younger. Ichiro and MLB’s hit king Pete Rose are the only players to acrew 3,000 hits from their age 27 season onward. Rose with 3,357, Icho with 3,89. The next highest in the integration era is 2,635 by Stan Musual. When Ichiro reached 3,000 MLB hits, he was 42 years, 9 months, and 156 days old. That made him the second oldest player to join the club behind Cap Anen, who played his entire career in the 19th century. All told, Iro finished his professional career with 4,367 hits. Though his 4,257th professional hit, which passed Rose’s MLB total, was acknowledged by the fans at Petco Park when he reached that mark with a double for the Marlins on June 15th, 2016. Ichiro’s Japanese numbers don’t count toward his major league hit total. Still, this was a human hit machine who debuted in MLB unusually late, got the hang of it immediately, and crafted his own special place in baseball history. Next up, 25. That’s the number of pitches Ichro faced with his career average below 300. Think about that. Iro faced a total of 39,64 pitches in his career, but only 25 of them came with his career average below 300. In his MLB debut, Iro went two for five in a 5 to4 victory over the A’s. The next day, he went 0 for four to drop his average down to a very unro like 222 with even some players on his own team doubting that unusual style of hitting would work in the majors. and a wave of Japanese and American media following his every move closely. It would have been very easy for Ichro’s season to spiral in an opening slump. But in his third game, he singled in his first at bat to reach 300. And when he singled in his next trip to the plate, he never looked back. He appeared in 19 MLB seasons, played in 2,653 games, logged a total of 10,734 played appearances, and was never below 300 again. It’s consistency extended to so many areas. He hit 312 at home and 310 on the road. He hit 304 against righties and 329 against lefties. He hit 317 in first halves, 304 in second halves. He hit 317 with no outs, 307 with one out, and 305 with two outs. He hit .307 in high leverage situations and 307 in low leverage situations. He hit 311 with no runners on base and you guessed it, 311 with runners on. When Ichro recorded his final at bat at age 45 in 2019 in an MLB game in Japan that amazingly just like his debut resulted in another 5 to4 Mariners victory over the A’s. He finished with a 311 average. It would have to come out of retirement suit up again and go 0 for 382 or almost 96 over 0 for4s more than half an MLB season to fall back below 300 for his career. What do you want to bet? He’d get a hit in at least one of those games, though. Now, let’s hone in on one of those splits for our third number, 329. Again, that’s what Ichro batted against lefties, which is crazy because he batted left-handed. Actually, I was a natural right-hander who hit lefty. In MLB history, there have only been 406 players who batted left and threw right, and Iro is the only one among them who torched lefties to this degree. His 329 average versus lefties was the best ever for any lefty batter and actually better than his 304 average against righties. As a matter of fact, the only four right-handed batters with at least 1,500 at bats against lefties and a better average off southpaws than Icho were Kirby Pucket, Manny Ramirez, Derek Jeter, and Moyes Aloo. Iro’s 2004 season versus Southpaws is especially shocking. He hit 404 off lefties that year, becoming the first lefty hitter with a minimum of 100 plate appearances against lefties to surpass 400 in a season in those matchups since Stan Musual in 1948. The entire league of left-handers in MLB in 2004 hit 257 off lefties. If you remove each row from the equation, that number drops to 250, a 7point difference because of one human being. Our fourth amazing IRO number is 2,244. This is how many hits Ichro had from 2001 through 2010 with the Mariners. That’s the most in history for a player in his first 10 MLB seasons. Ichro had at least 200 hits in each of those 10 seasons. That matches Pete Rose for the most 200 hit seasons in a career. But unlike Ichro, Rose did not notch his 10 200 hit seasons consecutively. Ichiro’s average of 224 hits in that 10 season span has only been exceeded in an individual season by a player, Icho included, 58 times in the modern era, which dates back to 1901. Since Ichro’s 2001 debut, the only player other than to have that many hits in a single season was Joseé Altuve in 2014 with 225. Iro had at least one hit in 130 plus games in five seasons. No one else has two such seasons. He had five seasons with at least 70 multi-hit games. No one else has done that even twice. In the 162 game era, Ichiro has the top two, three of the top six and five of the top 18 single season hit totals. His 242 hits with the record- tying 116 win Mariners in 2001 were the most ever by a player in his first season. And in 2004, he passed George Sysler’s 257 hit record, albeit in more games. Iro finished that season with an MLB best 262 hits, leading second place Juan Pierre of the Marlins by 41 hits. That 41 hit edge is the largest gap in history between first place and second place in the hits tally. It is also second on that list, beating out Brett Boone and Rich Aurelia by 36 apiece in his 2001 rookie season. Our final number is 58. This is how many infield hits Ichiro had after the age of 40. The infield hit, the ability to turn what for many would be a routine ground out into a single was Icho’s greatest superpower. There are those who will chide him for stacking singles, and they’re not wrong. IRO’s 362 doubles are the fewest for any member of the 3000 hit club, and his 117 homers are identical to the total put up by Tai Cobb, who played the majority of his career in the dead ball era. But nobody hunted hits like Iro, who applied his skill set superbly and created singles in situations where they simply did not appear possible. Infield hits have been accurately tracked going back to 2002, which was Icho’s second season. Since that data became available, Ichro is the only player with more than 300 infield hits. He’s also the only player with more than 400 infield hits. And he’s the only player with more than 500 infield hits. That’s right. He’s the only player this century who is a member of the 300, 400, and 500 infield hit club. He has 551 infield hits that have been tracked by fan graphs since his sophomore season in MLB, and that’s 257 more than anybody. Derek Jeter is second in that time frame with 294. All of that is incredible, but Ro’s longevity at legging out infield hits is even more extraordinary. 58 of his infield hits came in his age 40 plus seasons. No one else in recorded infield hit history has anywhere near that number north of 40. The next closest is Hall of Famer Craig Beio with 31. So Ichro bests him by 87%. So it’s not just the number of MLB hits that Iro assembled that makes him such a historical outlier, but the way in which he got them. And when you add in his double-digit steals total every season from age 27 through age 42 and the fact that he’s the only player other than Johnny Bench to win a gold glove in each of his first 10 MLB seasons, Ichro was a complete player. He was also a singular player. When he crossed the Pacific and stormed the major leagues, we had never seen anything like him and we still haven’t.

These stats are jaw-dropping 🤯

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