Poll on Ichiro

[D-train]

Clearly the guy that says he is the best player he has ever seen is the true racist. lol

[bpj]

Clearly the guy that says he is the best player he has ever seen is the true racist. lol

Unfortunately liberals have labeled everything as racist for a bit too long and people have become desensitized to the word.

True racism is pretty obvious, but people are done putting up with the "you're a racist or bigot every time you dont believe what I do" bit.

[DanielVogelbach]

Never been a fan of lead off hitter who seldom hit extra base hits, seldom ran up pitch counts, and seldom walked,. He was no Rickey Henderson, that's for sure.

Seldom ran up pitch counts? He rarely walked, but he was like the master of fouling off 10 pitches. Which Ichiro were you watching?

Everyone has to look at Ichiros power numbers when he first came to USA. Then realize he was 28 when he played as a rookie. He would have been blistering balls from age 22-27. His highest SLG% was his rookie year .457. His highest OPS was 2004 at .869. Most HRs was 15 in 2005. Based on normal career trajectory, he would've been piling up stats in MLB during 1996 - 2000.

[DanielVogelbach]

My point is that Ichiro only cared about hits. Setting hitting records. He could give a rats ass about helping the team. I remember him slap hitting into double plays when a sac fly could score a critical run.

Baseball is a sport where you can be very selfish and provide immense benefit to the team.

Clearly #51 would never intentionally slap hit into a double play. Players fail in sacrifice fly situations ALL THE TIME. The general advice is to not worry about hitting the ball into the air, just try to hit the ball hard. If it goes in the air, great. If not, you could still get a hit, which is even better than a sac fly. The only thing would be if the ball is up in the zone, you could take kind of a half swing at it and try to get it to the outfield, but then you also risk hitting it too shallow.

I watched a LOT of Ichiro ABs, and I thought he was super clutch. If he was on deck, I wanted him coming to the plate in a clutch situation. I never once worried about his selfishness hurting the team. You can remember all the slap hitting into double plays that you want. I remember him barreling up balls.

Bunts and infield singles helped Ichiro get on base. But, in three separate MLB seasons he amassed over 30 doubles. Some folks are talking like the guy never hit a ball that left the infield. He could absolutely rip the ball.

[bpj]

He could when he wanted to. Unfortunately most of the time he wanted to slap it somewhere for a single.

[D-train]

How's this for a split.

OPS in wins: .855
OPS in losses: .660

[bpj]

Good RF / Bad RF