FanNation

Ombudsman Cooz said 08/29, 08:40 PM
Ichiro...the guy who brought Japanese baseball into the forefront in the U.S. The fastest player ever to 1,500 hits.

If this was his actual sixth season, and not his 15th at a professional level, I might agree with you.

Ichiro turns 34 in October, and has been getting paid to swing since he was 18. Now, the guy can flat-out rake, but you're asking a helluva lot, even for him, to be cranking out 200+ hit seasons (assisted by infield hits) when the dude's 39. C'mon now...nothing against Ichiro, he's clearly an elite player of his generation, but the fact is, he came across the ocean too late to think he's going to have a realistic chance at 3000 hits.

Debilitating injuries do not know a specific age, but the fact is, he cannot miss any amount of time for injury for the next seven seasons.

He can always just paraphrase Vince Lombardi, "it's not that I didn't get 3,000 hits, it's just that I was a little short when the clock ran out."

It will be more true than we'll ever know.

Ombudsman Cooz said 08/29, 09:06 PM
He's going to START to slow down when he???s 40? I'm a big Ichiro fan, but that's...uh...a bit optimistic. I think it would be very cool to see a 45-year-old leadoff man cranking out 250 hits a season, but the only example we could see of that today would be Julio Franco.

Yeah, he's not doing that.

The two guys who reached 1,500 hits faster than Ichiro are Al Simmons and George Sisler. Simmons had a total of 58 hits after he turned 37, and Sisler missed a lot of time with injuries in his late thirties.

Neither player got to 3,000 hits, but both players were in MLB before they turned 27. These things don't bode well for Ichiro.

Ombudsman Cooz said 08/29, 09:32 PM
Ichiro is 34 years old! I don't care what kind of shape he's in, he is so far ahead of the curve right now in terms of injuries, the other shoe is simply waiting to drop. Naturally, his body is going to break down little by little, and he's going to lose that amazing first step he has. When that???s gone, he???ll drop from 250 hits a year to maybe 200. Then that will fall off to 180.

His entire swing is predicated on his speed. He's a slap-hitter who is able to place the ball at the exact spot where he can beat the throw by a quarter of a step. When that step is gone, he doesn't beat out half of those, and he loses maybe even as many as 50 hits a year. And none of this even gets into how easier it is for him, a professional athlete since Clinton took office the first time, to yank a hamstring one cold Seattle afternoon in April. That???s a 20 game performance decreasing injury.

I think he's a fantastic player, and he can't be judged on his cumulative statistics, but he will not reach the standard milestones of the typical great player in MLB for no other reason than he simply did not play long enough.