Every Mariners fan misses the days when Ichiro Suzuki put an absolute clinic on Major League Baseball pitching. In his first 9 years in the league he batted over .330 and had a staggering amount of hits, thanks to playing in 99% of his games, leading off every single time, and hardly ever drawing a walk. Ichiro would swing at everything and still manage to get base hits. The most remarkable thing about it is that he hardly ever struck out. He is by far the best hitter I’ve ever seen, and in his prime he was arguably the best in the game next to Albert Pujols (who has mysteriously paralleled his career batting average over the years).
A lot of people are debating whether or not Ichiro’s Japanese hits should count, saying that their league is like triple A and that it’s easier to hit over there. I agree that it’s probably easier to hit in Japan, but it is still unfair to ignore those hits for several reasons. They only play 144 games per year there, not 162, so if he’d played in America he’d have had 18 more games to gain ground on the hits he wouldn’t have had facing better pitching. Also, it’s not like Ichiro ever had a hard time against American pitching. After he came here he had one of the best rookie seasons of all time and consistently batted .330+ with over 200 hits per year. Not only that, but he set the all time MLB record for hits in a single season at 262, indicating that his stats are legit if you want to put him in the top five hitters of all time. The point is, if Ichiro had played in the MLB during the years he was in Japan, I think he'd have almost 4,000 hits anyway, and might even have more.
He was truly a joy to watch in his prime- a sort of reincarnation of Ty Cobb, with the arrogance to boot. I won’t deny that his personality is flawed, but that shouldn't take anything away from his talent and his accomplishments.
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