Ichiro Was Somehow Both Underrated and Overrated at The Same Time
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Keywords: MLB, baseball, Dodgers, Giants, Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Phillies, Rangers, Astros, Pirates, Paul Skenes, Elly De La Cruz, Major League Baseball, Yordan Alvarez, Aaron Judge, Yankees, Ichiro Suzuki, Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, Red Sox, Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr
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Career WAR 60.0 starting at age 27 says it all.
That is insane. The guy is a legend.
@@Akeoni for a slap singles hitter yes indeed.
He's an outfielder version of Ozzie Smith who is offensively better. Excellent Japan career and MLB. He's a true World level of HOF.
unreal
Once he said things like he can hit 40 season HR by compensating BA down to .220 ish. If he transformed into the player, his hypothetical career WAR would have exploded.
Nope. Not overrated.
The spoiler blocker we need
If you ask most baseball fans who’s better Rod Carew, Wade Boggs, Tony Gwynn, or Ichiro, they would probably say Ichiro. Overrated.
Better at what? Hitting? Or overall player? Only boggs is on ichiro level in that group as an overall player. Hitting wise, you could argue gymnn is the guy. Ichiro is a top 25 ball player of all time.
@@kenw2225 All three of those guys are better overall players. Please give me the numbers that show Ichiro is a top 25 player of all time. We’re looking at a guy who only had a 757 OPS and 60 WAR. Don’t get me wrong Ichiro was great but at best he’s only just a top 100 player of all time.
@@ToonTwisthe “only” had a 60 war because he joined the MLB when he was 27 lmao
Imo Ichiro is the real Hit king. He proved that he was better in the MLB than Japan, had 3k hits in the mlb alone, and that's after playing 9 seasons in Japan. Idc what Rose says, ichiro is better, and he would've surpassed Rose if he had those years back.
Yea maybe. They both have fair claim to the thrown and i think its a tie. Tie for 1st is good for both of them and good for baseball
@@kenw2225Tiebreaker is Ichiro literally being the platonic ideal of a baseball player compared to pete rose being a little bitch hater
and rose saying his hs hits should be added... shows he thinks japanese baseball is hs level.
its still a pro league, just another country
@@kenw2225throne 🙄
@@anonymousYTviewer692nd best pro league in the world look how many great Japanese players came out of that league now
Was he overrated? Short answer: No. Long Answer: Nope
I'd argue the long answer is actually noooooooooooooooo
@@katalina256 ...and I would argue that your long answer is the correct one
absolutely he was
I recall one time when asked why he hits so many balls on the ground and I recall him saying something along the lines of "chicks dig base hits"... had to have been a meta-response to the "chicks dig the long ball" by Maddux and Glavine.
Was it in one of those mariners commercials they did?
Top 200 all time in career WAR and didn’t start until his late 20’s. If he started at 20 years old he’d definitely be top 100. So definitely not overrated.
Are you kidding me?this dude was a legend on and off the field. Pure LOVE for the game. Still around the clubhouse to this day.
Ichiros role was a leadoff hitter. His goal was to get on base whatever it took. Slapping the ball in the infield was the easiest way for him to do it since he was so fast. He's one of the greatest leadoff hitters ever. Top 5 at it. Not to mention Tim Mcarver called him the best right fielder he'd seen since Clemente.
Sure but being a lead off hitter doesn’t technically mean it’s more advantageous to shoot for on-base percentage vs total number of bases you can possibly earn. Just bc Ichiro was fast and could steal bases doesn’t mean it was advantageous for him to have 130 WRC+ peak hitting seasons slapping the ball around vs a power hitter like Giambi routinely being in the 175 WRC+ range. It just means he was more likely to accumulate additional value from lower value outcomes like singles vs a slow guy like Giambi if he had gotten a single.
Ichiro was definitely not overrated, not to mention was a gold glove outfielder
Statistics be damned ... Ichiro was the best player on the field at all times for most of his career.
The thing about Ichiro's approach to batting and how that makes his numbers look is important.
Back in the early 2000s there wasn't that much attention put into OBP in the MLB, which is the top of the sport, and Ichiro grew up and learned to play in Japan in the 80s and 90s, so the approach he was taught his entire life probably was "you're on the plate to hit". He wasn't naturally very strong due to his build so the default was to become a single hitter and, as with many talented players, he didn't need a ball in the zone to hit singles, particularly when he could get on base with a slow rolling to the short stop or a high bouncer to the third baseman. His speed as a complement to his batting made him a huge treath on the home plate because, as I think Frank Thomas said referring to Ichiro, "speed doesn't slump". So there was no point in squeezing a pitcher for an easy pitch to hit since anything short of a wild pitch was within his area of comfort for hitting with a good chance of getting on base, which his astronomical average during his prime shows.
Of course, in hindsight with modern sabermetrics we can see how this is at best inefficient, at worst a complete waste of a super talented batter who could have focused on balls in the zone to consistently make strong contact, and compensate the likely fewer infield hit singles with a higher number of walks and a slight increase in extrabases, but in my opinion "rule of cool" applies here: had Ichiro been that kind of player he probably would have never gotten to 3K hits, or managed to reach 200+ hits a year for a decade, including the all-time record for a single season, in a row, the bulk of which were AFTER turning 30.
And regarding his MVP season and the overall respect his numbers got, I get that revisionists history using modern data to judge basically every player ever is a thing amd has it's value, but different things are valued differently in every era. Despite being the peak of the steroid era it was still close enough to the "classical era" of baseball for fans and media to appreciate and even equate the arquetype of player that Ichiro was to sluggers, something that the data driven modern game would, correctly, never do. After all, we now see teams putting the guy that in other eras would be the 3rd or 4th batter at 2nd in the lineup, and teams with good enough depth have guys that would arguably have been 3rd for 95% of the history of baseball batting 1st. Measured against that I understand why it could be argued that Ichiro's numbers are "overrated", but the context around it is important.
He didn't walk but what about the stat of fouling the ball off 8 times in a row to get the more elite pitchers pitch count up
Of course the maximizing value potential of each at bat approach is still dominant, the discussion around it now is if its healthy for the sport to make that our singular focus in molding hitters. You cant have andrew velasquez trying to optimize his launch angle. And you gotta take a step back and think about how the game was more popular when we had elite slap hitters like ichiro, gwynn, ozzie smith, even juan pierre was kinda popular.
The pitching analogue to the maximize value approach is throwing with intensity on every pitch, ie upper 90s fastballs. The "unhealthy" consequences on that side are much more visceral. Its 2 sides of the same coin. We have to ask ourselves if this is actually what brings fans cuz its not sustainable for our players bodies and skillsets
@@2UGamingProductions MLB batters aren't taught that anymore...
Guys like Rob Neyer at ESPN were making Sabermetrics more popular in the late 90s, so there were a lot of people who had issue with Ichiro as MVP. Neyer's one-sentence summary complaint was that Jason Giambi's OBP was higher than Ichiro's SLG that year, which made Ichiro's selection indefensible in his opinion. Now that we know Giambi was on the juice, I don't really mind that he didn't win MVP, though.
underrated actually
Yet, if the Mariners were tied or down a run late in the game with nobody on, Ichiro could deliver a homer. In his time he was the most exciting player in baseball, offensively or defensively.
Ichiro was so beloved in Seattle. When Miami came to town for a game while Ichiro was there, the crowd absolutely roared when he got a hit against the Mariners. We just couldn't help ourselves.
I’ve been a Mariner fans since I can remember (born in 1985)… there’s been seasons that the only thing fun to watch, was Ichiro and Felix. Ichiro is one of my all time favorites just for holding the line in very difficult times, of there have been many here in Seattle.
Bro for real I was so happy we made the playoffs finally looks like we got a decent team
why compare him to a guy that was proven to be juiced? But even doing so wasnt far off in a couple stats.
How can you say somebody is overrated when he got 2000 hits in just 10 seasons, let that sink in
He actually had 2000 hits in 9 seasons
@@Champs-ek7lh yeah thats right, even better
Bc his OPS+ was 105. A mere 5% better than the league average hitter.
He didn't walk. He didn't hit for ANY power.
Also I think he stuck around 4 years too long because he was chasing 3000 hits.
He's definitely a great player and a HOFer. But he's not an inner sanctum, unanimous type.
Boy young kids these days
@@dukedematteo1995 He did have power though, he just never bothered to use it except when he needed to. As for sticking around too long, he never played badly really, he just kinda regressed to average at the end. His only arguably bad seasons were 2018 and 2019 where he had a .205 average with 47 PA and .000 with 6, and both these seasons were after his 3000th MLB hit. As long as he didn't drag the team down, I see no reason to not play past your prime.
I will not stand for any Ichiro slander.
Piniella said Ichiro could do anything you needed him to do during an at bat. He said if we needed him to hit for power, he could. If we needed him to hit an opposite field single, he could. He said he had such great bat control, there wasn't anything he couldn't do in the batters box.
Ichiro shows that stat geeks ruined baseball. Bring back the heroes - make baseball great again.
I wonder how many fans would, like me, sacrifice a bunch of "efficiency" to increase the fun and watchability and passion? Obviously the folks who prefer reading baseball spreadsheets to actually watching baseball games would be livid. Anyway, the toothpaste is never going back in the tube, so it's all moot anyway.
Facts. Let's get on base but hit 200 with RISP
@@2UGamingProductions - Fiction. His RISP wasn't far from his regular BA in most seasons - and it was 449 in his rookie year! There's a reason why this leadoff batter is in the top 30 in intentional walks.
I took issue with the OPS+ numbers. I think that they overvalue slug% shows they couldn't quantify Ichiro's game. Dude would slap a single, steal second, score on single or steal second and third and score on anything. He didn't need doubles or triples. He made them himself.
@@raddimusmcchoyber3362 Well, that depends. If you want your team to win the World Series, you'll sacrifice excitement for wins, no?
Otherwise, I agree that the analytics revolution has left us with a boring version of a game a lot of people already don't have the patience for.
Anyone remember how he used to put on a show during pre-game batting practice by hitting towering home runs? He could do anything. He just didn't focus on that part of his game - he loved getting hits. It worked against him from an analytics point of view, but I wish we had more people like him. People would go to games just to see him play.
Why do you want more players like Ichiro?
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te I partly answered the question above. He reaches out to fans, putting on a show before games. He was funny - he even learned some Spanish just to talk trash to Spanish speaking players. He played the game in a style that was more exciting to watch, putting the ball in play and making the game exciting whenever he was on base, and his extraordinary effort in the field. As a retired player, he is travelling around to high schools and putting on clinics for them. He seems to have a genuine love of the game - it's contagious for all who get to experience it in person, as I did once. People love him. There's a reason why MLB is adjusting the rules to reward that style of play.
My favorite player ever. The most complete player ever (imo). The GOAT (imo). I see Ichiro, I hit the like and watch all the way through (even the ad read).
Ichiro was one of the most complete players. A legend in my mind.
I'm so tired of this, seriously, the dude has been out of baseball for a long time and people are still complaining that all he did was get hits?
He was terrific in the field had a rocket arm, stole bases extremely well, and led the league in hits virtually every year while hitting over. 300 consistently.... And people actually question if he was overrated?!?
Ridiculous!! He was one of the best ALL TIME. Period.
No one asked if Pete Rose or Ty Cobb were overrated, all they did was get hits as well....
Ichiro wasn't that insane as a base stealer. He's better than Pete Rose, who's still great but overrated, but he's no Ty Cobb...
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te another thing to keep in mind is that while cobb and rose were not *home run* hitters, they could still hit for good power in the form of doubles and (especially so for cobb) triples. even in his record breaking 2004, ichiro only hit 24 doubles and 5 triples. no denying ichiro was a generational talent, but i find his overall offensive game is very overhyped
@ligmaemperor7064 It sure is. His SLG is way too low, and his only "elite" seasons were 2001 and 2004. Otherwise, Ichiro's just another great MLB player among many...
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te for as annoying as i find the massive amount of dickriding that tony gwynn also gets, he could at least hit it into the outfield and draw walks. a lot of the love that ichiro gets seems to be more out of reaction to the rise of analytics than anything else, which is fine but doesnt make it any less annoying to hear. in all honesty, he was closer to a brett phillips crossed with luis arraez than he ever was to ty cobb
@ligmaemperor7064 Ty Cobb's just at a completely different league of his own when it comes to contact hitting, but Tony Gywnn's still overhyped along with Ichiro. Ichiro was certainly the better outfield and faster while Gwynn hits more doubles and triples, but still zero match of Ty Cook. We can discuss Wade Boggs because he was raking during his prime and was an excellent third baseman...
OPS+ (and similar metrics) fail at the extremes in my opinion. I think, in particular, it vastly overrates the Mendoza Line power hitters like Schwarber now and Gallo a few years ago and it underrates low power, volume hitters like Ichiro was and Arraez is now.
I think he has the highest rdp on Baseball Reference (most runs from not grounding into double plays.) It’s one of the many details that gets overlooked.
Ichiro slander of any kind is diabolical and should be come with consequences
As a teenager growing up in southeast Tennessee we very rarely got to watch Ichiro play on TV, but I watched sports center every morning. His highlight were amazing and I always wished I could watch him play on TV more. Dude is a legend.
Greatest Japanese baseball player ever
The fact that people equate the Japanese pro league to single A ball is absurd. It’s the most popular sport of a country with more than 120 million people. If Ichiro put up the kind of numbers he did as a rookie in Japan, you could expect him to do pretty well had he played in the MLB instead.
Where are you seeing people equate NPB to A-ball? The claim I usually see is that the level of play is between AAA and MLB, closer to AAA.
Ichiro played a kind of ball that lots of fans, including/especially casual fans, love to watch. This is sacrilege to many analytics folks, for whom "efficiency" is all.
Efficiency wins ball games, how many rings does Ichiro have again?
Ichiro's playstyle works far better in postseason games. Analytics baseball only works well in the regular season...
But yes, Ichiro's playstyle was way more fun to watch...
Such a legend
stats be damned ichiro is one of those ball players who passes the eye test with flying colors
It exemplifies the prejudice MLB minds once had about the NPB that Piniella didn't even consider the idea that a guy who had already played _nine years_ of pro ball in Japan would know not to show all of his cards in meaningless spring-training games.
His quotes were underrated. He also did this in steriod era while clean
i aint even watch the video yet but i will say he is my favorite player to ever step foot on a mound
Ichiro wasn’t a pitcher
@@Natey11 not in the mlb but after he retired he pitched in a couple of mens league games and one of his starts he threw a no hitter
@@6efrat W Ichiro
He was 1 time
Ichiro is no way, shape or form overrated. He was a prototypical Leadoff hitter and a 4 star menace.
Stats that normalize offensive environment like any "+" stat do a great disservice to Ichiro. It's not fair to compare him using today's analytics to players that juiced. If we want to assess how good Ichiro was by today's analytics, it's better to compare him to the current offensive environment in 2024. This would show how underrated he really was
Terrific video. And the highest of compliments to the effort you have clearly put in on your voiceover technique. It has really paid off!
Ichiro Suzuki could've been the first dual player in professional baseball. He was an excellent pitcher in high school and an consistent batter.
He knew for longevity for his career he needed to choose one over the other.
@@LaurelRawson Actually, in Japan the coach tells you what position you should play so Suzuki did not really have a choice. He did mention that if the times were different, he would've like to try being a dual player on an interview in Japan. Many pitchers in high school baseball in Japan are also good hitters.
If they had needed him to hit home runs, he certainly could have. Instead, he set the table for a litany of home run hitters. Baseball needs more hit leaders to balance out lineups. Also, his defense and base running are elite.
He was a complete baseball player, no fringes all fundamentals. I appreciate the career as a whole. Hitting high for average an entire career requires disciplined focus.
🤔Come on now,Ichiro worked by giving 100 percent and then some for his love of the game.
How can you ask if he is overrated.
His legacy speaks for him.😎
No one will ever have a 10 consecutive year run like Suzuki. Incredible.
And it could have been 15!
Is the best contact hitter in the history of baseball who was almost always a good defender overrated gang?
Takes like this are why Ichiro is considered overrated.
Arguably the best. Tony gywnn for example has a claim, among a handful of others. But your point remains
@@ToonTwist record single season hits only hitter with 2 top 10 seasons tied for 10 straight 200+ hits seasons over 3000 mlb hits when starting as a rookie at 27. All this post integration and live ball era
Sorry you don’t know ball bro
@@kenw2225 Tony’s probably the only hitter that comes close
@@dravenpop None of the things you just mentioned show how good a player is.
You don’t know ball.
Moral of the story: you can call almost any player under or overrated if you cherry pick the right stats.
In my opinion, he played the game like a chess grandmaster. Single+SB results in a player in scoring position exactly the same number of times as a double but you get in the pitchers head. And for Ichiro a good lead on first could be scoring position. Who needs dingers or even extra base hits when you have speed? At the end of the game all that matters is the runs on the board. How you get them doesn’t matter.
As for the defense, him being underrated is news to me. If this is a thing I’ve never heard it.
Disrespectful to call this man Overrated
You know who was overrated? Jorge Posada
Why do you say Jorge Posada's overrated?
Contact hitters, especially those who didn’t really walk won’t really show a ton of value as compared to a consistent power hitter who walks a ton(WAR offensively is very skewed to those guys) but even so I think that getting on base by putting the ball in play consistently to force the defense to do something is a great attribute that many undervalue because many stats are context neutral in that sense.
Ichiro isn’t as polarising as someone like Yadi in my opinion. These are both HoF-worthy guys with tremendous longevity and premium defense at a valuable position. While their hitting attributes are (this is gonna sound bad) pedestrian compared to other HoFers, I think that as compared to the average production from their counterparts (catchers having lower OPS+ numbers than other positions, not many right fielders putting the ball in play and running the bases as opposed to going for more power) they have a defining trait that gets people talking about them a lot.
Ichiro’s base running should be talked about more, I think he’s really got a lot of talent at that one very underrated piece of the game. Hate that he didn’t hit for 20HRs but it is what it is.
TL;DR Ichiro + Yadi 1st ballot HoF, if they aren’t unanimous idk what the writers’ purpose serves anymore
Well, also these power hitters strike out alot. The worst possible outcome. Low avg, decent walks, and decent home run numbers. War isnt an objective stat. Its subjective in what it weighs. I'd take ichiro over anyone hitting 28 hrs a year with a 225 avg. Contact, speed guys, do a number on a pitcher. A solo hr , sure sucks, but the pitcher is back to zoning in on the next batter. I find schwarber to be a bum, for example. Hes a glorified pinch hitter.
@@kenw2225 i don’t think it’s that black and white, guys like schwarber will always need guys like Ichiro to drive in, and guys like Ichiro will always need guys like schwarber to drive him in.
the game values putting the ball in play differently than it did years ago, and I think lineup construction has changed to reflect that.
(also if the mlb keeps juicing and nerding the ball a 20HR season will become the norm instead of the exception)
I think guys who make alot of contact and get on base have more value than guys who rarely make contact, cant run, and are only useful every 3-4 games. Just my opinion though. I do expect advanced stats to evolve and become more comprehensive to support my stance in the future though
@@kenw2225 A double play is the worst possible outcome lol. its ridiculous how casuals think striking out is worse than a double play
I just wrote something very similar to this. The thing with Ichiro is precisely that his approach to hitting was unusual for someone playing right field, as he was extremely focused on getting on base HITTING, disregarding walks since a lot of balls out of the zone were still in his "batting zone", so he could either get good contact out of them or, even if he made mediocre or even bad contact, leg out infield singles and accomplish his goal anyway. And, despite playing in the peak of the steroid era, that skill set was extremely liked and coveted so the public and media appreciated it.
Of course, this is an archaic approach that is inefficient at best, absolutely wasteful at worst, and makes for a somewhat underwhelming statistical profile using advanced stats that contrast with the spectacular picture traditional stats show. But at the same time that's what made him special. After all, his HOF candidacy starts with "Has 3K hit, got 200+ hits for a decade, holds the all time record for hits in a single season". Had he been focused on hitting balls in the zone and making strong contact he probably would have been a batter more akin to Joe Mauer, maybe a bit less power and walks and slightly higher average, but he wouldn't be "Ichiro".
Whatever is happening or has happened to baseball, one thing will ALWAYS be true, no matter what level of ball you are playing. If you can hit and put the ball in play, you will make it anywhere.
This is why people don’t like these new era stats. Ichiro filled his spot in the lineup the best anyone ever has. He had the ability to hit for power but didn’t because that wasn’t necessarily what his team needed ever at bat
Imo as a pure contact hitter, Tony Gwynn was clearly superior. But if I had to build a team, I'd go with Ichiro all the time. He was no doubt better in all other aspects.
"i think ill just die"
same, mr suzuki. same.
Ichiro hit Major League level pitches like he was playing softball. That running slap shot was amazing to watch
3:25 there's no way that's the first time a window has been broken by a baseball there. 😮
Hey ken
One of the few reasons I gave a crap about the Junior Circuit. Dude was amazing!
9:45 I mean… I’m def old enough to distinctly remember Giambi robbed Frank the year prior and there was a bit of reckoning due - atleast that’s how I felt. Similar to Mike trout’s 2019.. reverse payback if you will from him being robbed. I liked Berg that year.
And while team success shouldn’t always be tied to mvp, I think that’s hard to ignore on 116 win team. It’s not unheard of for lead offs like ichiro with that play style to win so there’s atleast some precedent. Im a cincy native so i quickly can recall Larkin half decade prior. Ricky a decade before ichiro. Speaking of cincy you mentioned rose a lot in this piece - he’s another that def wasn’t the biggest bat his mvp year - Stargell could rip but was dog shit on 1st. Last lead off I could even really find is probs the best and the year I used to think Mays was robbed but now I can see why Maury won over Willie . I do think there’s something to the idea of voters wanted something different. We had big bats that were already getting suspicious. How about we reward the purist this time before baseball changes forever. Atleast that’s how I remember it. It felt pure. Hindsight of course would confirm that but i think they wanted to get something different in there as it had after all been since mid 90s that we had an all rounder like ichiro take the award
Yo can I borrow that check mark next to your name?
Impossible to be overrated… only won 1 mvp. He literally broke the single season record for hits… and still didn’t get an MVP
Also he beat Pete Rose if you add NPB Hits…
27 as a rookie and in the HOF and 3000 club
But yea… overrated 😂
if you add NPB hits you have to add pete's minor league hits, and he's still the champ.
Analytics or not he wasn’t overrated or underrated he was just amazing
Tuned out as soon as you brought in "advanced statistics". Sabermetrics, moneyball, whatever you want to call it is just a way of making numbers sound impressive to justify having a guy who can barely hit above the Mendoza line but can knock out 30+ HRs a season.
Players like Kyle Schwarber aren't going to win you playoff games...
From 2001 to 2012 he hit over .300 BA. This was before the rule changes to make stealing easier and m not even going to count his stolen bases and defensive contributions.
Not overrated.
ichiro is at the table for the goat discussion, in the inner room of the upper levels of Cooperstown. what more can be said? for me personally, the three best baseball players i’ve ever seen play in person in my nearly 40 years, in order, are ICHIRO, RICKEY HENDERSON, and GREG MADDUX. i did see bonds and griffey, but not until they were past their primes. i would still take ichiro over everybody tbh.
Him and Pujols could be greatest nl and al roy careers
No doubt Ichiro’s 262 single season hit amount doesn’t get enough recognition. And it looks like Pete Rose was a bit jealous of Ichiro’s professional hit total.
Anyone who can get 200 hits in a season ten times in a row is an elite hitter. That said, a lot of his numbers are inflated by his very high PA and he did not hit for extra bases. A career 104 wRC+ and peak of 131 is bang average for a hall of famer.
That is not a sign of a ‘good’ hitter but a marginally above average one with a pretty good peak. A career 3 WAR player like Logan Morrison eclipsed Ichiro’s highest OPS+ in a season (133 to Ichiro’s 130). Granted, Ichiro has a slight to his because of the steroid era but even if we’re to add 10 points to his OPS+, he is still a person I can’t say in good faith is an all time valuable hitter by that metric.
People ought to focus more on his defense and baserunning. I think it would do him more favors in this discussion seeing as he wasn’t all too valuable as a hitter so much as he was adept at racking up numbers there.
the best thing i learned from this video is that ichiro has no idea who the loser Tom Brady is. what a chad.
And hated cleveland
It's amazing to think about all those hits Ichiro had, then realize he wasn't even a natural lefty while doing it.
Nothing overrated about Ichiro. He was a once in a lifetime special talent.
The funny thing about Ichiro is that of his career 647 walks, 181 of them were intentional. That comes out to 27.9%, which surpasses the 26.9% Barry Bonds drew. Dude was legitimately feared for his ability to swing the bat.
Being, undoubtedly, the greatest hitter of all time and being left out of the conversation time and time again is criminal. This title has to be clickbait
He's not even close to being the greatest hitter of all time. He's the greatest at creating empty average; his OBP and SLG both are miles behind the likes of Boggs or Gwyn.
@cynicanal111 Ichiro would still be incredible as a pinch hitter and a pinch runner, but he's far from being the best hitter MLB has ever seen...
I hate this retroactive application of modern metrics to a past player’s career. Ichiro was dominant at the game as he knew it. If he played now, he would master the skills that would make him valuable.
He's one of the greatest baseball players of all time.....up there with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.
where'd you find these "ratings" to see if he is under or over?
There’s a problem with analytics when walks are seen as better than singles. Singles is actually hitting. Walks is just a good eye. Stop underrating singles and overrating walks. This is why the people who bash batting average are ridiculous because they underrate singles and overrate walks.
Walks are only barely worse than singles, and especially the kind of infield singles that Ichiro hit that can only move runners forward one base at most. Batting average is less important than either OBP or SLG, and Ichiro was good but not great at the former and pretty average at the latter.
OBP includes singles. How is OBP undervalued them?
I watched him play. He was one of the best players I ever saw.
Watching the dodge at 15:00, Ichiro must have been a nightmare to play tag with.
Ichiro has said that one of the things he never did when stealing bases or making catches was to dive head first.
If Ichiro hit for power he would have like 80 home runs per season until like 2008 or something.
steroids improves your physical performance in MLB. home runs, stolen bases, even batting average is enhanced, because your strength goes up - which means your swing can benefit from more time watching the baseball as it approaches the plate. if you have more strength, you can control the bat better, too.
you'd think it is not the case with a batter's average - but you'd be wrong. which makes this comparison of Giambi and Ichiro a rather pontless exercise. if you remember Barry Bond's most productive years, his batting average was incredible - benefiting from the added strength, too. Rickey Henderson definitely used PEDs - he was never caught. PEDs totally messes up MLB baseball.
This is why Ichiro will not get near as many votes as people expect. Rather than the unanimous HoF some fans want, he'll probably only get 80%. If writers didn't feel they would be crucified, I think there would be a real chance he wouldn't get voted in on the first balot.
Ichiro is like the Kobe Bryant of baseball, an all-time player with incredible passion and love for the game, but with glaring flaws in their games that their diehard fans vehemently, but unreasonably denounce. Unlike Kobe, I'm a huge Ichiro fan, but without much power and an anemic walk rate, his unreal contact hitting just isn't as productive as his reputation. I do think hyper-modern data ball would be more favorable towards him than the slightly less modern sabermetrics, but those stats are difficult grasp from his era (just like Kobe honestly). It may not show up in the stats, a hit is a hit and a homer is a homer, regardless of WHEN they are hit, but not many players could CHOOSE to pursue certain outcomes like Ichiro. Can't shift against Ichiro, because he could actually choose where he hits the ball. He hit homers when he needed to (or at least tried).
Sabermetrics may be able to estimate how productive a player is, but it is useless in estimating the circumstances of when that player is productive. Ichiro is a player that adapts to his circumstances, he was a player that abused shifts.
The Kobe Bryant of MLB is really Derek Jeter, not Ichiro Suzuki...
This is kinda crazy because I was just thinking last night about how underrated this man was and it was pretty much completely random
I don’t believe he is overrated, but I love these types of videos!
i love the mariners
Nice bait
I didn’t even watch the video I just came to find someone pointing out the bait
Haven’t even watched yet, but number 1, how DARE you.
He wasn't overrated. The Mariners were.
..im a Mariners fan.
Damnit. The "record lsting longer than Bobby Bonilla's contract" made me spit my wine all over my monitor.
Would you believe that he lead the AL in intentional walks 3 times?
I wonder who has a higher winning percentage between Pete and Ichiro??
The other guy to win MVP as a rookie was Jackie Robinson right?
Fred Lynn
I really don’t understand how anyone can say ichiro is overrated. Great character and had the stats to back him up no shot is he even slightly overrated
“Smaller stature 5’11” 175lbs” if that’s small then I’m microscopic.
OVERrated?! Yeah RIGHT
“Overmatched” says Nelson rofl
What you've demonstrated to be overrated is this set of latter-day (pseudo-)stats.
Bingo. ops is as subjective as it gets. Impossible to exact. Hr carry too much weight in some of these advanced stats. As a former pitcher, id rather see a hr, than a bunch of hits scattered all over the field just out of reach of the fielders, frustrating the whole team. The psychogy of stats is being negated these days.
Next video was hank aaron the home run king?
And yet, during the era when not all teams were using modern analytics, we saw that teams that used modern analytics consistently overperformed their payrolls while teams that didn't consistently underperformed. The traditional stats are garbage. Batting average is a meaningless stat when it comes to offensive productivity. It doesn't even measure situational hitting well, since it doesn't count sacrifices! If you're going to try to make the argument that @kenw2225 does, then you should look at RE24 and WPA, not any of the (largely worthless) traditional stats.
@cynicanal111 Ichiro Suzuki's an overrated player but don't undersell Batting Average. Batting Average is still the most important and fundamental batting stat out of all, especially when it comes to winning postseason games...
I thought the whole thing with Ichiro was that he was consistently great year to year. Cool, the juicer was better in a year. What about the next? The year after that?
OPS is getting a bit overrated imo. People forget On base + slugging doesn't exactly equate to offensive value
Why do you say that though?
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te Couple reasons - many people will see an OPS+ of 110 and think "He's 10% better offensively than average". Which obviously isn't true. There are many more components to offensive value than On-base and slugging.
Specifically, I think slugging weighs too heavily and can therefore underrate guys with higher batting averages. Basically, BA went from being overrated to underrated. Can't score a runner on second with a walk
@@GavinOCo Have you heard of the 2014-2015 Kansas City Royals?
TBF, you should've brought up RISP. Ichiro had a nutty RISP stat back in 2001 that doesn't get discussed enough.
RISP, WRC+ and Batting Average are the 3 true most important stats in the game's history... especially when we're talking about the postseason...
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te elaborate
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te I was referring to RISP with the 'walks dont drive in men on second' comment. Think you for sure got a point with those 3 stats, i thought you were disagreeing with me at first lol
dont think he's 5'11 was listed at 5'9 i think.
This is where the math is so stupid, Ichiro had a role, he was a table setter. Who was always on base and who’s speed always had the pitcher worried out of the stretch. Yet he’s compared to steroid era players paid to drive in runs.
Not overrated at all