.............

We wondered whether Ichiro had his big years, in those seasons in which the #9 Mariner hitter was competent.

You'll never find a simpler study than this one:  without peeking, that is before looking at the splits, we put a tick mark beside Ichiro's four glory years.  Those were :

1. 2001, the MVP ...
2. 2004, the .372 season, when he broke the hits record ...
3. 2007, when hit .351 with power and walks and finished #8 in the MVP ...
4. 2009, batting .352 with a whopping .465 SLG, getting the #9 in the MVP ...
5. whoops gotta add 2002, since he had a 120 OPS+ and by far his best EYE ratio.

In all of the above years, Ichiro's OPS+ was 120 to 130 ... in the other six years, his OPS+ was 84 to 113.  Okay, you've got a clean split, five MVP-candidate seasons and six lesser seasons, with no blurry seasons in the middle at all.  Beautiful.

Now let's see how the #9 hitters in the order did in those seasons.  tOPS+ means, here's how that spot hit compared to other American League #9 hitters, 100 being average:

There we are again:  Ichiro has runners in front of him, he gets his groove on.  Or he's asked to play all by himself, in the barren wasteland of a 513-run year, and he's got no life to his game.

Ichiro would much rather bat #1, go up there and whale away for 263 base hits, but the fact is that he needs to be playing with a good team, playing for victory rather than for stats.  File this as another melancholy case of "what the athlete wants is not what's best for him."

I've seldom seen a player so sensitive to the lineup around him, and it is because Ichiro's goals change with the context.  If there is no point to the at-bat, other than his own personal stats, he's in the swing-and-a-prayer mode.  Give him a team offense to play within, and you get Ichiro's toughest at-bats.

You could say that it would be a good idea to hit him third, I think.

BABVA,

Dr D