Ichiro and the Immortals - 2011-2021 Career

Q.  What is Bill James' Favorite Toy?

A.  A little fuzzy-logic device that James developed to estimate remaining career value.  It's valuable because James has spent 100's, if not 1,000's, of hours swimming through almanacs developing his pattern recognition.  You haven't.

.

Q.  What does it predict for Ichiro?

A.  It predicts three remaining seasons of 225 hits or so and then retirement.  This is perfectly reasonable for the average 35-year-old star, but is of course "broken" by Ichiro, as the BABIP formulas are.  

775 remaining hits as the over/under for Ichiro?  How many baseball caps would you like to bet?  ... of course, the 35-year-old Rickey would have detonated the Favorite Toy as well.  Can't judge immortals by mortal standards, Duncan.

It does give Ichiro a 41% chance of 3,000 hits in the majors, which is nothing to sneeze at.  His actual chance has got to be over 90%.

The Toy gives Ichiro a "negative" chance to get 4,000 hits in the bigs; I'd say the actual chance is at least 10-20%.

.

Q.  What does common sense (like the Favorite Toy) say, if you leave sabermetrics out?

A.  C'mon.  I watched Pete Rose when he was great.  Pete walked a lot more than Ichiro.

Nobody has ever piled up base hits the way that Ichiro piles them up.  Ever.  You are watching the greatest singles machine who ever lived.  And Safeco doesn't bother him. 

It's flabbergasting.  Why are we debating it?  Why aren't we just watching it in fascination?

.

Q.  What will the old Ichiro look like?

A.  Sometime between the ages of 38 and 42, Ichiro is going to have to abandon his long swing.  You know how Ichiro looks now, when he's in a slump?  Two-bouncing everything to second?  That's what the old Ichiro will look like.  The slowed reflexes won't allow him to play the game he does now.  Instead of squaring the ball up, he'll be topping it.

There's some chance that Ichiro, with his long swing, will have to go to his slap-hit game by his late 30's. 

But!  That's a perfectly viable plan B for him.  Ichiro can cut down the swing, aim for the SS hole, line the ball up the middle, and run. That will be the Ichiro that emerges through the reflex dropoff.  You know he's smart enough to adjust that way.

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

Lofton was good until 40, and then retired kind of unnecessarily.

Tim Raines played at HOF caliber at 41.

Lou Brock was a quality ballplayer at 40.  These guys could take a reduced swing and run like crazy.

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

You know and I know that Ichiro is more of a fitness freak than any of them, except Rickey ... and Ichiro is one of the smallest men ever to play at his level.  That's to his great advantage at age 40, beng smaller. 

And Ichiro's technique is superior; that will help when he's older and weaker.  Like we say.  Ichiro's going to star until 38-42, and he's going to be able to play decently till 45.  He's said he intends to do a lot more than that.

Going to be some really interesting numbers for this dude by the time Felix' contract is up.

.

Part 3


 

Comments

1
muddyfrogwater's picture

Perpetuation of the fan trap. Anaheim is built like a tank. Texas has the ability to spend $100 mil. The Oakland machine churns along. Ichiro's remarkable playing skills are not needed at this time. Without a huge roster makeover the M's will not compete next year. Time to let go for now fundamentally speaking. Perhaps make room later on for the play off retirement run. I'm not guaranteeing a proper suitor, however such a move should be strongly considered.

2
muddyfrogwater's picture

It improves the team. It gives youth a shot to take take the field for rebuild purposes. It sheds salary. It could yield a blue chipper in return.

3
muddyfrogwater's picture

I expect to see a rescue mission from the evils of rebuilding from most of you folks. Rotten tomatoes for me I guess. :)

4

I think Ichiro's amazing, and basically useless to this team.  Pete Rose playing for the Braves or the Mets of the late 70s wouldn't have helped them much either.  They were terrible.
We are terrible.
Are we terribly far from getting better?  I don't think so. 
With Chone here and Ackley coming up, two OBP guys who can run bases, is Ichiro's skillset what we're missing?
No.
Will we be trading Ichiro?
No.
Is he a great player?
Yes.
Do we need more great players?
Yes.
Do I want frog to stop posting cryptic spam?
Yes.
Ichiro will be here in 2011.  I will still be amazed by his baseball skills, and slightly irritated that there is nothing that all his singles can do to score runs with this offense.  And I will hope that we can find a power bat (in addition to hopefully keeping Branyan as a DH and backup 1B) and with it some extra offense that might make Ichiro relevant again for our team instead of merely amazing.
~G

5

...Doc...as someone who has been on record calling the NPB essentially the equivalent of AAAA (halfway between AAA adn the bigs), I take great exception to your comparing me to a white supremicist from Alabama. And yes...I do think the Negro Leagues were of, roughly, minor league quality in terms of overall talent level. With a wider distribution of talents than today';s AAA, but not with an overall better group of players. The NPB, the Negro Leagues, Cuban baseball...all of them produced star major leaguers, and all of them are, NONETHELESS...essentially of minor league quality.
The NPB team that beats up on the US team in the WBC is not representative of the NPB's overall quality...it's the NPB ALL STAR TEAM! It's not surprising to me that they would be, at the very least, our equals. And keep in mind...the US Major Leagues don't play Japan...just the US born players. Most of the stars of today's game come from places like the DR, Venezuela and Puerto Rico...not from the US natively. Yes...the NPB has an elite class of all-star-level players and strong secondary role players that make for a very cohesive and well-trained WBC team. But (a) the US players don't train AT ALL for the WBC, whereas team Japan convenes early to work together for several weeks before the games and (b) having a core of great players does not make the league of equivalent ability overall to the majors...it's a deeply tiered league with many...many more very weak players than our major leagues have. There's a reason guys who are AAAA talent here in the states FAIL in the big leagues, go to Japan, and then slug .600 for 6 years. And no...my raising doubts about how strong the NPB actually is does NOT MAKE ME A RACIST. I'll thank you to avoid such unfair language in the future.

6

mfw,
Because of your vague language reading your posts is like trying to read through...muddy frog water. I get the feeling there's something there, but I'm not sure what it is because it's obscure(d). Confucious had pithy, pregnant, wise statements, but usually it was obvious what he meant. 
Perhaps language barrier reason for obscurity, but foggy vision prevent me confidence. :bows politely:

7

Matt,
the rest of the quote was, "It's not like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige and Larry Doby were in the Negro Leagues because they were outplayed by white guys who were promoted ahead of them.  And it's not like Yu Darvish got outpitched by Chris Seddon and that's why he's not in Safeco yet."
Is the NPB as a whole up to MLB standards? No.  Can a team of their All-Stars compete with anyone?  Obviously, the answer is yes.  I don't know that I would say the same for any minor league, and since you have them as half-way between AAA and the bigs maybe you'd agree that they would not take out teams made of MLB All-Stars either.
He never compared you to a racist (that I read, anyway).  He said that the Negro leagues were not a "minor" league and indicated they could not be because their great, seminal talents were not ALLOWED to achieve promotion to the best league.  Neither are the NPB greats.  They have that decade-long waiting period to come try their hand over here, so what makes the minors what they are (ie, being unable to compete at the highest level) is not true of the cream of the crop of the Negro leagues or the NPB.
Ichiro being held in the NPB and destroying it for 10 years before coming here and destroying our pitching was not because he was incapable for 10 years of beating up on US pitchers.
If he'd been in the minors, he'd have been promoted as a teenager.  And he faced pitchers who, had they been allowed to come over, would have been major leaguers as well.  Less top-flight than MLB in total?  You'd have to say yes.  Indivuals who would have been MLB stars if they'd been allowed?  Yes as well.  It's not possible to rate his competition or his potential in MLB at 20 except to say what you have: probably not ML in total, but great players in particular.  And there are plenty of "major leaguers" who could not cut it in Japan.
When someone caps your opportunities it's not a fair assessment to compare it to an uncapped system.  Satchel Paige is not in the HOF because of his MLB accomplishments, but because of what he would have done if unleashed on the bigs in the late 20s instead of the late 40s.  They didn't have to run a numbers regression to notice that he would have given Joe DiMaggio fits.
Japan's barnstormers are worthy MLB players, most of whom will never get the chance to attempt the jump while they're in their prime.  That's the Negro League comp.  Now maybe Doc means that the entire Negro Leagues could have sent all their teams to play all the MLB teams of the time and fought them to a draw, and that NPB could do the same.
That doesn't appear to me to be the argument.  And since you don't view NPB as being a AA league (as was said about it before all the international play, and Ichiro's big league dominance, showed maybe that was under-crediting the league JUST a little) but rather as being better than any of the minors, I guess I can't see a slam aimed at you. 
Maybe Doc can enlighten us.  Until then, I would hold off on being overly offended.
~G

8

I posted when I should have kept reading.
..... what G said.  :- )
.....................
BTW Matty, I went back and added an edit just to clarify.  :daps:

9

In fact, didn't remember who did or didn't buy into the NPB's quality...
Bias against Negro League play is used as a reductio ad absurdum, to illustrate unconscious bias towards that which is familiar...
Pretty unlikely that ANYbody in the Seattle blog-o-sphere is racist, and I've made my opinion on that clear, many times.  The inference on your part is a bit of a reach, b'wana.  You know that I know that you're not racist.
....................
Five years ago, I used to regard NPB as halfway between the PCL and the NL ... nowadays, I'd see it as closer to the NL than that, with the top fraction of NPB players quite capable of playing well in the bigs...

10

Is a Milli Vanilli rewrite ;- ) of an epic Bill James essay that revolutionized the way people looked at the Lefty Groves and Josh Gibsons of baseball history.
Bill wrote, "I don't believe in giving credit to players for what they might have been.  But I do believe in giving them credit for what they actually were " (Teddy Ballgame was a great hitter during his pilot years).
But your essay was a lot better than Bill's.  Should put it up front.
...............
Ichiro, when he was 22, was of course a terrific ballplayer.  Attempts to deny him credit for that are often clever, but they are doomed attempts IMHO.

11
muddyfrogwater's picture

Twas not spam my friend. however I find it interesting that a SABR driven community holds Ichiros batting average in such high reguard when rule of thumb prefers OBP & slugging as a better performance indicator. Outside the Mariner bubble a great majority of people believe Ichiro is overated. I've noticed that the fan base in general over values it's own. Simply put, trading Ichiro is free lunch.

12
Taro's picture

You're probably reading the wrong SABR community.
Sometimes its better to have no knowledge than to have a mediocre grasp of something.
Edit: Not in reference to you of course, but any SABR community worth anything understands the value of defense, baserunning, and park effects.

13
muddyfrogwater's picture

Not a rip on SABR per say. But I do believe defense is over rated and over valued on the WAR scale. Stats are too volitile. I have a better grasp on stacking up the chips & rolling the dice. More chips gives you a better probability of Yahtzee. That's not to say that stats are useless for scouting players. I do believe the SABR march is in it's infancy and I expect it to be more refined in comming decades. Ichiro plays in the smaller part of Safeco.

15
muddyfrogwater's picture

Also , I'd suggest posting a 3 year average to the defensive scale if a three year average is in fact a better indicator of defense. It would paint a clearer picture on an annual basis.  My suspicion is that the defense is weighted a little too heavily and it's value should drop slightly.

16
Taro's picture

I don't think defense is neccesarilly overvalued, but I do think there are issues with the way its currently calculated via WAR. It would be relatively easy to combine stats like plus/minus, RZR, OOZ, and UZR into an average to eliminate potential outliers, but currently fangraphs only uses UZR for WAR calculation. That would be the best solution until even more refined defensive metrics come out.
I also think that GIDP and post-play errors should be included in wOBA, and that non-SB baserunning and speed/power hits (infield hits, long singles) should be accounted for as well.

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