Bladestunner found a video of Ichiro pitching in 1996.  With the attention Ichiro gets, how did we never hear of this?  Am I the only one who missed it?  :- )

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For those who just joined us, it didn't used to be a huge deal to let a position player pitch once in a while, until Jose Canseco tore his TJ ligament in a 1993 game for Texas.

As you might expect, there were about 83 things that set Canseco up for his karmic comeuppance, including but not limited to:

• Dr. Jobe related later that the ligament was partially torn before the outing...
• ... 'cause Canseco was way too big for his skeleton, IMHO
• Canseco was showing off in the bullpen
• Canseco's motion was short-arm, tight, and scary
• Kennedy let him throw quite a few pitches after his velo crashed from 95 to 85
• etc.

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It won't surprise you to watch Ichiro use a full-blown major league pitching motion, complete with a high back leg and decleration that would make most M's pitchers jealous.  Everything Canseco did wrong is exactly inverted with Ichiro.

There would be a modest but definite amount of real value in having a Brooks Kieschnick pitch as the last man on your staff; you could carry an extra bench player that way. 

Would a ballclub pay $1M to the league in order to play with 26 players rather than 25?  How much would your roto club pay, to use one roster slot more than any other team?

Modern pitching staffs have 1, 2 or even 3 guys down there mostly as a buffer factor for the guys who don't pitch -- and if the main guys pitch well, they have to be sent down to AAA to get work.  In that situation, a hitter/pitcher becomes even more relevant.

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I'll bet that Ichiro would have less chance of hurting himself pitching, than Felix Hernandez would batting.

But, of course, the difference is that Jack Zduriencik isn't going to be media-lynched if Felix fails to get out of the way of a beanball.  The accusations and finger-pointing would be hellacious if anything happened to Ichiro when pitching.  So when Ichiro requested to pitch in the last WBC for Japan, the Mariners refused.

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In the 1996 video linked by Blade, Ichiro throws 90 mph in his first warmup pitch, then is given one batter in the game -- they pinch-hit somebody to spare Godzilla the humilation of being taken down by Ichiro.  :- )

Ichiro, about 20 years old at the time and walking to the mound in front of a packed house to do something insane, looks about as nervous as he does now leading off a game.

Ichiro threw, as near as I can tell:

• 85 fastball gimme strike, straight, no movement but decent life
• 88 fastball gimme strike
• Hitter now ready
• fastball pulled way outside, 1-2
• fastball pulled a little off the corner, 2-2
• fastball about 89 mph, letter high, batter smacks a hard grounder right at the SS, thrown out at 1B

Probably not a bad glimpse at what Ichiro would be like as a pitcher.  With work, he might be able to throw an 88-91 located fastball and figure out a circle change to go with it.  But he looks like he has untapped potential for velocity :- )

Wild-eyed guess here is that he could run a 5.00 ERA or something in blowout games, save some of the other relievers, expand your roster.

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Point is, the video satiated my curiosity as to what the maneuver would look like.

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Another point is, imagine some other bats left, throws right ballplayer (Rickey, for example) taking the mound and looking like Daisuke Matsuzaka on it.  There has never been any athlete, ever, who was comparable to Ichiro.

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Good stuff Blade,

Dr D