I said this when complaining about the Ichiro extension -- the crash and boom of Sexson is the exception - not the rule. The "typical" reality for fading players is that the FIRST thing they lose is "consistency". It is not that Ichiro's "A" game is gone. It's not. It is that he is simply not bringing it to the office as often as he used to do.
My sense is that "most" HoF hitters tend to bounce back from their first 'major' dip in performance. They work a little harder - rest a little longer - are quicker to make tweaks - whatever. But, the first plunge in production is rarely the death knell for HoF level players.
Ichiro is a rare combo of skills, so he doesn't have a good comp for what to expect. But, what does his 2011 look like?
April: .758
May .508
June .689
July .538
Aug .714
Could there possibly be a better indicator that he is NOT the same player at the plate from week to week? The lack of an .800 month is (to me) more troubling than the .500 months. But I find it telling the "slow starting" Ichiro had his best month in April. He NEEDS days off - not just days DHing -- but actual days off if he is going to avoid a repeat of 2011's Log Flume ride.
Ichiro's Poor 2011: Timeline, B
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Now, that's what I call an Ichiro swing
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It's certainly possible that Ichiro's problem is as simple as weak contact, but how often is life that simple? .... More light bulbs offered by the wonderful Fangraphs.com thread:
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C - There is a 5.33% chance that Ichiro's BABIP and stats are down, due to random chance alone. (See Epee9 on 7.29 at 8:33 pm.) Also, Ichiro's April, and his recent hot streak, show "flashes" of 2009 form.
Just in the last few days, SSI think-tankers have pointed out that Ichiro has been web-gemmed 30+ times in 2011. See for example Dr. G's post here.
Dr. D agrees, from the 3rd deck at Safeco, that Ichiro has been web-gemmed a lot this year. Add 20 (not thirty) hits to Ichiro's 550-AB season and his AVG goes from .273 to .310.
And if Ichiro's AVG is .310, we are not having this conversation, now are we? Ichiro's .327 lifetime average has ranged from .303 to .372, and he's hit .310 or thereabouts in 40% of his seasons.
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It is completely plausible that Ichiro's season is a bad-luck mirage.
I remember Bill James writing a 1995 article, "Two Thousand Years of Willie Mays," in which he showed that good and bad luck can cause MUCH wilder seasons than you'd think ... in those 2,000 years Mays hit (by random chance) .415 one time and .223 another, or something like that.
Not that it makes it easy for roto kings, or Jack Zduriencik, to decide what to do about 2012...
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D - None of Ichiro's plate-discipline stats (swinging at pitches inside & outside of zone, contact with both, receiving strikes, etc.) are badly out of alignment with his career ...
D2 - ... but ALL of his plate-discipline stats are below-average for him (similar to Derek Jeter). See Yirmiyahu's comments on 7.27 at 6:40 pm.
Jeter is a compelling example here. He's a guy who simply started blomping the ball around the park with no pace on it. Happens all the time. Maybe it happened to Ichiro? Could be.
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E - Ichiro's GB% is up, along with a decrease in BABIP. See Jordan's comment on 7.27, at 4:44 pm.
"Jordan" has a theory that the convergence of these two things --- > necessarily implies that a player has lost physical skills (because GB increase should usually help BABIP).
The idea is probably sound in a very general way. And I believe that in Ichiro's case, it does probably indicate that he's been hitting the ball with less pace. More on that later...
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FANGRAPHS CONCL - Ichiro is simply making weaker contact, according to the readers there.
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Dr. D -- who, in contradistinction to the Fangraphs crowd en masse, has been watching Ichiro for weak swings -- agrees that Ichiro is swinging a bit less weakly.
Dr. D most certainly does not agree that a subtly weaker swing would transform a player from a 5.0 WAR player to a 0.0 WAR player, so let's find some nuance here.
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