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If this is true, is Wedge the wildcard here? Is he the first manager (perhaps since Lou) that can challenge Ichiro and draw the best out of him? The two times this season that Wedge has had a talk with Ichiro - first making him sit down to take a day off and second by chastising him for the ridulous bunt attempt - Ichiro has responded with a stretch of more normal "Ichi" like performance. Both times, he started stinging the ball more before regressing a bit after a while.
Wedge keeps saying that he cannot analyze or fix Ichiro's swing, any more than anyone else possibly could. Which makes sense. But what if Wedge can  actually *manage* Ichiro the baseball player, if not Ichiro the hitter? That is something we haven't seen in Seattle since Pinella left.
Maybe it's nothing...maybe not. Ichiro has always been a cerebral, stoic player - it the thing that drives his critics absolutely crazy. Melvin, Hargrove and Wakamatsu simply couldn't deal with it. They couldn't reach Ichiro at all. But Wedge...maybe...