I'm moving into the Terry camp.
I can't see us letting Ichiro go just 17 or 25 or 30 games into the season. So you have him for a while. Fair enough. But it is unlikely that he goes far north of .700 vs. RHP. Ditto, by the way, Heredia. .675 might be an expected ceiling for him. And if you keep them both, then the 8-man bullpen, so carefully constructed, isn't happening. OK, you can mitigate that some with the Tacoma Trolley/Cheney Choo Choo, but bringing Ichiro on may have just warped the best layed plans of mice and Dipoto.
And if you keep both Ichiro and Heredia, then you've just lost Ford, unless Healy is still tweaked.
I haven't seen what we're giving Ichiro, but if we're going cheap, then I would rather we give Andreoli the job for 3 weeks, or just Heredia, and keep Ford. Or take a 3 week look see at Bishop (agreeing with Terry here, too).
The more I think about it, keeping Ichiro (and assuming Heredia is on the 25-man) is sort of a death knell for Ford, barring injury or trade.
I am telling you, you're better off, if going with a 13-man staff, when you have two multi-positional guys on the bench. Healy's ability to go to 3B, and the good 2B we have in CF, mitigates that to some degree. But if you get a "day-to-day" injury to Segura or Cano, we get hamstrung pretty quickly.
Ichiro is one of my very favorite players of all-time. Top 5, easily. I am tickled to have him back, but with a 12-man staff and Ichiro as #4 it makes way more sense.
But since he's now ours, I hope he gets 20 starts in LF and we start Heredia in AAA. Cruz would become the 4th OF in that situation.