Ichiro Was Somehow Both Underrated and Overrated at The Same Time
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- Опубліковано 9 тра 2024
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Keywords: MLB, baseball, Dodgers, Giants, Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Phillies, Rangers, Astros, Pirates, Paul Skenes, Elly De La Cruz, Major League Baseball, Yordan Alvarez, Aaron Judge, Yankees, Ichiro Suzuki, Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, Red Sox, Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr - Спорт
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Nope. Not overrated.
The spoiler blocker we need
If you ask most baseball fans who’s better Rod Carew, Wade Boggs, Tony Gwynn, or Ichiro, they would probably say Ichiro. Overrated.
Better at what? Hitting? Or overall player? Only boggs is on ichiro level in that group as an overall player. Hitting wise, you could argue gymnn is the guy. Ichiro is a top 25 ball player of all time.
@@kenw2225 All three of those guys are better overall players. Please give me the numbers that show Ichiro is a top 25 player of all time. We’re looking at a guy who only had a 757 OPS and 60 WAR. Don’t get me wrong Ichiro was great but at best he’s only just a top 100 player of all time.
@@ToonTwisthe “only” had a 60 war because he joined the MLB when he was 27 lmao
Career WAR 60.0 starting at age 27 says it all.
That is insane. The guy is a legend.
@@EChino92 for a slap singles hitter yes indeed.
He's an outfielder version of Ozzie Smith who is offensively better. Excellent Japan career and MLB. He's a true World level of HOF.
unreal
Once he said things like he can hit 40 season HR by compensating BA down to .220 ish. If he transformed into the player, his hypothetical career WAR would have exploded.
Imo Ichiro is the real Hit king. He proved that he was better in the MLB than Japan, had 3k hits in the mlb alone, and that's after playing 9 seasons in Japan. Idc what Rose says, ichiro is better, and he would've surpassed Rose if he had those years back.
Yea maybe. They both have fair claim to the thrown and i think its a tie. Tie for 1st is good for both of them and good for baseball
@@kenw2225Tiebreaker is Ichiro literally being the platonic ideal of a baseball player compared to pete rose being a little bitch hater
and rose saying his hs hits should be added... shows he thinks japanese baseball is hs level.
its still a pro league, just another country
@@kenw2225throne 🙄
@@anonymousYTviewer692nd best pro league in the world look how many great Japanese players came out of that league now
Top 200 all time in career WAR and didn’t start until his late 20’s. If he started at 20 years old he’d definitely be top 100. So definitely not overrated.
I recall one time when asked why he hits so many balls on the ground and I recall him saying something along the lines of "chicks dig base hits"... had to have been a meta-response to the "chicks dig the long ball" by Maddux and Glavine.
Are you kidding me?this dude was a legend on and off the field. Pure LOVE for the game. Still around the clubhouse to this day.
Statistics be damned ... Ichiro was the best player on the field at all times for most of his career.
Ichiro was definitely not overrated, not to mention was a gold glove outfielder
Was he overrated? Short answer: No. Long Answer: Nope
I'd argue the long answer is actually noooooooooooooooo
underrated actually
The thing about Ichiro's approach to batting and how that makes his numbers look is important.
Back in the early 2000s there wasn't that much attention put into OBP in the MLB, which is the top of the sport, and Ichiro grew up and learned to play in Japan in the 80s and 90s, so the approach he was taught his entire life probably was "you're on the plate to hit". He wasn't naturally very strong due to his build so the default was to become a single hitter and, as with many talented players, he didn't need a ball in the zone to hit singles, particularly when he could get on base with a slow rolling to the short stop or a high bouncer to the third baseman. His speed as a complement to his batting made him a huge treath on the home plate because, as I think Frank Thomas said referring to Ichiro, "speed doesn't slump". So there was no point in squeezing a pitcher for an easy pitch to hit since anything short of a wild pitch was within his area of comfort for hitting with a good chance of getting on base, which his astronomical average during his prime shows.
Of course, in hindsight with modern sabermetrics we can see how this is at best inefficient, at worst a complete waste of a super talented batter who could have focused on balls in the zone to consistently make strong contact, and compensate the likely fewer infield hit singles with a higher number of walks and a slight increase in extrabases, but in my opinion "rule of cool" applies here: had Ichiro been that kind of player he probably would have never gotten to 3K hits, or managed to reach 200+ hits a year for a decade, including the all-time record for a single season, in a row, the bulk of which were AFTER turning 30.
And regarding his MVP season and the overall respect his numbers got, I get that revisionists history using modern data to judge basically every player ever is a thing amd has it's value, but different things are valued differently in every era. Despite being the peak of the steroid era it was still close enough to the "classical era" of baseball for fans and media to appreciate and even equate the arquetype of player that Ichiro was to sluggers, something that the data driven modern game would, correctly, never do. After all, we now see teams putting the guy that in other eras would be the 3rd or 4th batter at 2nd in the lineup, and teams with good enough depth have guys that would arguably have been 3rd for 95% of the history of baseball batting 1st. Measured against that I understand why it could be argued that Ichiro's numbers are "overrated", but the context around it is important.
He didn't walk but what about the stat of fouling the ball off 8 times in a row to get the more elite pitchers pitch count up
Of course the maximizing value potential of each at bat approach is still dominant, the discussion around it now is if its healthy for the sport to make that our singular focus in molding hitters. You cant have andrew velasquez trying to optimize his launch angle. And you gotta take a step back and think about how the game was more popular when we had elite slap hitters like ichiro, gwynn, ozzie smith, even juan pierre was kinda popular.
The pitching analogue to the maximize value approach is throwing with intensity on every pitch, ie upper 90s fastballs. The "unhealthy" consequences on that side are much more visceral. Its 2 sides of the same coin. We have to ask ourselves if this is actually what brings fans cuz its not sustainable for our players bodies and skillsets
@@2UGamingProductions MLB batters aren't taught that anymore...
I’ve been a Mariner fans since I can remember (born in 1985)… there’s been seasons that the only thing fun to watch, was Ichiro and Felix. Ichiro is one of my all time favorites just for holding the line in very difficult times, of there have been many here in Seattle.
Bro for real I was so happy we made the playoffs finally looks like we got a decent team
Ichiros role was a leadoff hitter. His goal was to get on base whatever it took. Slapping the ball in the infield was the easiest way for him to do it since he was so fast. He's one of the greatest leadoff hitters ever. Top 5 at it. Not to mention Tim Mcarver called him the best right fielder he'd seen since Clemente.
How can you say somebody is overrated when he got 2000 hits in just 10 seasons, let that sink in
He actually had 2000 hits in 9 seasons
@@Champs-ek7lh yeah thats right, even better
Bc his OPS+ was 105. A mere 5% better than the league average hitter.
He didn't walk. He didn't hit for ANY power.
Also I think he stuck around 4 years too long because he was chasing 3000 hits.
He's definitely a great player and a HOFer. But he's not an inner sanctum, unanimous type.
Boy young kids these days
@@dukedematteo1995 He did have power though, he just never bothered to use it except when he needed to. As for sticking around too long, he never played badly really, he just kinda regressed to average at the end. His only arguably bad seasons were 2018 and 2019 where he had a .205 average with 47 PA and .000 with 6, and both these seasons were after his 3000th MLB hit. As long as he didn't drag the team down, I see no reason to not play past your prime.
Ichiro shows that stat geeks ruined baseball. Bring back the heroes - make baseball great again.
I wonder how many fans would, like me, sacrifice a bunch of "efficiency" to increase the fun and watchability and passion? Obviously the folks who prefer reading baseball spreadsheets to actually watching baseball games would be livid. Anyway, the toothpaste is never going back in the tube, so it's all moot anyway.
Facts. Let's get on base but hit 200 with RISP
@@2UGamingProductions - Fiction. His RISP wasn't far from his regular BA in most seasons - and it was 449 in his rookie year! There's a reason why this leadoff batter is in the top 30 in intentional walks.
I took issue with the OPS+ numbers. I think that they overvalue slug% shows they couldn't quantify Ichiro's game. Dude would slap a single, steal second, score on single or steal second and third and score on anything. He didn't need doubles or triples. He made them himself.
why compare him to a guy that was proven to be juiced? But even doing so wasnt far off in a couple stats.
I will not stand for any Ichiro slander.
I'm so tired of this, seriously, the dude has been out of baseball for a long time and people are still complaining that all he did was get hits?
He was terrific in the field had a rocket arm, stole bases extremely well, and led the league in hits virtually every year while hitting over. 300 consistently.... And people actually question if he was overrated?!?
Ridiculous!! He was one of the best ALL TIME. Period.
No one asked if Pete Rose or Ty Cobb were overrated, all they did was get hits as well....
Ichiro wasn't that insane as a base stealer. He's better than Pete Rose, who's still great but overrated, but he's no Ty Cobb...
I think he has the highest rdp on Baseball Reference (most runs from not grounding into double plays.) It’s one of the many details that gets overlooked.
Ichiro was one of the most complete players. A legend in my mind.
OPS+ (and similar metrics) fail at the extremes in my opinion. I think, in particular, it vastly overrates the Mendoza Line power hitters like Schwarber now and Gallo a few years ago and it underrates low power, volume hitters like Ichiro was and Arraez is now.
His quotes were underrated. He also did this in steriod era while clean
My favorite player ever. The most complete player ever (imo). The GOAT (imo). I see Ichiro, I hit the like and watch all the way through (even the ad read).
Stats that normalize offensive environment like any "+" stat do a great disservice to Ichiro. It's not fair to compare him using today's analytics to players that juiced. If we want to assess how good Ichiro was by today's analytics, it's better to compare him to the current offensive environment in 2024. This would show how underrated he really was
Terrific video. And the highest of compliments to the effort you have clearly put in on your voiceover technique. It has really paid off!
As a teenager growing up in southeast Tennessee we very rarely got to watch Ichiro play on TV, but I watched sports center every morning. His highlight were amazing and I always wished I could watch him play on TV more. Dude is a legend.
Anyone remember how he used to put on a show during pre-game batting practice by hitting towering home runs? He could do anything. He just didn't focus on that part of his game - he loved getting hits. It worked against him from an analytics point of view, but I wish we had more people like him. People would go to games just to see him play.
Why do you want more players like Ichiro?
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te I partly answered the question above. He reaches out to fans, putting on a show before games. He was funny - he even learned some Spanish just to talk trash to Spanish speaking players. He played the game in a style that was more exciting to watch, putting the ball in play and making the game exciting whenever he was on base, and his extraordinary effort in the field. As a retired player, he is travelling around to high schools and putting on clinics for them. He seems to have a genuine love of the game - it's contagious for all who get to experience it in person, as I did once. People love him. There's a reason why MLB is adjusting the rules to reward that style of play.
Ichiro is no way, shape or form overrated. He was a prototypical Leadoff hitter and a 4 star menace.
The fact that people equate the Japanese pro league to single A ball is absurd. It’s the most popular sport of a country with more than 120 million people. If Ichiro put up the kind of numbers he did as a rookie in Japan, you could expect him to do pretty well had he played in the MLB instead.
Where are you seeing people equate NPB to A-ball? The claim I usually see is that the level of play is between AAA and MLB, closer to AAA.
stats be damned ichiro is one of those ball players who passes the eye test with flying colors
Ichiro played a kind of ball that lots of fans, including/especially casual fans, love to watch. This is sacrilege to many analytics folks, for whom "efficiency" is all.
Efficiency wins ball games, how many rings does Ichiro have again?
Ichiro's playstyle works far better in postseason games. Analytics baseball only works well in the regular season...
But yes, Ichiro's playstyle was way more fun to watch...
Greatest Japanese baseball player ever
"i think ill just die"
same, mr suzuki. same.
Is the best contact hitter in the history of baseball who was almost always a good defender overrated gang?
Takes like this are why Ichiro is considered overrated.
Arguably the best. Tony gywnn for example has a claim, among a handful of others. But your point remains
@@ToonTwist record single season hits only hitter with 2 top 10 seasons tied for 10 straight 200+ hits seasons over 3000 mlb hits when starting as a rookie at 27. All this post integration and live ball era
Sorry you don’t know ball bro
@@kenw2225 Tony’s probably the only hitter that comes close
@@dravenpop None of the things you just mentioned show how good a player is.
You don’t know ball.
🤔Come on now,Ichiro worked by giving 100 percent and then some for his love of the game.
How can you ask if he is overrated.
His legacy speaks for him.😎
Such a legend
No one will ever have a 10 consecutive year run like Suzuki. Incredible.
And it could have been 15!
i aint even watch the video yet but i will say he is my favorite player to ever step foot on a mound
Ichiro wasn’t a pitcher
@@Natey11 not in the mlb but after he retired he pitched in a couple of mens league games and one of his starts he threw a no hitter
@@6efrat W Ichiro
He was 1 time
Ichiro slander of any kind is diabolical and should be come with consequences
So maybe WRC+ stat is overrated?
It's not. It's probably the best single stat for evaluating a hitter
@@eliotjurgensen1421 Why do you say that?
3:25 there's no way that's the first time a window has been broken by a baseball there. 😮
Hey ken
Whatever is happening or has happened to baseball, one thing will ALWAYS be true, no matter what level of ball you are playing. If you can hit and put the ball in play, you will make it anywhere.
Piniella said Ichiro could do anything you needed him to do during an at bat. He said if we needed him to hit for power, he could. If we needed him to hit an opposite field single, he could. He said he had such great bat control, there wasn't anything he couldn't do in the batters box.
Analytics or not he wasn’t overrated or underrated he was just amazing
One of the few reasons I gave a crap about the Junior Circuit. Dude was amazing!
Contact hitters, especially those who didn’t really walk won’t really show a ton of value as compared to a consistent power hitter who walks a ton(WAR offensively is very skewed to those guys) but even so I think that getting on base by putting the ball in play consistently to force the defense to do something is a great attribute that many undervalue because many stats are context neutral in that sense.
Ichiro isn’t as polarising as someone like Yadi in my opinion. These are both HoF-worthy guys with tremendous longevity and premium defense at a valuable position. While their hitting attributes are (this is gonna sound bad) pedestrian compared to other HoFers, I think that as compared to the average production from their counterparts (catchers having lower OPS+ numbers than other positions, not many right fielders putting the ball in play and running the bases as opposed to going for more power) they have a defining trait that gets people talking about them a lot.
Ichiro’s base running should be talked about more, I think he’s really got a lot of talent at that one very underrated piece of the game. Hate that he didn’t hit for 20HRs but it is what it is.
TL;DR Ichiro + Yadi 1st ballot HoF, if they aren’t unanimous idk what the writers’ purpose serves anymore
Well, also these power hitters strike out alot. The worst possible outcome. Low avg, decent walks, and decent home run numbers. War isnt an objective stat. Its subjective in what it weighs. I'd take ichiro over anyone hitting 28 hrs a year with a 225 avg. Contact, speed guys, do a number on a pitcher. A solo hr , sure sucks, but the pitcher is back to zoning in on the next batter. I find schwarber to be a bum, for example. Hes a glorified pinch hitter.
@@kenw2225 i don’t think it’s that black and white, guys like schwarber will always need guys like Ichiro to drive in, and guys like Ichiro will always need guys like schwarber to drive him in.
the game values putting the ball in play differently than it did years ago, and I think lineup construction has changed to reflect that.
(also if the mlb keeps juicing and nerding the ball a 20HR season will become the norm instead of the exception)
I think guys who make alot of contact and get on base have more value than guys who rarely make contact, cant run, and are only useful every 3-4 games. Just my opinion though. I do expect advanced stats to evolve and become more comprehensive to support my stance in the future though
@@kenw2225 A double play is the worst possible outcome lol. its ridiculous how casuals think striking out is worse than a double play
I just wrote something very similar to this. The thing with Ichiro is precisely that his approach to hitting was unusual for someone playing right field, as he was extremely focused on getting on base HITTING, disregarding walks since a lot of balls out of the zone were still in his "batting zone", so he could either get good contact out of them or, even if he made mediocre or even bad contact, leg out infield singles and accomplish his goal anyway. And, despite playing in the peak of the steroid era, that skill set was extremely liked and coveted so the public and media appreciated it.
Of course, this is an archaic approach that is inefficient at best, absolutely wasteful at worst, and makes for a somewhat underwhelming statistical profile using advanced stats that contrast with the spectacular picture traditional stats show. But at the same time that's what made him special. After all, his HOF candidacy starts with "Has 3K hit, got 200+ hits for a decade, holds the all time record for hits in a single season". Had he been focused on hitting balls in the zone and making strong contact he probably would have been a batter more akin to Joe Mauer, maybe a bit less power and walks and slightly higher average, but he wouldn't be "Ichiro".
The other guy to win MVP as a rookie was Jackie Robinson right?
In addition to all of his tangible and intangible skills, Ichiro is also just a delightfully eccentric guy, which I always love seeing in a top athlete. Also, "Ichi" means "one" in Japanese, which I think is fitting for a guy who was truly one of one.
How was Ichiro eccentric?
He was a complete baseball player, no fringes all fundamentals. I appreciate the career as a whole. Hitting high for average an entire career requires disciplined focus.
It exemplifies the prejudice MLB minds once had about the NPB that Piniella didn't even consider the idea that a guy who had already played _nine years_ of pro ball in Japan would know not to show all of his cards in meaningless spring-training games.
No doubt Ichiro’s 262 single season hit amount doesn’t get enough recognition. And it looks like Pete Rose was a bit jealous of Ichiro’s professional hit total.
Tuned out as soon as you brought in "advanced statistics". Sabermetrics, moneyball, whatever you want to call it is just a way of making numbers sound impressive to justify having a guy who can barely hit above the Mendoza line but can knock out 30+ HRs a season.
Players like Kyle Schwarber aren't going to win you playoff games...
the best thing i learned from this video is that ichiro has no idea who the loser Tom Brady is. what a chad.
And hated cleveland
If they had needed him to hit home runs, he certainly could have. Instead, he set the table for a litany of home run hitters. Baseball needs more hit leaders to balance out lineups. Also, his defense and base running are elite.
9:45 I mean… I’m def old enough to distinctly remember Giambi robbed Frank the year prior and there was a bit of reckoning due - atleast that’s how I felt. Similar to Mike trout’s 2019.. reverse payback if you will from him being robbed. I liked Berg that year.
And while team success shouldn’t always be tied to mvp, I think that’s hard to ignore on 116 win team. It’s not unheard of for lead offs like ichiro with that play style to win so there’s atleast some precedent. Im a cincy native so i quickly can recall Larkin half decade prior. Ricky a decade before ichiro. Speaking of cincy you mentioned rose a lot in this piece - he’s another that def wasn’t the biggest bat his mvp year - Stargell could rip but was dog shit on 1st. Last lead off I could even really find is probs the best and the year I used to think Mays was robbed but now I can see why Maury won over Willie . I do think there’s something to the idea of voters wanted something different. We had big bats that were already getting suspicious. How about we reward the purist this time before baseball changes forever. Atleast that’s how I remember it. It felt pure. Hindsight of course would confirm that but i think they wanted to get something different in there as it had after all been since mid 90s that we had an all rounder like ichiro take the award
Yo can I borrow that check mark next to your name?
Hit over .300 w/200 hits per season over a ten year span. Had he retired then his BA would have been .338. 1st ballot HOF up with there with Ruth, Gehrig, Dimaggio, Rose, Speaker, Gwynn, Cobb, Jackson, Williams, Clemente, etc. He hurt his legacy by continuing. His lifetime dropped to .311. Like Jim Brown and Barry Sanders go out on top.
He wouldn't have got to 3000 hits though and his HOF chances would have been worse. The hall likes longevity and career stats.
Ichiro still playing and training just not in the game
Watching the dodge at 15:00, Ichiro must have been a nightmare to play tag with.
This is kinda crazy because I was just thinking last night about how underrated this man was and it was pretty much completely random
Anyone who can get 200 hits in a season ten times in a row is an elite hitter. That said, a lot of his numbers are inflated by his very high PA and he did not hit for extra bases. A career 104 wRC+ and peak of 131 is bang average for a hall of famer.
That is not a sign of a ‘good’ hitter but a marginally above average one with a pretty good peak. A career 3 WAR player like Logan Morrison eclipsed Ichiro’s highest OPS+ in a season (133 to Ichiro’s 130). Granted, Ichiro has a slight to his because of the steroid era but even if we’re to add 10 points to his OPS+, he is still a person I can’t say in good faith is an all time valuable hitter by that metric.
People ought to focus more on his defense and baserunning. I think it would do him more favors in this discussion seeing as he wasn’t all too valuable as a hitter so much as he was adept at racking up numbers there.
Disrespectful to call this man Overrated
Imo as a pure contact hitter, Tony Gwynn was clearly superior. But if I had to build a team, I'd go with Ichiro all the time. He was no doubt better in all other aspects.
I think the biggest reason he won an MVP is to promote baseball around the world...just saying
You’re gonna get flamed… just sayinf
Ichiro has said that one of the things he never did when stealing bases or making catches was to dive head first.
i love the mariners
Impossible to be overrated… only won 1 mvp. He literally broke the single season record for hits… and still didn’t get an MVP
Also he beat Pete Rose if you add NPB Hits…
27 as a rookie and in the HOF and 3000 club
But yea… overrated 😂
if you add NPB hits you have to add pete's minor league hits, and he's still the champ.
I really don’t understand how anyone can say ichiro is overrated. Great character and had the stats to back him up no shot is he even slightly overrated
I hate this retroactive application of modern metrics to a past player’s career. Ichiro was dominant at the game as he knew it. If he played now, he would master the skills that would make him valuable.
If Ichiro hit for power he would have like 80 home runs per season until like 2008 or something.
Damnit. The "record lsting longer than Bobby Bonilla's contract" made me spit my wine all over my monitor.
I don’t believe he is overrated, but I love these types of videos!
There’s a problem with analytics when walks are seen as better than singles. Singles is actually hitting. Walks is just a good eye. Stop underrating singles and overrating walks. This is why the people who bash batting average are ridiculous because they underrate singles and overrate walks.
Walks are only barely worse than singles, and especially the kind of infield singles that Ichiro hit that can only move runners forward one base at most. Batting average is less important than either OBP or SLG, and Ichiro was good but not great at the former and pretty average at the latter.
OBP includes singles. How is OBP undervalued them?
He wasn't overrated. The Mariners were.
..im a Mariners fan.
Would you believe that he lead the AL in intentional walks 3 times?
Being, undoubtedly, the greatest hitter of all time and being left out of the conversation time and time again is criminal. This title has to be clickbait
He's not even close to being the greatest hitter of all time. He's the greatest at creating empty average; his OBP and SLG both are miles behind the likes of Boggs or Gwyn.
@cynicanal111 Ichiro would still be incredible as a pinch hitter and a pinch runner, but he's far from being the best hitter MLB has ever seen...
Under rated (if possible) as an outfielder.....BEST defensive outfielder since Clemente (and perhaps as good as Clemente). Over rated, his batting average was wasted at the top of the order and he didn't have the SLUG to bat #3 thru #5. His real batting spot should have been in the #6 hole, despite his .360 BA
Why do you say that Ichiro should've batted at the #6 hole?
if ichiro was a "rookie" then andy hawkins should get his no-hitter back.
ichiro is at the table for the goat discussion, in the inner room of the upper levels of Cooperstown. what more can be said? for me personally, the three best baseball players i’ve ever seen play in person in my nearly 40 years, in order, are ICHIRO, RICKEY HENDERSON, and GREG MADDUX. i did see bonds and griffey, but not until they were past their primes. i would still take ichiro over everybody tbh.
Him and Pujols could be greatest nl and al roy careers
No! UA-cam tricked me into upward inflection guy. Imagine a GPS … ‘Turn left in 100 feeeet.’ ‘You are on the fastest rouuuuute.’ ‘You have arrrrriiived.’ 🙉🙉🙉
Such good, well paced, content tho.
“Smaller stature 5’11” 175lbs” if that’s small then I’m microscopic.
Even the concept of Ichiro being "overrated" makes me question the validity of any plus metrics used as justification for the arguments and the the intelligence and/or sanity of anyone making said arguments. Ichiro was the perfect prototypical leadoff hitter who was also a world class defender. He was never going to be the biggest man, so he maximized what he was able to do with what he had to work with. As long as it creates a +1 in run column, a single is just as good as a homerun, regardless of the metrics; you just have to work a little harder to create that +1 from a single.
I might be arguing both ways here, but while you're in part right you're also wrong.
If we judge Ichiro by conventional wisdom, particularly the one in the 2000s and early 2010s, you're right. But we know that a walk is as good as a single. Sure, we can split hairs about how a ball in play might make the defense commit an error, but we are talking about MLB, nobody plays expecting the opposition to make mistakes.
Ichiro was first and foremost a singles hitter, but there is the fact that he didn't care much for walks, he was on the plate to hit, and since he was a great hitter with excellent bat control he didn't need balls in the zone to get those hits, particularly considering that with his speed he could easily leg out a significantly above average number of infield hits despite poor contact. That style is what made him what he was, and why his HOF candidacy starts with "Has 3K hits, batted 200+ hits a year for a decade, has the most hits in a single season record".
The problem is that said approach is inefficient at best, wasteful at worst. With his vision it could be objectively argued the he would have been a better batter if he concentrated more on squeezing pitchers and selecting easier balls to make strong contact. The positive results of this would be twofold: he would get more walks, which would increase his OBP, and the increase on strong contact would make his already great BABIP sky rocket even further. There is drawbacks like a likely slight increase in SO rate, but I woild argue he was such a good batter that this would be almost negligible, or handsomely compensated by the prior mentioned advantages, plus a slight increase on extra base hits. Think of Ichiro as taking a Joe Mauer-esque type approach and you will understand what I'm getting at.
This doesn't mean I agree with the "overrated" label, which I find flatout ridiculous due to the context I just mentioned about his batting style, but I do understand why coldly looking at the advanced stats numbers not much pops out.
He gets a single then steals a base=double plus ichiro on base made the Pitcher think more. Doubt metric people don't count the human elements
The fact that anyone thinks that Ichiro belongs anywhere near the "best hitter ever" conversation proves that he's absurdly overrated as a hitter. He's miles behind both Gwyn and Boggs in both OBP and SLG. He's mostly an "empty average" guy whose productivity was good but not great, aside from *maybe* 2004.
@cynicanal111 2004 Ichiro Suzuki was one of the best hitting seasons an MLB player has ever had. Ichiro's still overhyped by his fanboys, but he still has his great niche as having the best _pure_ contact Modern MLB has ever seen _in a single season_ (Sorry, Tony Gwynn).
He's one of the greatest baseball players of all time.....up there with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.
I thought the whole thing with Ichiro was that he was consistently great year to year. Cool, the juicer was better in a year. What about the next? The year after that?
Let’s not forget that his team won 116 games that year. Obvious MVP.
dont think he's 5'11 was listed at 5'9 i think.
“Overmatched” says Nelson rofl
Comparing those OPS numbers makes it seems like one if those substats is being overvalued in the formula
The problem is, Ichiro's OBP numbers (which is the substat that's undervalued) aren't as good as you'd expect from his AVG -- they were only really elite twice (2004 and 2007), and were merely "good" after 2009. His lack of ability to draw walks combined with his lack of power means that he's heading dangerously close to being an "empty average" guy, at least with the bat. Compared to Tony Gwyn or Wade Boggs, and he's not even close in terms of overall productivity with the bat because he wasn't nearly as good at getting on base as those two overall (and his power was actually significantly below both of those two, as well).
One of the best baseball players of all time!
Hell of a player. I don’t think he was overrated.
You know who was overrated? Jorge Posada
Why do you say Jorge Posada's overrated?
How is this even a question?
the most important ability is availability
Nice bait
I didn’t even watch the video I just came to find someone pointing out the bait
We don't count minor league hits toward major league totals, so his Japanese numbers don't count. That being said, he is still one of the best all time.
OVERrated?! Yeah RIGHT
Underrated and overrated? Definitely not overrated as he broke Pete Rose’s record. Imagine if we got Ichiro in his prime vs 28 yo back in 2001?!
Ichiro was a great player, but he was not nearly as amazing as everyone makes him out to be.
What makes him great is the combination of contact hitting, his defense, and his speed. But there is more to being a batter than contact skills.
He was an impatient hitter, which means he didn't walk. The more you sacrifice walks for hits, the less meaningful those hits become.
And then of course, he didn't hit for power. Even for a contact hitter, his power was not good.
I've read that teammates called him selfish, because he would go for hits instead of going for what was needed for the team to win. He didn't want to walk, so he would swing when he shouldn't have. Instead of hitting for more power, he played for more hits.
He's even said himself, that he could hit for more power if he wanted to, but he doesn't. And it's not like he has a shelf of championships to point to as proof that his approach works, just a bunch of individual accolades, which befits exactly his selfish play style.
It's not so much that he was overrated, it's that he didn't play to win the game when he could have.
Lol. Horrible take. Overrated? I Shouldnt have even read all that.
I agree that this is a horrible take. The dude was the first and last on the field every day. He had routines that other players could not accomplish. He played great for his style. A .200 hitter with 40 home runs plays his style and couldn't do what ichiro did. Ichiro couldn't hit 40 house runs no matter the myth. He played his style and did things to help his team by stealing bases, playing great defense and doing anything he could to make himself better at what he was great at.
@@adventuregames424 You can be the first and last person on the field and still be selfish. Yeah, he had skills, never said he didn't. My point is that he did not play the game in a way that would benefit his teammates the most optimally. He wouldn't listen to his teammates or his coaches. He would routinely ignore signs from coaches. He didn't take pitches. He wouldn't move down in the lineup when his manager felt he should.
And he knew he could get away with it because he was so loved. He was effectively a stat padder, not a team player, who also happened to be very good at a specific set of baseball skills.
Yeeeep. Hitting a bunch of infield singles on pitches where you should have taken ball 4 doesn't do anything to help your team win, and that's basically all Ichiro did at the plate. He's miles behind relatively contemporary contact hitters like Boggs and Gwyn on both sides of OPS, yet people would have you thinking he's better than them just because he got more empty average.
@@cynicanal111 Ichiro's overrated as a player, but don't sell him _that_ short. He can easily fullfill a niche that no-other MLB player in history can do, no even Wade Boggs or Tony Gwynn...
What you've demonstrated to be overrated is this set of latter-day (pseudo-)stats.
Bingo. ops is as subjective as it gets. Impossible to exact. Hr carry too much weight in some of these advanced stats. As a former pitcher, id rather see a hr, than a bunch of hits scattered all over the field just out of reach of the fielders, frustrating the whole team. The psychogy of stats is being negated these days.
Next video was hank aaron the home run king?
And yet, during the era when not all teams were using modern analytics, we saw that teams that used modern analytics consistently overperformed their payrolls while teams that didn't consistently underperformed. The traditional stats are garbage. Batting average is a meaningless stat when it comes to offensive productivity. It doesn't even measure situational hitting well, since it doesn't count sacrifices! If you're going to try to make the argument that @kenw2225 does, then you should look at RE24 and WPA, not any of the (largely worthless) traditional stats.
@cynicanal111 Ichiro Suzuki's an overrated player but don't undersell Batting Average. Batting Average is still the most important and fundamental batting stat out of all, especially when it comes to winning postseason games...
Absolutely not.
He hit 3000+ hits, and started in the MLB at the age of 27.
He’s underrated, if anything.
One of the best players ever.
OPS is getting a bit overrated imo. People forget On base + slugging doesn't exactly equate to offensive value
Why do you say that though?
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te Couple reasons - many people will see an OPS+ of 110 and think "He's 10% better offensively than average". Which obviously isn't true. There are many more components to offensive value than On-base and slugging.
Specifically, I think slugging weighs too heavily and can therefore underrate guys with higher batting averages. Basically, BA went from being overrated to underrated. Can't score a runner on second with a walk
@@GavinOCo Have you heard of the 2014-2015 Kansas City Royals?
TBF, you should've brought up RISP. Ichiro had a nutty RISP stat back in 2001 that doesn't get discussed enough.
RISP, WRC+ and Batting Average are the 3 true most important stats in the game's history... especially when we're talking about the postseason...
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te elaborate
@@TiagoGomez-hb9te I was referring to RISP with the 'walks dont drive in men on second' comment. Think you for sure got a point with those 3 stats, i thought you were disagreeing with me at first lol