Friday, December 24, 2010

The Strange Season of Ichiro Suzuki

Nothing illustrates the futile offensive season of the Seattle Mariners more than the strange season by Ichiro Suzuki. It wasn't a strange season by what Ichiro did. He did what he always does. For the fifth season in a row and for the seventh time in his ten year big league career, Ichiro led the league in hits. It's what he didn't do that seems so crazy. He didn't score many runs. His run total came to 74. He scored that few runs despite being on base 259 times. That's unbelievable.

June was the most amazing month. In June, Ichiro hit .322. He walked 11 times (his highest month for walks) and so he was on base 47 times that month. He scored seven times. Seven! And two of those hits were homers. So that means that he scored 5 times in the 45 times he got on base without hitting a homer. That seems bad enough, but of those 45 times, he hit 8 doubles. Plus he had 8 stolen bases. So of those 45 times on base in June without a homer, he was on second base at least 16 times and scored only 5 runs.

When Ichiro led off an inning, he got on base 105 times. He hit three homers, so we'll throw those out. So he was on base 102 times leading off an inning. He hit 13 doubles leading off an inning and two triples. He scored 38 runs in those situations.

This Fan finds all of that remarkable.

1 comment:

Josh Borenstein said...

Hard to believe the Mariners' offense was so bad in 2010. I hope, for their fans' sake, that Dustin Ackley, Michael Saunders, and Justin Smoak aren't busts.