Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Best Hitter Nobody Sees

Ichiro Suzuki accumulated his 3000th hit the other night but hardly anyone seemed to notice. That's too bad because Ichiro remains one of the game's most exciting all around players but because he plays on the West Coast and for a team going nowhere he isn't getting much air time.

There are those who will say Ichiro's success is "tainted" by the number of hits (1278) accumulated against Japanese League pitching. Since joining the Mariners in 2001 he has 1723 hits and counting. That works out to over 200 hits a season against ML pitching. How many other players in the "superior" league can say that?

Congratulations to a fine player.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just to put that in perspective, Jimmy Rollins has 1400 hits.