Ichiro

[deacphan]

The stats revolution has been great for baseball, but I hate how there's a new stat like every year. Makes it hard for the casual fan to keep up. I used to read baseball prospectus every day 5 years ago. I've never heard of wrc+. Sorry for the rant.

Anyway, Ichiro has such a unique style of play and was a lot of fun to watch. Especially since he came into the league when speed, defense, and singles hitting was not the predominant strategy. In terms of pure value, he was overrated for that reason. But he definitely brought more to the game from an entertainment standpoint than any number of second tier one dimensional power hitters.

wrc+ has been around a bit. it's a pretty great statistic. think of it like ops+ (in that it adjusts for park/league/era/etc.), but it uses linear weights to determine how many runs each offensive outcome has. i can go in to more detail if you care, but it's the best measure of total offensive performance available. i'd imagine it would be hard to top apart from tweaks.

on your second point, i couldnt agree more about the entertainment angle. i do think only looking at what he did as a hitter underrates him. my point wasn't to undermine ichiro the player; it was to undermine ichiro the hitter. i think he's still a hall of famer even if you exclude what he did in japan.

 

[CheesePritchard]

I would rather watch Ichiro hit than 2/3 of the guys on that list.

 

[nomadic]

I would rather watch Ichiro hit than 2/3 of the guys on that list.

No one can fill a ballpark like Corey Hart.