Ichiro And The Eye Test

But one thing stands out to me: If Ichiro were simply in a BABIP-induced slump, we wouldn’t see any evidence of it in his defensive numbers or play. Yet it does look/feel like he’s lost a little something out there in the Outfield. His “magic”, as you refer to it. Maybe not a whole step lost, but a half-step; or a little bit of his old jump. Its not that Ichiro has looked bad to me; he’s just looked human. And for a guy that seems to depend on speed and super-human hand-eye coordination and control, I feel like my eyes are more trustworthy than the numbers. But I do hope I’m wrong!!

Although I’m not a Mariners fan and have only seen them play a couple times this year, I think it’s quite possible that the “visual information” is really just confirmation bias. You see his bad numbers and as a result, you interpret what you’ve seen in a biased way by only remembering the weakly hit balls in play.

Interesting piece, though. There’s still a lot of research needed to qualitatively evaluate different hit types.

is for Ichiro to reach 100 career HR. He’s at 92 right now.

I agree with you completely that he’s looked terrible (much like Chone Figgins last year when people were saying he was unlucky but everything looked like he was worse), and I think he’s probably in a massive decline. I personally have a hard time seeing him get better.

But one thing I’ve come to realize too is that slap hitters always look awful, and it’s easy to forget the awfulness when they aren’t getting on base. Every time Ichiro has ever been in a slump over the past 10 years he’s looked like the worst player in baseball. So I do think slap hitters have something inherently going against them when it comes to the eye test. It’s why Chone Figgins has been not just bad, but also painful to watch in recent years.

So it’s hard to say. Slap hitters always look bad, and it’s the hits that make them look less bad, so if he’s slumping and not getting hits it seems like there is no way for him to not look “done.” Every slump he looks done, because slumping slap hitters are the ugliest hitters on the planet. But yeah, these have looked like some seriously weak hits for a player that was already known for weak hits, and these days even when he hits the ball he looks like he was fooled.

This is the real Ichiro.

That is all.

So how do his infield hit numbers, total and percentage, stack up against previous years? How many force outs at second has he hit into? How many times has he been thrown out by an infielder or on unassisted plays by the first baseman? I’d be surprised if his infield hit numbers are up to par with previous years.

It seems to me the opposing infielders are playing deeper for him this year and are still able to throw him out. If so it’s because he’s slower and other teams know it, because you can bet someone timed him several times to find out.

Next up on his list: Comeback Player of the Year.

She said that she’d heard from Ichiro that he hadn’t hit much during the off-season because he was trying to figure out golf. Something about how he didn’t like golf because he found it tough to hit a ball that wasn’t moving. Struck me as odd. Wonder how much truth there was to that and if true, whether that’s had any effect on his hitting this year.

Not all groundballs are the same, and I feel like I’ve seen weaker ones than usual. That might just be bias though

Where he seems to be losing it isn’t speed but the ability to drive the ball through gaps and over the infield with power. I think it was Jeff that had some statistical analysis that showed he wasn’t turning on the inside pitch with authority earlier in the year and posted in on ESPN 710. The lack of ability to drive the ball allows infielders to cheat in a step and that takes away the infield hits. I suspect there may be a conditioning/preparation problem here. He probably did what he does every off-season instead of upping it up a notch to compensate for aging. He even took up golf in the off-season last winter. I fully expect him to regain his warrior approach this winter and if it doesn’t pay dividends I think he’ll either come back here to Japan or give it up. He certainly needs to make some adjustments.

His contact rate and strikeout rate do not please me because there is the eye test. If you swing not to strike out or to simply to make contact, most of the balls you hit will be rolled over and become easy groundballs to the second baseman or shortstop.

A few years ago, when Ichiro was hitting as many ground balls, those were driven ground balls with backspin. He’s actually hitting a different kind of groundball now.

If his contact rate and selectivity are in line with league averages, as JLC points out, is there something mechanically he’s doing differently this year that leads to more groundball outs? If I recall correctly, his swing & approach are a bit eccentric and hard to coach to begin with, so perhaps it’s hard to analyze.

BB% and K% are normal. Baserunning is as effective as ever. But slugging and isolated power numbers are at historical lows. Everyone was expecting Ichiro to move from a speed game to a power game as he aged, but it would appear that the speed lingers while the power (such as it was) is what drops. And actually, we shouldn’t be surprised if this is the case.

Our eyes see fewer hard hit balls, and the stats back that up.