The seventh in a non-alphabetical and irregularly updated series of review pieces for each(?) of the players we predicted last spring.

LL/USSM Community: .337/.385/.434
Actual Line: .310/.361/.386

Honestly, it wasn't that bad of a projection - the only significant difference is that, instead of going ten points over his career BABIP, Ichiro instead fell twenty points under it, which dragged down his final line. There was also a bit of a discrepancy in the power department, but at the end of the day, four missing doubles and three missing homers aren't really meaningful. Players vary. That's well within the range of error, no matter who you're talking about.

Looking back on everything, it'd be hard to compare Ichiro's year in 2008 to his other seven and not come away thinking that it was the most trying all-around season of his career. For one thing, his slugging percentage was the lowest it's ever been by thirty points, and his overall offensive production was as low as it was in 2005. For another, he got off to a slow start and didn't really get going until the team was out of contention. The fact that the team dropped out of contention as quickly as it did was another factor - Ichiro just wants to win, and the collapse of a highly-touted roster around him must have been psychologically devastating. Like anyone who's either watched or been a part of this team over the years, Ichiro's sick of disappointment, and it couldn't have been easy coming back to the ballpark every day when almost overnight your dreams were dashed.

Those weren't the only things that made 2008 especially difficult for him, though. There were whispers of certain strong opinions of Ichiro in the clubhouse, and whether or not things ever actually boiled over, there was almost undoubtedly some degree of jealousy and resentment present in the room. He was always kind of by himself. On top of that, over time he started to catch flak from fans and the media for not pulling his weight on the field or off of it, and Ichiro gave some of these mouths more material when he made a few uncharacteristic defensive mistakes down the stretch. People were calling him overrated. People have been calling Ichiro overrated since he first broke into the big leagues, but this time, some of those statements were coming from the same fanbase that had previously held him up on a pedestal. By the end of the season, Ichiro seemed less like an icon and more like a target.

It was tough, and it was tough in every single way. It certainly didn't help that Ichiro's favorite manager got fired in June. What did he have to enjoy? What could he possibly have looked forward to? As bad as it was to watch this team, and as torturous as it was to try and write about it every day, I can't for the life of me imagine how beaten down Ichiro must've felt the whole time. It's a wonder people weren't killed.

Fortunately for Ichiro - fortunately for everyone - the season ended. The season ended, and almost as quickly as people started to criticize him for underperforming they tried to erase their memories of the past and turned their eyes to the future as a new and more forward-thinking front office was installed. Brighter days had arrived in the Pacific Northwest just at the onset of winter, and all of the things that had been spoken and published about Ichiro during the season were written off as just part of the crash landing. So 2008 was a rough year for Ichiro. So what? 2008 was a rough year for everyone. Zduriencik knows what he's doing. All hail Zduriencik!

It's funny the way a little splash of optimism can make such a world of difference. Ichiro isn't going anywhere. We know this to be true. He's a Mariner now, and for all intents and purposes he's a Mariner for life. And where last season these reminders were a frequent source of conflict (No! Trade him! Trade him now! While he might still have value!), now by and large we're back to simply taking this knowledge for granted. Ichiro's here for a long time, and people are much more willing to accept that today than they were three or four months ago. Because they aren't as angry anymore. Fans of bad teams may focus their frustrations on the team's best players, but fans of bad teams with a direction tend not to be frustrated. Cooler heads prevail, and cooler heads are able to see through the negative hyperbole characteristic of bad seasons past.

Ichiro's sticking around, and at least for the next few years, I think he's going to be fine. He hit .351 in 2007 and .310 in 2008 without anything really changing. Diagnostically, he was the same player. Same swing rate. Same contact rate. Same groundball rate. Same line drive rate. Same walk rate. It was pretty much the same everything, but for one exception:

2007: .389 BABIP
2008: .334 BABIP

For his career, he stands at .356, so he was about as unlucky in 2008 as he was lucky in 2007. That's all it was. Luck. Even with that midseason hamstring injury, it's not like there's evidence that he got any slower - he stole more bases and he recorded just as many triples and infield hits. So we're left with luck.

Here's another way of looking at it:

2008

Grounders: .285 BABIP
Fly Balls: .127 BABIP
Line Drives: .634 BABIP

Career

Grounders: .301 BABIP
Fly Balls: .117 BABIP
Line Drives: .701 BABIP

Difference

Grounders: -6 hits
Fly Balls: +1 hit
Line Drives: -9 hits

That's the breakdown, and even if you think Ichiro's less able to single on groundballs than he used to be (with which I wouldn't agree; that BABIP was .368 in 2007), 36% of his line drives were caught last year, compared to 30% for his career. That's not sustainable. Brandon Fahey's BABIP on line drives is .734. Willie Ballgame's is .691. Tom Goodwin's was .733. .634 is unheard of. More than anything else, Ichiro was unlucky with his line drives last year, and that's not going to keep up.

Offensively, I think Ichiro's as solid as he's ever been, and his year to year fluctuation is simply the result of the vagaries of being a ball-in-play hitter. His single-season BABIPs have run the gamut between .319 and .401, and there's no pattern to be unconvered. It's just randomness, or something approximating randomness. The best we can do is say that Ichiro's skillset seems to have remained stable, and that going forward he's as likely to be a tremendous asset as he is to be a disappointment. Odds are in favor of 2009 being a kinder, gentler season.

Defensively, who knows. Plus/minus loves him, UZR hates him, PMR thinks he's okay. I'm comfortable calling him 0 < x < +10 in right field, including a little bonus for his arm. He did make a handful of mistakes down the stretch last year, and those can't be forgotten. On the one hand, I'd like to think those were simply the result of a lack of focus due to it being a lost year, because that's a non-physical explanation. But on the other, I feel like Ichiro has too much pride to give less than his all, so whatever, I don't know. It did seem like his mistakes had more to do with bad split-second decisions as opposed to deteriorating skills, so I think his range is intact. He should be peaches.

Overall, Ichiro's still a heck of a player. He may never again approach the kind of season he had in 2004, but that's not the player we expect him to be, nor is that the kind of player he has to be in order to remain productive. All he has to do is hit .320-.330 while playing solid defense every day, and there's no good reason to think he's any less capable of doing that now than he was three years ago, the last time people thought he might be losing a step. Ichiro's fine. The question shouldn't be whether it's possible to build a winning team around Ichiro; the question should be whether we'll ever be able to surround Ichiro with the winning team he so rightly deserves.

Geoff Baker, September:

When it came to Ichiro, who got off to a typically slow start in April and part of May, the internal turmoil nearly hit its boiling point.

"I just can't believe the number of guys who really dislike him," said one clubhouse insider. "It got to a point early on when I thought they were going to get together and go after him."

The coaching staff and then-manager John McLaren intervened when one player was overheard talking — in reference to Ichiro — about wanting to "knock him out." A team meeting was called to clear the air.

John McLaren, November:

There was talk of an unnamed player going after Ichiro Suzuki and you having to call a team meeting.

JM: "I never called a team meeting. I never saw any of that. A lot of stuff comes out that was really overblown. We just didn't play well. I thought there were a few jealousies in there that had to be resolved before the team could jell and move forward, but that's all I ever said."

It was a good story, though. Really got people focused on what's important.

I was on the fence about posting these results since they're irrelevant and totally stupid, but I know people will probably want to talk about them, so here's a link to your 2008 Gold Glovers. Commentary by categorization:

Reasonable

Yadier Molina
Jimmy Rollins
Carlos Beltran
Shane Victorino
Joe Mauer
Adrian Beltre
Grady Sizemore

Questionable

Greg Maddux
Mike Mussina
Brandon Phillips
David Wright
Carlos Pena
Dustin Pedroia
Ichiro

Laughable

Mike Young
Nate McLouth
Adrian Gonzalez
Torii Hunter

Neither Gonzalez nor Hunter are bad defenders, mind you, but in their cases there are such obviously superior options that you can't even make a decent case for them winning. Young and McLouth just suck a lot.

Congratulations to Adrian Beltre for winning an award he deserves, and to Ichiro for winning an award he probably doesn't. Honestly, Ichiro probably belongs under "laughable" with the other four (I mean, come on, Carlos freaking Gomez, people), but I can't bring myself to do it, so whatever. The only thing that matters here is that, were the Gold Gloves an exam in any college class other than second semester organic chemistry, the voters just flunked. I know, I know. I can't believe it either.

Every now and then it's nice to remember that Ichiro is capable of extraordinary things.

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Ichiro, 3/31-6/26: .285/.346/.365

June 26th:

Ichiro Is Fine
...
You could go through a laundry list of potential reasons why Ichiro's numbers are down, but just because he's a unique player doesn't mean there has to be a unique explanation. He's been unlucky. Despite zero convincing evidence that his skills are eroding, he's struggling to match his recent batting lines, and when you see that happen to someone luck should automatically be the first thing that comes to mind.

Ichiro, 6/27-present: .359/.406/.441

Bad leg and all, for the last month and a half Ichiro's put up some of the finest raw numbers of his career.

We go through this at least once every season, but please, stop reading into Ichiro's numbers and inferring from the occasional cold streak that he's lost a step. He hasn't. Ever. The next time this suggestion proves accurate will be the first. 

It's like the hitter's version of Mariano Rivera's annual two-week slump. How many more times do we have to do this before people catch on?

In Scott Miller's piece that presented the Larson and Gillick rumor, he also argues that trading Ichiro would help re-tool the Mariners. Well, duh Scott. Anyways, asked about it, Ichiro responded (emphasis mine):

"I haven't heard that, but what I think about it is that when things are not going well, many people have different ideas, and that's only natural. If a crow has thought it, it would surprise me. But since it's human beings, it does not surprise me."

And about the package the Mariners might get in return?

"All those younger prospects people talk about, I'd probably have more youthful movements than them," he said, smiling. "The way I move probably would be younger."

Awesome and true.

I need to break up Matthew's little hot streak. Whose blog does he think this is?

Running down the table:

-Ichiro's swing rate on balls outside of the zone hasn't changed at all
-Ichiro's swing rate on balls inside the zone is a little down, but probably not significantly so
-Ichiro's made more contact on balls outside of the zone
-Ichiro's made just as much contact on balls inside the zone as always
-Ichiro's groundball rate is up
-Ichiro's line drive rate is down, but probably not significantly so
-Ichiro isn't lacking for infield hits
-More of Ichiro's balls in play are being turned into outs than ever before

The first thing you might guess is that hitting grounders at the expense of line drives is hurting Ichiro, but I think the opposite is true - this should be helping him. In his groin-grabbingly awesome 2004, he put up a GB% of 63.7 and a LD% of 18.4. Fly balls are what he really wants to avoid, and he's been doing that just fine. So this likely isn't the issue.

The next thing you might guess is that he's being hurt somehow by making more contact on balls outside of the zone, but (A) that seems weird, (B) his O-Contact% was 77.8% last year and he did just fine, and (C) his BABIP on balls outside of the zone is actually higher in 2008 than in 2007, at least according to Josh Kalk's combined PITCHf/x tool. The culprit here appears to be BABIP on strikes.

Another thing I've seen here and there every so often is the suggestion that opposing defenses are learning how to play Ichiro better. They're not. This is, has always been, and will continue to be stupid.

You could go through a laundry list of potential reasons why Ichiro's numbers are down, but just because he's a unique player doesn't mean there has to be a unique explanation. He's been unlucky. Despite zero convincing evidence that his skills are eroding, he's struggling to match his recent batting lines, and when you see that happen to someone luck should automatically be the first thing that comes to mind.

Adjust Ichiro's performance so far to that .353 '05-'07 BABIP and you've got yourself a .319 BA with a .377 OBP. In other words, business as usual. Barring something unforeseen, I expect Ichiro's numbers from this point forward to look a lot more familiar than they have to date. If his batting average between tomorrow and the end of the season isn't in or around the .310-.330 range, I'll eat a hat.*

Why put them all in a bunch of individual posts if you don't have to? At this point I'm just in a rush to get them done and out of the way so we can officially put the offseason behind us. Onward!

ICHIRO:

AB: 673 (678)
2B: 24 (22)
3B: 7 (7)
HR: 9 (6)
HBP: 4 (3)
BB:  48 (49)
K: 72 (77)
SB: 41 (37)
CS: 9 (8)
GB%: 54 (56)

BA: .337 (.351)
OBP: .385 (.396)
SLG: .434 (.431)
IsoPa: .048 (.045)
IsoPo: .097 (.080)

Technically a bit of a drop-off, but not much of one. Ichiro compensates for a small dip in average by hitting for a little more power, meaning that - once again - the team's best hitter will be batting leadoff, coming to the plate several more times than anyone else on the roster.

Of note is that the community projection is the most optimistic Ichiro forecast of anything out there. It's higher than Bill James, higher than ZiPS, higher than Marcel, higher than CHONE, higher than MINER, higher than THT, and so much higher than PECOTA that it's looking down on PECOTA from above and smushing its tiny body between its fingers. I don't know how meaningful this is, but once again, given what our lineup's going to look like, this is a case where we could really stand to be right. If Ichiro reverted to, say, 2005 form, then that would be really bad news. For us.

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