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Nope. Not overrated.

Career WAR 60.0 starting at age 27 says it all.

Imo Ichiro is the real Hit king. He proved that he was better in the MLB than Japan, had 3k hits in the mlb alone, and that's after playing 9 seasons in Japan. Idc what Rose says, ichiro is better, and he would've surpassed Rose if he had those years back.

I recall one time when asked why he hits so many balls on the ground and I recall him saying something along the lines of "chicks dig base hits"... had to have been a meta-response to the "chicks dig the long ball" by Maddux and Glavine.

Are you kidding me?this dude was a legend on and off the field. Pure LOVE for the game. Still around the clubhouse to this day.

Top 200 all time in career WAR and didn’t start until his late 20’s. If he started at 20 years old he’d definitely be top 100. So definitely not overrated.

Was he overrated? Short answer: No. Long Answer: Nope

Ichiro was definitely not overrated, not to mention was a gold glove outfielder

underrated actually

The thing about Ichiro's approach to batting and how that makes his numbers look is important. Back in the early 2000s there wasn't that much attention put into OBP in the MLB, which is the top of the sport, and Ichiro grew up and learned to play in Japan in the 80s and 90s, so the approach he was taught his entire life probably was "you're on the plate to hit". He wasn't naturally very strong due to his build so the default was to become a single hitter and, as with many talented players, he didn't need a ball in the zone to hit singles, particularly when he could get on base with a slow rolling to the short stop or a high bouncer to the third baseman. His speed as a complement to his batting made him a huge treath on the home plate because, as I think Frank Thomas said referring to Ichiro, "speed doesn't slump". So there was no point in squeezing a pitcher for an easy pitch to hit since anything short of a wild pitch was within his area of comfort for hitting with a good chance of getting on base, which his astronomical average during his prime shows. Of course, in hindsight with modern sabermetrics we can see how this is at best inefficient, at worst a complete waste of a super talented batter who could have focused on balls in the zone to consistently make strong contact, and compensate the likely fewer infield hit singles with a higher number of walks and a slight increase in extrabases, but in my opinion "rule of cool" applies here: had Ichiro been that kind of player he probably would have never gotten to 3K hits, or managed to reach 200+ hits a year for a decade, including the all-time record for a single season, in a row, the bulk of which were AFTER turning 30. And regarding his MVP season and the overall respect his numbers got, I get that revisionists history using modern data to judge basically every player ever is a thing amd has it's value, but different things are valued differently in every era. Despite being the peak of the steroid era it was still close enough to the "classical era" of baseball for fans and media to appreciate and even equate the arquetype of player that Ichiro was to sluggers, something that the data driven modern game would, correctly, never do. After all, we now see teams putting the guy that in other eras would be the 3rd or 4th batter at 2nd in the lineup, and teams with good enough depth have guys that would arguably have been 3rd for 95% of the history of baseball batting 1st. Measured against that I understand why it could be argued that Ichiro's numbers are "overrated", but the context around it is important.

Statistics be damned ... Ichiro was the best player on the field at all times for most of his career.

I’ve been a Mariner fans since I can remember (born in 1985)… there’s been seasons that the only thing fun to watch, was Ichiro and Felix. Ichiro is one of my all time favorites just for holding the line in very difficult times, of there have been many here in Seattle.

Ichiros role was a leadoff hitter. His goal was to get on base whatever it took. Slapping the ball in the infield was the easiest way for him to do it since he was so fast. He's one of the greatest leadoff hitters ever. Top 5 at it. Not to mention Tim Mcarver called him the best right fielder he'd seen since Clemente.

How can you say somebody is overrated when he got 2000 hits in just 10 seasons, let that sink in

Ichiro shows that stat geeks ruined baseball. Bring back the heroes - make baseball great again.

I think he has the highest rdp on Baseball Reference (most runs from not grounding into double plays.) It’s one of the many details that gets overlooked.

why compare him to a guy that was proven to be juiced? But even doing so wasnt far off in a couple stats.

His quotes were underrated. He also did this in steriod era while clean

My favorite player ever. The most complete player ever (imo). The GOAT (imo). I see Ichiro, I hit the like and watch all the way through (even the ad read).

Ichiro was one of the most complete players. A legend in my mind.

Such a legend

OPS+ (and similar metrics) fail at the extremes in my opinion. I think, in particular, it vastly overrates the Mendoza Line power hitters like Schwarber now and Gallo a few years ago and it underrates low power, volume hitters like Ichiro was and Arraez is now.

It exemplifies the prejudice MLB minds once had about the NPB that Piniella didn't even consider the idea that a guy who had already played _nine years_ of pro ball in Japan would know not to show all of his cards in meaningless spring-training games.

I will not stand for any Ichiro slander.

As a teenager growing up in southeast Tennessee we very rarely got to watch Ichiro play on TV, but I watched sports center every morning. His highlight were amazing and I always wished I could watch him play on TV more. Dude is a legend.

Terrific video. And the highest of compliments to the effort you have clearly put in on your voiceover technique. It has really paid off!

Anyone remember how he used to put on a show during pre-game batting practice by hitting towering home runs? He could do anything. He just didn't focus on that part of his game - he loved getting hits. It worked against him from an analytics point of view, but I wish we had more people like him. People would go to games just to see him play.

stats be damned ichiro is one of those ball players who passes the eye test with flying colors

i aint even watch the video yet but i will say he is my favorite player to ever step foot on a mound

Greatest Japanese baseball player ever

Piniella said Ichiro could do anything you needed him to do during an at bat. He said if we needed him to hit for power, he could. If we needed him to hit an opposite field single, he could. He said he had such great bat control, there wasn't anything he couldn't do in the batters box.

If they had needed him to hit home runs, he certainly could have. Instead, he set the table for a litany of home run hitters. Baseball needs more hit leaders to balance out lineups. Also, his defense and base running are elite.

He was a complete baseball player, no fringes all fundamentals. I appreciate the career as a whole. Hitting high for average an entire career requires disciplined focus.

Ichiro played a kind of ball that lots of fans, including/especially casual fans, love to watch. This is sacrilege to many analytics folks, for whom "efficiency" is all.

I'm so tired of this, seriously, the dude has been out of baseball for a long time and people are still complaining that all he did was get hits? He was terrific in the field had a rocket arm, stole bases extremely well, and led the league in hits virtually every year while hitting over. 300 consistently.... And people actually question if he was overrated?!? Ridiculous!! He was one of the best ALL TIME. Period. No one asked if Pete Rose or Ty Cobb were overrated, all they did was get hits as well....

No one will ever have a 10 consecutive year run like Suzuki. Incredible.

Ichiro was so beloved in Seattle. When Miami came to town for a game while Ichiro was there, the crowd absolutely roared when he got a hit against the Mariners. We just couldn't help ourselves.

In addition to all of his tangible and intangible skills, Ichiro is also just a delightfully eccentric guy, which I always love seeing in a top athlete. Also, "Ichi" means "one" in Japanese, which I think is fitting for a guy who was truly one of one.

"i think ill just die" same, mr suzuki. same.

3:25 there's no way that's the first time a window has been broken by a baseball there. 😮

Yet, if the Mariners were tied or down a run late in the game with nobody on, Ichiro could deliver a homer. In his time he was the most exciting player in baseball, offensively or defensively.

🤔Come on now,Ichiro worked by giving 100 percent and then some for his love of the game. How can you ask if he is overrated. His legacy speaks for him.😎

Ichiro is no way, shape or form overrated. He was a prototypical Leadoff hitter and a 4 star menace.

Stats that normalize offensive environment like any "+" stat do a great disservice to Ichiro. It's not fair to compare him using today's analytics to players that juiced. If we want to assess how good Ichiro was by today's analytics, it's better to compare him to the current offensive environment in 2024. This would show how underrated he really was

Is the best contact hitter in the history of baseball who was almost always a good defender overrated gang?

Whatever is happening or has happened to baseball, one thing will ALWAYS be true, no matter what level of ball you are playing. If you can hit and put the ball in play, you will make it anywhere.

One of the few reasons I gave a crap about the Junior Circuit. Dude was amazing!

The fact that people equate the Japanese pro league to single A ball is absurd. It’s the most popular sport of a country with more than 120 million people. If Ichiro put up the kind of numbers he did as a rookie in Japan, you could expect him to do pretty well had he played in the MLB instead.

Ichiro slander of any kind is diabolical and should be come with consequences

9:45 I mean… I’m def old enough to distinctly remember Giambi robbed Frank the year prior and there was a bit of reckoning due - atleast that’s how I felt. Similar to Mike trout’s 2019.. reverse payback if you will from him being robbed. I liked Berg that year. And while team success shouldn’t always be tied to mvp, I think that’s hard to ignore on 116 win team. It’s not unheard of for lead offs like ichiro with that play style to win so there’s atleast some precedent. Im a cincy native so i quickly can recall Larkin half decade prior. Ricky a decade before ichiro. Speaking of cincy you mentioned rose a lot in this piece - he’s another that def wasn’t the biggest bat his mvp year - Stargell could rip but was dog shit on 1st. Last lead off I could even really find is probs the best and the year I used to think Mays was robbed but now I can see why Maury won over Willie . I do think there’s something to the idea of voters wanted something different. We had big bats that were already getting suspicious. How about we reward the purist this time before baseball changes forever. Atleast that’s how I remember it. It felt pure. Hindsight of course would confirm that but i think they wanted to get something different in there as it had after all been since mid 90s that we had an all rounder like ichiro take the award

This is why people don’t like these new era stats. Ichiro filled his spot in the lineup the best anyone ever has. He had the ability to hit for power but didn’t because that wasn’t necessarily what his team needed ever at bat

This is where the math is so stupid, Ichiro had a role, he was a table setter. Who was always on base and who’s speed always had the pitcher worried out of the stretch. Yet he’s compared to steroid era players paid to drive in runs.

Analytics or not he wasn’t overrated or underrated he was just amazing

Ichiro Suzuki could've been the first dual player in professional baseball. He was an excellent pitcher in high school and an consistent batter.

Contact hitters, especially those who didn’t really walk won’t really show a ton of value as compared to a consistent power hitter who walks a ton(WAR offensively is very skewed to those guys) but even so I think that getting on base by putting the ball in play consistently to force the defense to do something is a great attribute that many undervalue because many stats are context neutral in that sense. Ichiro isn’t as polarising as someone like Yadi in my opinion. These are both HoF-worthy guys with tremendous longevity and premium defense at a valuable position. While their hitting attributes are (this is gonna sound bad) pedestrian compared to other HoFers, I think that as compared to the average production from their counterparts (catchers having lower OPS+ numbers than other positions, not many right fielders putting the ball in play and running the bases as opposed to going for more power) they have a defining trait that gets people talking about them a lot. Ichiro’s base running should be talked about more, I think he’s really got a lot of talent at that one very underrated piece of the game. Hate that he didn’t hit for 20HRs but it is what it is. TL;DR Ichiro + Yadi 1st ballot HoF, if they aren’t unanimous idk what the writers’ purpose serves anymore

Moral of the story: you can call almost any player under or overrated if you cherry pick the right stats. In my opinion, he played the game like a chess grandmaster. Single+SB results in a player in scoring position exactly the same number of times as a double but you get in the pitchers head. And for Ichiro a good lead on first could be scoring position. Who needs dingers or even extra base hits when you have speed? At the end of the game all that matters is the runs on the board. How you get them doesn’t matter. As for the defense, him being underrated is news to me. If this is a thing I’ve never heard it.

Imo as a pure contact hitter, Tony Gwynn was clearly superior. But if I had to build a team, I'd go with Ichiro all the time. He was no doubt better in all other aspects.

i love the mariners

The other guy to win MVP as a rookie was Jackie Robinson right?

So maybe WRC+ stat is overrated?

No doubt Ichiro’s 262 single season hit amount doesn’t get enough recognition. And it looks like Pete Rose was a bit jealous of Ichiro’s professional hit total.

Watching the dodge at 15:00, Ichiro must have been a nightmare to play tag with.

I don’t believe he is overrated, but I love these types of videos!

If Ichiro hit for power he would have like 80 home runs per season until like 2008 or something.

Tuned out as soon as you brought in "advanced statistics". Sabermetrics, moneyball, whatever you want to call it is just a way of making numbers sound impressive to justify having a guy who can barely hit above the Mendoza line but can knock out 30+ HRs a season.

Disrespectful to call this man Overrated

Ichiro has said that one of the things he never did when stealing bases or making catches was to dive head first.

Damnit. The "record lsting longer than Bobby Bonilla's contract" made me spit my wine all over my monitor.

This is kinda crazy because I was just thinking last night about how underrated this man was and it was pretty much completely random

No! KZfaq tricked me into upward inflection guy. Imagine a GPS … ‘Turn left in 100 feeeet.’ ‘You are on the fastest rouuuuute.’ ‘You have arrrrriiived.’ 🙉🙉🙉 Such good, well paced, content tho.

Under rated (if possible) as an outfielder.....BEST defensive outfielder since Clemente (and perhaps as good as Clemente). Over rated, his batting average was wasted at the top of the order and he didn't have the SLUG to bat #3 thru #5. His real batting spot should have been in the #6 hole, despite his .360 BA

Anyone who can get 200 hits in a season ten times in a row is an elite hitter. That said, a lot of his numbers are inflated by his very high PA and he did not hit for extra bases. A career 104 wRC+ and peak of 131 is bang average for a hall of famer. That is not a sign of a ‘good’ hitter but a marginally above average one with a pretty good peak. A career 3 WAR player like Logan Morrison eclipsed Ichiro’s highest OPS+ in a season (133 to Ichiro’s 130). Granted, Ichiro has a slight to his because of the steroid era but even if we’re to add 10 points to his OPS+, he is still a person I can’t say in good faith is an all time valuable hitter by that metric. People ought to focus more on his defense and baserunning. I think it would do him more favors in this discussion seeing as he wasn’t all too valuable as a hitter so much as he was adept at racking up numbers there.

I think the biggest reason he won an MVP is to promote baseball around the world...just saying

Hit over .300 w/200 hits per season over a ten year span. Had he retired then his BA would have been .338. 1st ballot HOF up with there with Ruth, Gehrig, Dimaggio, Rose, Speaker, Gwynn, Cobb, Jackson, Williams, Clemente, etc. He hurt his legacy by continuing. His lifetime dropped to .311. Like Jim Brown and Barry Sanders go out on top.

“Smaller stature 5’11” 175lbs” if that’s small then I’m microscopic.

He's one of the greatest baseball players of all time.....up there with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.

the best thing i learned from this video is that ichiro has no idea who the loser Tom Brady is. what a chad.

I really don’t understand how anyone can say ichiro is overrated. Great character and had the stats to back him up no shot is he even slightly overrated

Impossible to be overrated… only won 1 mvp. He literally broke the single season record for hits… and still didn’t get an MVP Also he beat Pete Rose if you add NPB Hits… 27 as a rookie and in the HOF and 3000 club But yea… overrated 😂

Haven’t even watched yet, but number 1, how DARE you.

I hate this retroactive application of modern metrics to a past player’s career. Ichiro was dominant at the game as he knew it. If he played now, he would master the skills that would make him valuable.

One of the best baseball players of all time!

Let’s not forget that his team won 116 games that year. Obvious MVP.

Would you believe that he lead the AL in intentional walks 3 times?

“Overmatched” says Nelson rofl

ichiro is at the table for the goat discussion, in the inner room of the upper levels of Cooperstown. what more can be said? for me personally, the three best baseball players i’ve ever seen play in person in my nearly 40 years, in order, are ICHIRO, RICKEY HENDERSON, and GREG MADDUX. i did see bonds and griffey, but not until they were past their primes. i would still take ichiro over everybody tbh.

Hell of a player. I don’t think he was overrated.

the most important ability is availability

Amazing player top 10 alltime

I thought the whole thing with Ichiro was that he was consistently great year to year. Cool, the juicer was better in a year. What about the next? The year after that?

He wasn't overrated. The Mariners were. ..im a Mariners fan.

dont think he's 5'11 was listed at 5'9 i think.

Great video!! Overrated? Nah

You know who was overrated? Jorge Posada

Even the concept of Ichiro being "overrated" makes me question the validity of any plus metrics used as justification for the arguments and the the intelligence and/or sanity of anyone making said arguments. Ichiro was the perfect prototypical leadoff hitter who was also a world class defender. He was never going to be the biggest man, so he maximized what he was able to do with what he had to work with. As long as it creates a +1 in run column, a single is just as good as a homerun, regardless of the metrics; you just have to work a little harder to create that +1 from a single.

There’s a problem with analytics when walks are seen as better than singles. Singles is actually hitting. Walks is just a good eye. Stop underrating singles and overrating walks. This is why the people who bash batting average are ridiculous because they underrate singles and overrate walks.

if ichiro was a "rookie" then andy hawkins should get his no-hitter back.

OVERrated?! Yeah RIGHT

Being, undoubtedly, the greatest hitter of all time and being left out of the conversation time and time again is criminal. This title has to be clickbait