I recently posted a long article about Chase Utley and while the numbers don't look nearly as rosy for Ichiro as they did for Chase they're still not bad. They certainly don't indicate that he's been 'figured out'.
First of all Ichiro is a unique player that 'breaks the rules' as far as standard expectations go. He makes his living by getting on base at far above the 30% clip on balls put into play that one would normally expect from a player. His yearly BABIP (batting average on balls in play) are as follows:
2001 - 0.371
2002 - 0.347
2003 - 0.333
2004 - 0.401
2005 - 0.319
Career through 2005 - 0.355
2006 - 0.254
The fact that he had a 3 year down trend followed by a monster year and then another down year indicates to me that the league hasn't figured him out...but he's walking a fine line as far as foot speed and bat skill goes to be able to do what he's doing. It's clear to anyone watching the game that Ichiro definitely has special abilities (speed/bat control) that allow him to consistantly do better than .300 for BABIP. However he's no spring chicken and since a lot of his BABIP ability is tied to speed (beating out ground balls that he places to the left side of the infield) we could see him regress in this sooner than other hitters might regress in their abilities. On the other hand, his BABIP this season of 0.254 is terribly low and indicates very bad luck thusfar.
Ichiro has always been excellent at not wasting an ab with a strikeout. Here is his yearly breakdown of k/ab:
2001 - 7.66%
2002 - 9.58%
2003 - 10.16%
2004 - 8.95%
2005 - 9.72%
Career through 2005 - 9.20%
2006 - 13.04%
These numbers indicate to me that Ichiro fluctuates very little on this number over the course of a full season. Once pitchers had good scouting reports on him in 2002 he has k'd between 8.95% and 10.16% - a very low number. However, all players can slump and that's what Ichiro is doing right now - he's slumping. With the skill required to hit the way he does I would think it's much easier for him to get into these type of slumps...some time when I have time I might look to see if Ichiro is more 'streaky' than most hitters but my gut feeling is that we would find that to definitely be the case. That said, even at 13.04% that's still not that much of a difference. Even if he kept this up we're talking about right around 26 more k's for the year which would equate to about 9 or 10 hits at his career BABIP of .355. He's slumping but it's not *that* bad of a slump...the big problem is that when he has put the ball in play he's been unlucky (.254 BABIP this year versus his .355 BABIP career average).
For those that think Ichiro is hacking at slop though the numbers don't bear that out. Here is his yearly career k/bb ratios (the higher the number the worse he's doing):
2001 - 1.77
2002 - 0.91
2003 - 1.92
2004 - 1.29
2005 - 1.38
Career through 2005 - 1.35
2006 - 1.13
As you can see, he's actually doing better in 2006 than in any year since 2002 in this regard. He just *looks* like he's hacking at slop because when he swings and misses he just ends up looking stupid - it's a side effect of swinging with all his weight on the front foot. If you take a big cut and miss (a la Adam Dunn) you look like you're swinging for the fences. If you do a pirouette like Ichiro you just look overmatched.
Finally there are some numbers that are BETTER this year than in the past. I'll put all 3 numbers together here...the first on each line is the stolen base % (which is slightly down this year). The second is the % of attempts per time on base. The last is the % of steals per time on base.
2001 - 80.00%, 26.52%, 21.21%
2002 - 67.39%, 17.16%, 11.57%
2003 - 80.95%, 17.87%, 14.47%
2004 - 76.60%, 15.51%, 11.88%
2005 - 80.49%, 17.15%, 13.81%
Career through 2005 - 77.24%, 18.79%, 14.51%
2006 - 75.00%, 34.78%, 26.09%
These numbers are INSANE. It's definitely a small sample size so it's very likely (make that extremely likely) that these numbers will revert to career averages. However, what these numbers would mean if they held true would be about an 80% increase in stolen bases on the year. Assuming about 30 stolen bases in a given year for Ichiro this would translate to a 54 steal season if he got on base at his normal clip. We can only hope Ichiro or the M's management has made a conscious decision to set him loose on the basepaths a little more this year. Given Beltre's sb exploits to this point in the season that might actually be the case.
So to sum things up...Ichiro is playing a bit worse than he usually does. He's in a minor slump made even worse by a string of bad luck to go along with it. But the stolen base numbers and the plate discipline (k/bb) show that he still has the skills necessary to succeed and he most certainly hasn't been figured out. What's there to figure out - he hits the ball where they ain't. You can't stop that - you can only hope to contain it.
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by rib217 » Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:54 pm 
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