Ichiro Suzuki looks to be the next unanimous Baseball Hall of Fame induction. His resume is full of accolades, so he’s good on paper, but when you watch what he does on the field, the art makes you forget about the numbers.
He said to be careful when it comes to those measurements too:
“What I was interested in was whether they valued things that cannot be seen through data. Sometimes it’s not just data,” Ichiro told Yahoo News. “How do emotions move? Sensitivity, etc. Modern baseball is about getting tethered with data and losing sensibility. Think for yourself and act.” Data cannot be ignored because players analyze each other. However, even if you fill your head with data, in the end it is a showdown between flesh and blood humans.”
The words he said were toward a group of juniors from his alma mater, Aichi Institute of Technology Meidai baseball team on Monday. It was a complete surprise to the kids to have Ichiro show up.
Suzuki is one of just two (Fred Lynn in 1975) as the only players to win AL Rookie of the Year and AL MVP in the same season in 2001. He earned 10 All-Star selections, three Silver Sluggers, two batting titles, and 10 Gold Glove awards. He played 19 seasons in the league across three teams.
He also had the innate ability to know where he was going to hit the ball before it was coming.
Ichiro was part of an era of baseball where it was right on the cusp of the old-school game, but slowly introducing analytics to the game. Those statistics became more and more advanced as time went on. But the eye test remains true and a part of the game that will never go away.
There’s a balance there.
“A good pitcher doesn’t throw easy pitches,” he said. “It’s hard. You have to turn them into hits. Technique should take priority,” and said, “It doesn’t matter if it’s a strike or a ball. If you think you can make it a hit, that’s a strike.”
Ichiro joins a class of 14 newcomers on the Hall of Fame ballot, including pitchers CC Sabathia and Félix Hernández, and infielders Dustin Pedroia and Hanley Ramírez.
