ichiro suzuki

Published in DDT's Pop Flies
January 26, 2016

Is Ichiro Suzuki the Real Mr. 3000?

On October 6, 2015, the Miami Marlins reported that they had re-signed Ichiro Suzuki to a one-year, $2 million contract for the 2016 season. The 41-year-old outfielder, the most successful Japanese player in Major League Baseball history, is just 65 hits shy of the vaunted 3000-hit plateau, a baseball hallmark that generally results in a Baseball Hall of Fame induction for those hitters who have reached it unless you've run afoul of baseball's proscriptions against gambling (see: Rose, Pete) or performance-enhancing drugs (see: Palmeiro, Rafael).

Published in DDT's Pop Flies
December 12, 2020

Baseball Hall of Fame: Ballot Forecast 2021 to 2025

In a tumultuous year that was not normal for anything and everything including baseball, one thing that might be back to normal is voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Granted, the 2021 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot has 14 returning candidates, with just about every one of them owning cases for induction that range from borderline to compelling.

Published in Top 50 Seattle Mariners
April 23, 2020

3. Ichiro Suzuki

Like Edgar Martinez, Ichiro Suzuki received some consideration as the top Seattle Mariner of all-time, but instead, he will have to label him the best hitter for average in team history.

A case can be made that Ichiro was one of the greatest hitters of the game period. The Japanese native did not debut in the Majors until he was 27, and he was still able to collect 3,089 Hits, 2,542 of them with Seattle. If you add his hits in the Japanese League, he has more combined than Pete Rose.