Infield singles are worth much more than a walk. An infield single will score a runner from third and usually advance a runner from second to third. And I’ve seen runners score from second on infield singles. Walks won’t do any of that that unless the runner is forced.
OK: there are some situations where an infield hit is better than a walk. For most, I think they’re going to be equal. An infield single could score a runner from third depending on where the ball is hit and the situation in the game. A hit to the outfield will almost always score a runner from third unless it’s a bullet hit right at an outfielder with a strong arm. And an outfield single is far more likely to score a runner from second than an infield single. I’m not sure if there are statistics that measure how often this happens.
Probably the dominant performer at his position for an extended period, and at the very least one of the very few dominant ones. Ten-time All-Star (Blyleven was only 2x), 10x Gold Glove, 7x hits leader, single-season hits record, 10x 200+ hits (and consecutively), 2 batting titles, 1 MVP, 1 SB title. How’s them for stats? First ballot, no question. Don’t be silly.
The question I see is if his induction will make performances in Japan NPB get considered when other Japanese players come up for consideration, something like the way the Negro Leagues were retroactively decided to have been equivalent enough to MLB (er, excuse me, it was “Organized Baseball” then) for its players to have merited consideration. Sadaharu Oh may get a plaque someday anyway, and Sachio Kinugasa’s consecutive-games streak may get recognized too.
The difference between an infield hit and an outfield hit is overrated. They are both significantly better than an out.
I’ve seen how the rest of the Mariners hit, and they should take hits any way they can get them.
The year Ichiro won the MVP wasn’t even his best year.
Well, yes. But that’s not the question at hand, is it? We’re asking about the relative worth of infield hits, outfield hits, and walks. It can be taken for granted that all three are vastly superior results to making an out.
I’ve agreed on this point, and I think Ichiro is a no-doubt Hall of Famer. I said some people give him less credit because of all the infield hits and I explained why. Even if you devalue those hits by some amount, you still have a guy who has performed at an extremely high level for a decade and the first Japanese position player to have a major impact in the U.S.
I’m on board with the love for Ichiro, but All-Star teams, Gold Gloves and MVPs are not really meaningful. They are suggestive, but they don’t tell you anything you can’t learn better by studying the stats and watching the player. Awards are not themselves statistics; they’re a record of prevailing opinions. If Blyleven’s talents had been more recognized in his day and he’d received three times as many All-Star spots, that wouldn’t change his actual Cooperstown merits in the slightest.
First, to get it out of the way: It’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Stats. The criteria (both the official and the effective ones) are mostly subjective. They are aimed at getting the premier players of their time in. The people who saw Blyleven actually play, and who performed against him and who knew best on the basis that matters, considered him very good but not one of the truly premier players of his time.
Second, to get IT out of the way: Quantifiability =/= significance. It’s easy to think something matters just because you can put a number of some kind on it. The drive to get him in, based on anachronistic application of some trendy quant stuff that nobody at the time considered significant, and which are derived from views of significance to the game that are several decades out of phase with its history, is an illustration of how easily you can be led astray by focusing on some computer stuff with an acronym on it, not by actually watching players play.
And: Any analysis, in any field and not just sports, requires regular and frequent reality checks, which seem to far too rarely occur the Figger Filbert community. Post #9 in this thread is a great example - an approach to “understanding” the game that puts Blyleven in and Suzuki out shows itself to have desperately lost its way.
If he’d been a better player in his day, he’d have been more recognized. And that’s what “Cooperstown merit” is derived from.
Infield hits are strictly better than walks. By how much may be up for debate, but that they’re better should not be. In a force situation, both a walk and an infield hit advance runners, but infield hits can also advance runners in non-force situations and put pressure on the defense to make plays.
Point being, Ichiro gets hits off pitches where most batters get outs. The proper comparison (if you’re doing comparisons) of his infield hits is to groundouts. If your reply is “Yeah, well, that just proves he’s fast”, then so what? He IS fast, and that’s part of what makes him great.
We’ve got some people quoting some stats, other people quoting other stats, and everyone arguing against each other and yet somehow agreeing Suzuki’s a Hall of Famer.
I agree. But you’re the one who said, “how’s them for stats?” I’m just pointing out that several of the items you mention are not stats like H and SB–not events on the field.
I agree. TV commentators are forever throwing garbage numbers at us. You have to know something about baseball stats to distinguish the useful ones in particular situations. By the same token, just because we haven’t yet figured how to precisely quantify some events on the field, they are not unimportant. We really don’t know exactly how good Ichiro’s defensive play is.
I also agree with the point about Ichiro’s infield hits and speed.
I disagree about Blyleven, though.
I specified “watching the player” as key, whereas I don’t think knowing a player’s ASG or GG count is helpful in understanding him on the field. References to awards are often a way to avoid direct analysis and rely on safe conventional wisdom.
What you’re calling “some trendy quant stuff” is an effort to rigorously understand the precise on-field dynamics of winning baseball games. This has always been exactly as significant as it is now. We just didn’t know quite as much about it in Blyleven’s time. (And we don’t know as much about it now as we could.)
You wouldn’t object to using modern genetic science to try to understand earlier human populations, right? The fact that people didn’t know the significance of the genome didn’t mean that it was less significant.
Yes, Blyleven wasn’t great in the ways that were recognized in his time. That’s why he wasn’t voted into the Hall promptly. But now that we do have a better understanding of his quality, it would be strange to insist that we be held to the flawed judgments of earlier observers.
You can score a guy from 3rd on an infield hit. Unless the bases are loaded, you can not do that with a walk. Besides a fielder can throw the ball away. you can not make an error on a walk.
That is, the ways most recognized by fans and media. Plenty of batters who faced him have testified to his prowess, and even a moderate sifting of pre-sabermetric stats should have shown he was special. Blyleven himself pointed to his career 242 CG (91st all-time, and almost everyone above him played under very different conditions) and 60 SHO, ninth all-time.
A figure of speech, hoping against hope that we might not have to wade through as deep a muck of acronyms as usual. Don’t be so literal. 
But we can see it for ourselves. So can the Gold Glove voters, even if they often do let reputation play too much of a role. But even then, reputations are earned. We do know Ichiro is one of the top defensive outfielders of his time, and has been for a long time.
There are reasons it’s both safe and conventional - see my comments on the stats overemphasizers disdaining to do reality checks.
Or according to the ways the game was played in his time. Things have changed, though, they change constantly. Players play the game according to the methods and standards that are generally seen as important at that time. Those are the proper basis to judge them.
And where are the reality checks of those analyses? Is the basis really rock-solid upon which you claim that everyone back then simply didn’t understand what they were seeing, and that some crunching of abstract numbers about things the players of the time didn’t even care about is a truer, deeper reality?
If a theory doesn’t match fact, or perception, it isn’t the fact and it isn’t usually the perception that is deficient.
The proper basis to judge a baseball player’s on-field actions are the extent to which he helps his team win games. Are you really suggesting that there was ever a time in which that was not the most important method and standard?
And as my addendum says, I believe that players who faced Blyleven generally had a more accurate understanding of his ability than the general audience, though I admit that impression is largely based on things they said after 1998.
Play for a terrible team and you will not have good game winning stats. It remains a team game in that regard.
And part of that is that you will play differently for a terrible team than a good one. As a hitter, you won’t get as many good pitches to hit, so your approach at the plate will have to be different and you’ll have to swing at more pitches outside your wheelhouse. As a pitcher, you’ll have to focus more on throwing strikes, knowing you can’t trust your defense and you won’t get much run support, and that can lead to nibbling. If you’re somebody like Blyleven with the Twins, that means giving up a lot of gophers along the way, too. It can also mean pacing yourself to go the full 9 innings, knowing the manager isn’t going to bring in the good reliever he doesn’t have.
But the truly greatest players make their teammates play better, too. If the team is bad, that does and should count against your candidacy for the Inner Circle.
Sure. Every contract negotiation involves a player presenting his individual stats, and those are very often focused upon to the detriment of the team’s win total. Bonus clauses are very often negotiated in ways that create personal incentives that are at cross-purposes with the team’s, leading to problems like players waiting for home run pitches in AB’s where they should be swinging for contact, or managers feeling they have to bring in their appointed closer in any official save situation, no matter the effect on the game.
Please provide an example of a great player switching teams, so that we can demonstrably see this phenomena reflected in the improved play of his new teammates. I’m not seeing much improvement from the 2003 Yankees to the 2004 version when A-Rod joined the team. Other than Matsui, I see a bunch of regression.