HUH? I’m not trying to discount anything. I had never heard about this theory that infield hits are less valuable than other hits, so I asked what it meant. It was posted by Incensed. I now understand the rationale, but I don’t think I agree. At least not to the point where you can write off a large chunk of Ichiro’s hits. As you noted, he does not choose between infield hits and outfield hits.
What does it matter what he chooses to do. We are measuring performance not desire.
Anyway no one is saying infield hits don’t have value or even that they aren’t almost as valuable as outfield hits. According to this article an outfield hit is worth 0.477, while a single that stays in the infield is worth 0.409 runs. So roughly speaking 7 infield hits = 6 outfield hits. Certainly that is something to consider.
No one’s writing off a large chunk of Ichiro’s hits. The point is this:
Let’s say you have two players, Ichiro and Achiro, each with exactly n hits. 30 percent of Ichiro’s n hits are infield singles, while 15 percent of Achiro’s n hits are infield singles. All else being equal (always a dicey proposition), Ichiro has provided less offensive value with his n hits than Achiro has with his n hits.
That doesn’t take away from the fact that Ichiro does, in fact, have n hits to his credit. It’s no different than observing that (again, all else being equal) a guy who went 4 for 4 with four doubles had a better offensive game than a guy who went 4 for 4 with four singles.
Trammel was World Series MVP in 84. He hit 350 in the Championship series and 450 in the Series. That was a pretty big moment.
<insert David Eckstein/Mark Brosius joke here>
He also should have been MVP in 1987 - I think that was the election that made sportswriters stop sending in their ballots early.
Again, I’m not trying to write off anything, just illustrate the idea Hawkeyeop’s cite addresses.
I hadn’t read his post when I started this reply, and was going to estimate that INF singles were about 85-90% as valuable as outfield singles, and lo and behold he delivers a cite that puts it at 85.7%.
Point being that if you discount such singles, Ichiro’s SLG%'s would go from .434 to .419. Of course all SLG % are thus inflated, but I venture that Ichiro would be in the top 5 in the live ball era and that average would be closer to 4-8 points.
On preview, what Gadarene said.
I don’t get this math. I came up with .295. Converting 20% of his singles to walks subtracts 330 singles, but also 330 at bats. 1700/5769 = .295.
And to be honest I think the effect of so many singles being infield hits is pretty overstated. Infield singles almost always advance all runners a base; it’s very unusual to see an infield single that freezes a runner at second or third. In any event, the impact on his on base percentage is zero, and the impact on his slugging percentage is minor.
I’m a Blue Jays fan and even I was appalled by the writers choosing Bell over Trammell. That was not a good year for awards voting.
That’s one of the reasons you can’t ascribe a lot of value to one or two awards. Nobody thinks George Bell was a better player than Alan Trammell just because one dimwit too many was impressed by his 1987 RBI total, do they?
Marley23:
Pioneering how? Even if you ignore the occasional outlier like that Japanese guy who played a bit for the Giants in the 60’s, you’d have to credit Hideo Nomo with pioneering the jumping of Japanese players to MLB a good 6 years before Ichiro.
Good catch; I was in a spreadsheet and had entered the PA and AB’s by hand instead of summing them from their components, then forgot to make the adjustment.
I also misspelled ‘voila’, ‘viola’, because I’m an idiot.
Shit, I did the same thing in my last post regarding the SLG%, adjusted number should be .426, not .419.
Possibly in the fact that Ichiro was the first position player from Japan to make it big.
He was the first Japanese position player in the MLB. It was accepted by that point that the best Japanese pitchers could compete in the majors, but it seemed to me that the prevailing wisdom was that the hitters and position players couldn’t hack it since the Japanese leagues have smaller fields and such.
I thought it was mainly that the Japanese players are smaller (and thus theoretically weaker) than their American counterparts. Ironically, Ichiro is small even for a Japanese player, and that’s a major reason he wasn’t selected until the 4th and final round of the Japanese draft. despite a stellar high school career.
Not the same. Trammel was a very good player. He did not just bump into the pitches in a World Series once.
By the way Polanco signed with the Phillies for 3 years.
[Emphasis mine]
And that’s where a goodly chunk of an infield hit’s value comes from-avoiding the out.
Outfield hits, too. 
The main argument against Ichiro so far, really, is that he’s had a short career (in the major leagues.) In terms of quality his peak is good enough, he just hasn’t been around long. So the discussion really won’t be over until we know how long he’ll last.
He certainly hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down so far. He was pretty much just as good in 2009 as he’s always been. Absent a serious injury there isn’t any reason to think 2010 will be much different.
I’m not sure he’ll make it to 3,000 hits but I wouldn’t bet anything against it that I couldn’t afford to lose.
Ichiro to his Owniro, I guess.
Report to the principal’s office.
Well, the Veterans’ Committee selections are in - congratulations, Whitey Herzog and (Umpire) Doug Harvey.