Final Card Friday: 2019 Ichiro Suzuki

Ichiro Suzuki is a modern day, Japanese Roberto Clemente. Granted, Clemente had more pop in his bat throughout his career, while Ichiro had many more career stolen bases. However, both were tremendous defensive right fielders with canons for throwing arms. Ichiro and Clemente both won multiple batting titles, hit over .300 for their careers, and collected 3,000-lifetime hits. Yet, their biggest similarity is their legendary status in their home countries.

Clemente is still a legend in his native Puerto Rico and the Jackie Robinson of Latin ballplayers. Ichiro is just as legendary in Japan and an icon among Asian ballplayers. Throughout their careers, both players were not only standouts on the field but ambassadors of the game.

To start the 2019 season, Ichiro finished his Major League career in his native Japan, when the Seattle Mariners took on the Oakland A’s. Even though he was 0-5 in two games, he made lasting memories for Japanese baseball fans…and still was able to show off his tremendous throwing arm. His final APBA card, if the company even decides to issue one, is as disappointing as any I’ve ever posted in this column. Therefore, I hope we all can remember the Ichiro that took the American League by storm in 2001 as a 27-year old rookie. That year, he won the AL batting title, Rookie of the Year Award, and AL MVP Award.

The best example of Ichiro’s greatness was his 2004 season when he captured the batting title, hitting a career-best .372 and set the Major League record with 262 hits.

There’s little doubt Ichiro Suzuki will be a first-ballot Baseball Hall of Famer. I’m curious how many MLB hits Ichiro would have gotten had he not spend the first part of his career in Japan. If figuring conservatively by saying he would have been a Big Leaguer at 22 years old and averaged 200 hits, Ichiro would have had a 1,000 more career hit, putting him over 4,000 knocks for his career. It’d be safe to say that two or three of those seasons would have seen Ichiro getting well over 200 hits, which means Suzuki would have challenged Pete Rose’s career hit record and likely borken it.