The stupidest stat of the day, courtesy of Baseball Tonight: Ichiro now has the record for most hits in a 162-game season (243). Think about that for a second.

Last night's game for Ichiro shows why it sometimes takes some breaks to set records. The players were positioned wrong so he picks up 5 hits.If he can hit one point higher than his .372 he will have the highest average since George Brett in 1980 when he hit .390. He has 905 hits in 4 seasons which averages out to 226 hits a season.

don't look now but scott miller wrote a total trash piece criticizing Ichiro on cbs-sportsline. The article is truly garbage imo.

He makes a pretty weak argument. OK, so he bunted a couple of times with a man on second and two outs. Overall, though, Ichiro's been doing an amazing job with the bat. Not every great player is a perfect run-producing machine. I think somebody who brings his overall stats into the upper echelons by doing something nobody else can is a great player even if you can point towards other guys who maybe create more runs.

The question is, if a player does one Thing that's great, but that Thing isn't really very important, does that make him a great player?

I guess the perfect example is Roger Maris. He held the single season HR record for about 40 years. Does that make him a great player? Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't.

But there are a LOT of players that I would rank as better than Ichiro right now. I would say that he's not even close to being in the Top 10 Best Players in 2004 (or any other year he's played in the majors). I would even venture to say that he's not even the best Japanese player in the majors right now.

Being able to hit singles at will isn't as good as being Barry Bonds, but it's not like hitting singles is an unimportant part of the game.

For the stat-heads: Ichiro is 9th in the AL in Win Shares (24 through 9/16), 11th in the AL in VORP (74), and 1st in the AL in Runs Created (125). Those are all pretty impressive. His .413 OBP is third best in the AL, and that really does create a lot of value, but then his isolated power (the component of his slugging that comes from extra base hits) is .087- the 2nd worst in the league. Every night is singles night for Ichiro...he's just such an unusual player. Great? How about unique, and very good.

i wonder how the stat guys with the most influence, Billy Beane, Epstein, Bill James, view Ichiro Suzuki.

One thing about Ichiro though is his speed combined with his singles (lack of power) hitting. I'm not talking about steals, but rather the fact that I've seen him countless times go from first to third on plays that the majority of players could not. That has to be taken into consideration.

9th in the AL in Win Shares, and probably not in the Top 20 in the majors (I don't have time to look).

1) Here in Seattle, Ichiro's taken some abuse for his two-out bunting. On the one hand I agree (According to tangotiger's run expectancy charts, the break-even point on these bunts is about 90%, and Ichiro failed both times). On the other hand, of all the players on that team to attack...

2) I forget where I read this, but it's perfectly true: The SIZE of Ichiro's value is good, but nothing special. The SHAPE of his value, however, is totally unique, and it's what makes him such an exciting player to watch.

You can't adequately assess Ichiro's value without looking at his home-road splits, which are perennially huge. SafeCo is a horrible place to hit.

Also, people forget: with the exception of the oddity of Barry Bonds, the ability to hit for average is - overrated and inconsistent as it is by the mainstream baseball media - the single most important skill in the game, moreso than hitting for power, drawing walks or stealing bases. It may be an obvious point, but for most players the batting average is anywhere from 50-75% of their slugging percentage and 75-85% of their OBP.

I'd rather have a .300 hitter with no power, patience or speed than, say, a Dave Kingman or a Rodney Scott. And Ichiro, of course, does have some pop, good speed, draws a few walks and plays good defense, so he's hardly one-dimensional.

Batting average may be the largest component of OBP and slug, but it's the least variable. And if you hit .300 with little patience or power, you will have a mediocre .700 OPS. It's hard to have a bad OPS if you take a lot of walks or hit for power.