He has a batting style that is unappealing. I don’t mean his swing, itself. I mean the seeming (again, I say seeming. I admit that I only see him infrequently) reliance upon infield hits for his offensive contributions.

Yes, a grounder to short that is beaten out is a hit just the same as a line drive to center field. But it doesn’t seem as good. It simply doesn’t and it’s hard to get past that almost aesthetic judgement about his hits. One element of that is that he was *extremely* frustrating for opposing fans to watch his first year or two. It was maddening to watch 3 hoppers to short turned into hits with great frequency and not as an accident as it is for most every other player but seemingly by intention. It seemed almost dishonorable. How can this guy try to get hits in a way that for other players is only an accident? And it was hard not to have some of the antipathy for his success spill over into the judgement of him. I’ve pretty much gotten past it but I *strongly* disliked him his first few years in the league.

One of the first ‘Ichiro is overrated’ articles I ever read was the Rob Neyer article titled something like ‘Ichiro is no Sisler’. Man that article was dumb. Sisler hit .473,15hr at home (a hitters park) during his .407, 19hr year, while Ichiro got hits at SafeCo field. That was the time I lost any respect for that guy’s opinion…..

I also know that batting order is largely unimportant, but to the extent that it is, Ichiro is an absolutely awesome lead-off hitter – he gets a decent obp, and mostly through hits.

My hope is that other GMs think he is overrated, and he stays right here.

Also, we’re going to ask you to refrain from turning comment threads into sounding boards for your personal trade suggestions.

I have several points:

1. Jones most certainly does not suck. Is he a bit overrated? Yes. But he does not suck.

2. I think Olney is premising his statement on the idea that we won’t be able to re-sign Ichiro. He’s not arguing that we’ll have our choice between the two.

3. Olney does bring up an interesing dynamic. Most just assume that because so many good CFs are going to be on the market next year, there is going to be a feeding frenzy. Not so. We’ll see how the increased supply will affect the demand for Ichiro. Will he actually be able to find greener ($) pastures elsewhere?

“Atlanta will need a center fielder, but under new ownership, the Braves aren’t going to spend big dollars.

So here’s some early speculation: There will be very heavy bidding on Cameron, because he’s going to be the cheapest option. In the end, he signs with Atlanta.

The Texas Rangers, looking for a long-term center field solution, will sign Hunter, a Texas guy.

That will leave Jones and Ichiro. I’m guessing that Ichiro winds up with the White Sox — he fits a lot of what they do, with their running and hitting and hitting-and-running — and that leaves Jones … in Seattle. We know the Mariners don’t shy away from Scott Boras clients, like Jones; they offered a huge deal to Barry Zito last offseason.

We shall see.”

First of all, we wouldn’t sign anybody if it came to that, because we’d just use Adam Jones. Second of all, if we had the money to sign Andruw Jones, we’d just sign Ichiro because Jones sucks and Ichiro is awesome.

No, this front office is NOT swift enough to pull this off. If they were, they’d be a lot shrewder at baseball operations wouldn’t need this kind of crap….

Obviously, but the contracts play a huge role in that.