Comments on: Ichiro, Still Hilarious

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:17:41 +0000

But the great thing for Ichiro is that he can argue in English and then insert choice turns of phrase in Japanese. The umpire might suspect he’s being called something colorful, but unless he understands Japanese slang there’s not much he can do about it.

By: JMHawkins

JMHawkins — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:46:46 +0000

Drayer mentioned last night that one of the reporters asked Ichiro if he had argued in Japanese or English, and that Ichiro gave him a look, and said “In English, or he wouldn’t have understood me”

Would the ump toss both Ichiro and Allen Turner if Ichiro brought him out to translate? I guess we’d get to find out just how extensive Turner’s vocabulary is.

By: pygmalion

pygmalion — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:28:27 +0000

Evidence of how poor a guide BA is for performance:
Consider these splits of Ichiro’s with men on base:

Situation / BA / OBP / SLG
–3 / .281 / .416 / .360
-23 / .219 / .529 / .281
123 / .473 / .481 / .703

Consider how foolish it would be to use BA rather than OBP to describe Ichiro’s performance in the first two situations. “Ichiro is batting only .219 with men on second and third for his career – he is anti-clutch!” It is obvious that people just don’t pitch to him in that situation.

By: jro

jro — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:23:03 +0000

From last year, when facing Dice-K for the first time, I loved Ichi's quote:

"I hope he arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul," he says. "I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger."

By: Mothy

Mothy — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:17:59 +0000

Ichiro may be over-rated as a player (I’m not so sure about that but there is a case to be made for it) but I think he’s under-rated in the clubhouse and as an entertainer. Quotes like this are hilarious and make me glad he still uses Japanese in interviews. I can guarantee he would just rattle off cliches in interviews if he did them in English.

By: pygmalion

pygmalion — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:11:29 +0000

Barring catastrophic bad luck, both Batista and Washburn should regress (progress?) to the mean over the course of the season and pitch with better results. Washburn especially has an insanely low LOB%.

But I’m struggling to see hope for the offense and defense. Ichiro has already hit his stride this month (.341/.413/.402 in May – his BABIP was only .262 in April, but is now .389, and his career BABIP is .355, so April was a lot of bad luck) and only Beltre looks to be significantly underperforming his peripherals.

By: jro

jro — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:56:39 +0000

43 – seems obvious to me, too.

I feel for Ichiro. He might be a bit over-hyped, but he approaches the game in the right way. He’s been dealing with this team’s (mis)management for a while, and the fact that he can find a way to keep it light, even at this stage, is more than I can say for his teammates.

By: tomas

tomas — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:44:27 +0000

When you compare that to both Batista and Washburn saying they threw nothing but good pitches, you can start picking out who we need to get rid of.

But, as usual, that’s not the way they’ll go about it

By: msb

msb — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:44:10 +0000

Drayer mentioned last night that one of the reporters asked Ichiro if he had argued in Japanese or English, and that Ichiro gave him a look, and said “In English, or he wouldn’t have understood me”

By: pygmalion

pygmalion — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:35:03 +0000

The Japanese contingency in ownership ought to be more concerned with their own failure to hire people who can field a competitive baseball team than with what Ichiro says.