Ichiro is awesome
DMZ · February 9, 2009 at 1:28 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Threw 56 pitches in a bullpen session, hitting 91mph. Has a forkball. (Nikkan Sports and this SimCentral post)
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Yup.
I have two reactions:
– Ichiro’s coolness goes up 10% and I wish he’d pitch for us too
– If he blows his arm out or something in the WBC you’re going to hear my wail of despair from anywhere on the globe. It’ll be like the explosion of Krakatoa where days later you’ll hear it again after it’s traveled the circumference of the Earth to reach you a second time.
Maybe my understanding of pitching mechanics is awful (and yeah, it’s awful) but with his arm, don’t you think he’d be able to throw a bit faster than 91?
Does a strong outfield arm always translate to speed on the mound? How about the other way? Could Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens (in their primes) throw a runner out at home from deep left?
Anyway, this is a pretty fantastic fantasy. I’m all for Ichiro pitching a game! Just don’t let him get hurt.
Interleague games would be awesome if Ichiro took the mound.
The two are quite different in various respects.
Still, I’m confident if Ichiro! chooses to he can easily hit
15094.Well, he’s about the same size as Lincecum, who hits 94. If he’d been following Lincecum’s regimen (and was as young) maybe he could throw as hard.
But he threw 56 pitches. He may have been pacing himself.
I’d like to see him come in as a reliever, actually. But having him start a game and get a win would be hilarious.
Ichiro is easily the coolest guy in baseball since the dissolution of the Negro Leagues.
Thats awesome! My question is, why is he even near the bullpen? Let alone throwing a ‘session’. Although, it has been rumored that he was a decent pitcher in his younger days…
Reminds of that one game that the M’s ran out of pitchers, and put Jamie Burke out there. I was SOOOO hoping to see Ichiro! I would be captivated.
Imagine what his mechanics would look like? Would he wear his Oakleys? Ha, that would be cool.
My new computer’s pretty awesome as well — it pulled up that Kanji script perfectly. 🙂
Seriously, though, you know you’re in trouble when Washburn barely has that kind of velocity these days…and he’s still in the rotation.
Didn’t Ichiro once say he was going to play baseball until he was 40, then learn a change-up and be a pitcher until he was 50.
I kind-of believe he could do that. At least (some day in the future) the team should give him a NRI to make the bullpen.
So, that Mariners commercial that came out a couple years ago w/Ichiro pitching from the mound is actually somewhat non-fictional? Holy smokes! Ichiro freakin rocks!
Check out the Cardinals’ pitchers for this game.
The only one I remember had him throwing strikes… from center field.
Bring him in as closer in the 9th inning!
“Japan WBC manager Tatsunori Hara has, perhaps unintentionally, prompted Ichiro to return to the mound by suggesting that using him in emergency situations is a possibility in this year’s tournament”
great.
that, and another set of links here, including a youtube video of Ichiro pitching.
My experience (as an outfielder into college baseball and a outfielder/pitcher in HS) is that having a good arm from the OF doesn’t necessarily mean a guy will have nearly as good of an arm from the mound. Annecdotally, I had a decent OF arm but was never that impressive from the mound.
Because outfielders can do a much better job of getting their momentum into a throw, there is a lot more force (or at least it is a lot easier to transfer force) from the lower body into the throw. Because pitchers are not moving when they start the throw (as opposed to an OF who is usually moving when he catches the ball and starts the throw), a pitcher’s mechanics must be much more efficient in order to achieve the same velocity.
Think of it this way – an OF is probably moving in at least 5 mph (and often more) when he catches the ball and prepares to throw. This means the ball is already moving at least 5 mph faster for an OF than a pitcher, who is not moving when he begins to throw and needs to general all velocity from scratch.
Or to make my post longer, imagine a javelin thrower throwing without a running start, or a shot putter throwing without a spinning start. Or an OF throwing the ball starting flat-footed (which does happen when a guy catches a ball over his head or off the wall). You can still throw hard, but it takes more efficient mechanics to generate the same velocity.
Well, for those curious – he wore the #1 uniform while playing for Aikodai Meiden, meaning he was the ace pitcher.
If you’re even more curious, here is some footage of him pitching back in 1991.
You’ve gotta love that the 1991 video only shows him giving up grounders and striking guys out. Perfect!
What does his contract look like ?
Haven’t there been instances in MLB where position players have hurt their arms while pitching (JOSE CANSECO)?
[I’m not happy about this.]
MissoulaMarinerFan – you mean this commercial that shows him pitching from the outfield? (That link is from Japanese tv and has made the rounds here before, but it has some “behind the scenes” footage that’s always entertaining.)
I’ll echo both of Derek’s reactions to this. But yeah, just when you thought he couldn’t get any cooler…
On a side note though, I’m not actually that worried about him blowing out his arm ala Conseco or anything. For starters, he’s had a decent amount of pitching experience in his youth… but mostly he is just in such good shape, and so in-tune with his body – I’m pretty sure he knows what he should or shouldn’t be doing.
Hey, you got Felix in my Ichiro!
No, you got Ichiro in my Felix!
He probably can catch too. And turn double plays at 2nd. And play every other position at the same time. He [b]is[/b] Bugs Bunny.
Going by the number of comments in various posts I realize I may be in the minority, but I feel like noting that reading about the awesomeness that goes by the name Ichiro! is much more enjoyable than reading about a couple of players who haven’t been M’s for nearly a decade.
My money says that the Mariners will have something to say about this and that Ichiro will not end up pitching in the WBC. He’s under contract and there’s no way they want him risking his career in games that don’t involve the Seattle Mariners.
KaminaAyato, thanks for the video link. Ichiro’s versatility is up there with Babe Ruth’s.
The last time Krakatoa blew it was known as the year without summer. If Ichiro blows out his arm it will be sadly repeated.
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Fujimoto’s catcher, you! It is 147 km out.
Hey! tonight’s FSN Mariners replay is Ichiro breaking the hits record
Now if only we could go to a World Series with Ichiro.
I’m not trying to be negative, just saying. . .
I’m hoping they show me screaming when he gets the record. Unfortunately, they rarely show our seats, too high for the third base camera and behind the screen.
There’s no need to freak out. For years Ichiro has been doing bullpen sessions as part of his work-out regime during the off-season. Ever wonder why he throws so accurately? He’d throw 240 pitches per day off the ground every 3~4 days to built up his arm strength and improve the accuracy.
50-something pitches is nothing compared to 240 pitches.
Cite please? That’s an incredibly high number of pitches.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbY_uVs9pPw
Since no one else has said it, I’ll put in that Ichiro has talked about wanting to pitch in relief pretty much since day one. Maybe some here don’t know about Ohgi calling him into pitch (for fun, with the game sewed up) in the Nippon All Star game. Against Hideki Matsui. (Bummer note: Matsui bowed out and the Central League broght in a pitcher to pinch hit.) There’s a card of the event in the All Star set of that year.
Also, according to (I’m working on memory here) Egawa, who wrote excellent pre-season scouting reports while Ichiro was still in Kobe, a big reason he was drafted so low was that other teams were only looking at him being a Yamada-style submarine pitcher instead of noticing he was among the best hitters at Koshien as well.
Ichiro is likely very serious about this, if he thinks he really can do it. He joked exactly the same way about going to the majors years before he did.
Oh, and Ichiro makes me happy.
The man is a specimen. I have little doubt he could be a decent/effective reliever. Then again I don’t know how helpful it would really be.
The team would lose a great defender, but if we had a good enough defensive sub it could help out. Boy would it be fun though. I would love it if we let him pitch 15 games a year in relief. I suppose you could DH him in games you wanted him to pitch and then let him come in relief.
Better yet, let Ichiro! be the DH when Felix is pitching. Bring him in in relief and let Felix hit. He had an OPS of five last year making him nearly as awesome as Ichiro. The sample size may have been a little small, but since when does anyone care about that?
Anyone who played little league baseball knows how it goes…
You’re playing centerfield. the pitcher is stinking it up. I mean, seriously bad. The coach visits the mound and gives you a wave, motioning for you to come take thye ball, which elicits your fast-paced trot from the outfield. You throw a few warmup pitches to shake out the cobwebs, and after a good two dozen tosses you cut a real one loose, resulting in that glorious “pop!” sound form the catcher’s mitt. You nod to the coach that you’re ready, get the ball back from the catcher, and bear down on your first hitter…
I don’t know if they do the same sort of thing in Japanese little league baseball (although, I must admit, I see no reason they wouldn’t), so perhaps bringing Itchy in to pitch in relief would be really interesting to see.
Then again, so would a six-armed monkey, but neither one is apt to help you win baseball games, in all reality.
Somebody remind me how the substitution rules work? Suppose Ichiro starts in the outfield, and in the 8th inning they have him come in and take the mound. You run Wlad out in the outfield in place of Ichiro. Technically, Wlad has been substituted for the pitcher, so he doesn’t bat because the DH bats for him, and Ichiro gets to keep his place in the batting order (right? Or does the DH rule require that the DH bat in place of the pitcher, always?) Now, the inning ends and we go to the 9th, and the closer comes in to pitch. Can Ichiro move back to the outfield (since the closer now technically is being substituted for Wlad?) That doesn’t sound right, but I’m drawing a blank… and I really don’t want to go dig through the official rules if someone can explain it in a couple of sentences.
You can’t move a position player from the field to pitcher w/o losing the DH
G.B. here to rain on the parade.
Silly fans, always getting revved up.
The photos in Baker’s blog are absolutely classic. Somebody was asking about his shades — the question has been answered: apparently he can pitch at 90+ mph with the shades tucked above his cap brim and they don’t shake loose. Who am I kidding? Of course he can. He’s Ichiro. They remain affixed to his head by the sheer force of cool.
Pichiro.