TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Sunday, May 23, 2004

A Tale of Two Latecomers

I'd like to take a look at the stat lines for the first three years of major league stats for two 28-year-old rookies (they both turned 28 the year they played their first major league game):

G AB H AVG R HR RBI SB
Rookie 1 455 1758 548 .311 355 40 257 88
Rookie 2 473 2018 662 .328 349 29 182 121


Here's some additional information about these two gentlemen:

• Both won Rookie of the Year and MVP honors during their first three years
  
• Both were instrumental in taking their teams to the brink of championships (but didn't quite make it)
  
• Player 1 played excellent middle-infield defense, player 2 played gold-glove outfield defense
  
• Player 1 hit in various spots in the lineup, Player 2 was exclusively a leadoff hitter
  
• Both players played for pretty good teams
  
• Player 1 played in a neutral era with respect to offense and defense, in a hitter's park; Player 2 played in a hitter's era in a strongly pitching-oriented park
  

Both these players were 28-year old rookies in the majors thanks largely to the circumstances of their times which prevented an earlier entry into the league.

Now here's the career 'big league' totals of these two gents to date:


G AB H AVG R HR RBI SB
Rookie 1 1382 4877 1518 .311 947 137 734 197
Rookie 2 1476 5824 2001 .343 1005 149 795 327


And your final clue: Player 1 is in the Hall of Fame, Player 2 is still playing.

Give up? Want more time? You can look at this lovely picture of the semi-pro Salinas Packers mascot, Mr. Lettuce (no love lost with the Wilmington Blue Rocks' Mr. Celery) while you think about it, and to prevent your eyes from scrolling down to the answer.

Rookie 1, as the statistically-devoted will have already surmised, is Jackie Robinson.

Rookie 2 is Ichiro Suzuki.

I cheated in this analysis: I used Ichiro's Japan League statistics with Orix to fill in his major league totals, and used Jackie's actual major league stats. Robinson's "statistics" prior to his major league career are purely speculative: he played a short stint in the Negro Leagues, a full year with Montreal in the International League, spend several years in the army during WWII, and spent several years without engaging in professional sports after his graduation from UCLA.

Robinson, I believe, was elected to the hall of fame for his caliber as a player. In 1962, when he was selected, I don't believe his "importance to the game" -- which we all recognize now much more clearly than I think the baseball writers might've forty years ago -- was as important as the idea that, despite what looked like a thin statistical line, the impression that Robinson was a dominant talent during his brief ten-year career. In other words, Robinson belongs in the Hall of Fame on his own hook, not simply because of his role in integrating baseball.

I'm not at all suggesting Ichiro's entry into major league baseball is as momentous as Robinson's. Suzuki is the first star-caliber hitter to make his mark in the major leagues from the JL (Hideo Nomo, of course, preceeded Suzuki by five years and has been good though not great), and clearly his success has opened up a minor trickle of talent from the JL. Robinson's entry into MLB opened up a floodgate of talent, of course, and improved the game permanently and deeply and in ways more profound than mere performance. Ichiromania added a bit of extra excitement, re-introduced an old style of play emphasizing speed, contact, and defense, and in general made games in which Suzuki plays that much more fun.

But while the gravity of the circumstances that kept these two players out of the majors for the early primes of their career differ quite a bit, it must be remembered that Ichiro wasn't a major league by choice. He started out in the JL because he had no choice under the restrictive free agent rules of Japan and the written and unwritten non-compete rules between MLB and JL (most of which are still in existence today) that essentially prevented a promising young Japanese player from making the jump straight to the bigs.

I've often heard the caliber of play in the JL be described as approximately that of AAA. Yet we have some good evidence that star players in the JL can come to the majors and continue to perform at approximately the same level they did in the JL. It suggests that a star player is a star player and his performance ceiling may be roughly similar -- as opposed to the average player.

I'm writing this on the occasion of Ichiro's 2000th "major league" hit, which came this week at a seasonal age of 31 -- the same week Luiz Gonzalez got his 2000th "major league" hit at the age of 36. If we count in Ichiro's JL stats -- bearing in mind that the JL season is only 130 games long, so Ichiro's lost the equivalent of over a season of counting stats if we're going to persist in our apples and oranges comparison -- as I did above, he's got what already looks like a Hall of Fame career, but for the icing of four or five more years.

In Ichiro's case, if he plays another five years at his current level of play or slightly below, his major league numbers probably will look a lot like the specious career numbers I provide above that combine his JL and MLB numbers. That would be a good line, but probably not quite Hall of Fame caliber.

One of the things I truly admire about the Basketball Hall of Fame is it's a World Hall of Fame for the sport, at every level. Players, coaches, and other important figures are inducted from amateur, international, women's, and even junior play. It's truly a museum and memorian to the sport and its greatest practitioners, not just those who have played at the highest professional level in the U.S.

This is not true of baseball's hall of fame, which is purely focussed on the major leagues. Ichiro may well be the first test case of a player whose major league career has been curtailed because of the restrictive covenants of the JL and MLB about Japanese-born players. Traditionally the Hall voters have not "filled in" gaps created in playing time due to circumstances beyond a player's control, ignoring subjective evidence of greatness to a point, although Negro League players have been a notable exception.

Looking at the numbers, I think he's probably as good a candidate at 31 as, say, Ken Griffey Jr. was at 31. Whether our standards of greatness can recognize that is anybody's guess.

posted by The Crank 12:58 PM