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Is Ichiro Suzuki the Real Mr. 3000?

Is Ichiro Suzuki the Real Mr. 3000?
26 Jan
2016
Not in Hall of Fame

Index

On October 6, 2015, the Miami Marlins reported that they had re-signed Ichiro Suzuki to a one-year, $2 million contract for the 2016 season. The 41-year-old outfielder, the most successful Japanese player in Major League Baseball history, is just 65 hits shy of the vaunted 3000-hit plateau, a baseball hallmark that generally results in a Baseball Hall of Fame induction for those hitters who have reached it unless you've run afoul of baseball's proscriptions against gambling (see: Rose, Pete) or performance-enhancing drugs (see: Palmeiro, Rafael).

And although Suzuki did not begin playing in the Major Leagues until his age-27 season in 2001, having spent the previous eight years as a superstar for the Orix Blue Wave in Nippon Professional Baseball, "Ichiro" proved to be a superstar for his first decade in the American big leagues, a hitting machine for the Seattle Mariners who also stole a lot of bases and was a perennial Gold Glove right fielder. Despite his getting a late start in the majors (and his NPB career has no impact on his MLB legacy), Suzuki looked to be a Hall of Famer during his halcyon years in Seattle, and I made the case for him as a Hall of Fame player back in 2011.


Ichiro Suzuki's quest for 3000 hits continues with the Miami Marlins--but does he need to reach that milestone in order to be considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame?

But as I noted in that article, the then-37-year-old Suzuki was showing significant cracks in the façade, which only grew bigger with each passing season, as he was a stopgap for the Mariners and then for the Yankees before becoming a part-time player for the Marlins. Ichiro's 2016 return, then, does look like the attempt to soldier on until he reaches a milestone, which is not unheard-of in baseball, but if Ichiro or anybody thinks that he must reach 3000 hits, then we could be looking at this question: Is Ichiro Suzuki the real Mr. 3000?

The Cinematic Genius of Mr. 3000

For those unfamiliar with this scintillating baseball movie (or who found a better way to spend their time and money), Mr. 3000, released in 2004, is the story of Stan Ross (played by Bernie Mac), the fictitious superstar of the real Milwaukee Brewers, a great hitter but an arrogant, egotistical, and selfish one (any resemblance to an actual player such as Barry Bonds is purely etc., etc.) who notches his 3000th hit but, in a fit of pique after the game in which he reaches that milestone, announces his retirement, convinced that having reached that milestone, he is a lock for the Hall of Fame—and never mind that he's quitting right as the Brewers are in a pennant race.

However, even after he becomes eligible for the Hall, the voting writers, not suffering from short-term memory loss vis-à-vis Ross's unpleasant personality, haven't yet got around to voting him in—and when statisticians rectify a clerical error that credited Ross with three more hits than he actually collected, leaving him with 2997 hits, Ross thinks that he must get back into the Show somehow to get three more hits, so at age 47 (Julio Franco, anyone?) he manages to land a spot back on the Brewers' roster to chase that hallowed milestone once more.

Mr 3000 Bernie Mac as Stan Ross

Stan Ross (Bernie Mac) thinks he needs to regain three lost hits to reach 3000 hits and be a Hall of Famer in Mr. 3000. Does Ichiro Suzuki think the same thing?

True, Ross did launch a chain of businesses all named after his "Mr. 3000" tag, which would all incur significant costs in order to rename them "Mr. 2997," but any baseball fan would recognize that this premise, cooked up by Eric Champnella and Keith Mitchell, is asinine: Three hits out of 3000 is statistical noise—Ross is the same player at 2997 hits as he is at 3000 hits. Not to mention that Hall voters in Mr. 3000 had not voted Ross in when he was supposed to be at 3000 hits already—so how would getting back to that plateau help his cause? Yes, as a sports comedy, that's not really the point—Stan must learn the lessons of humility, teamwork, and (literal) self-sacrifice while trying to win over Angela Bassett's sportscaster, but still.

The Curious Case of Al Kaline

In the real world, Al Kaline, the star right fielder for the Detroit Tigers from 1953 to 1974, reached the 3000-hit plateau in his final season and then retired, to be elected to the Hall of Fame in his first appearance on the ballot in 1980. Going into the 1974 season, his age-39 year, Kaline had 2861 hits, and in all likelihood he would have been elected to the Hall had he not played the 1974 season. However, Kaline returned to full-time status in 1974, starting 144 games as the Tigers' newfangled designated hitter, and collected 146 hits, pushing him seven hits over the 3000-hit threshold and becoming, at that time, only the 12th player to reach that milestone.

Intriguingly, though, when it comes to reaching those nice, round numbers, Kaline is really a case of just-missed. He retired with 498 doubles, two shy of 500, 399 home runs, one shy of 400, and a .297 batting average, three percentage points under .300. Is Al Kaline any less of Hall of Famer for not reaching those milestones? Of course he isn't.

But is he any less of a Hall of Famer for having reached the 3000-hit milestone? That's an interesting question—and one that is relevant to Suzuki's situation. For hanging on for the 1974 season, Kaline lost a couple of points from his career percentages: Had he retired at the end of the 1973 season, which would have left him with 2861 hits, 470 doubles, 386 home runs, 1551 runs scored, and 1518 runs batted in, his slash line (batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage) would have been .299/.378/.485, with an OPS+ of 136. (OPS+, or adjusted OPS, is the sum of a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage and adjusted for his ballpark and for his league's total percentages. An OPS+ of 100 indicates a player who is league-average—in other words, he is par for his league.)

Following the 1974 season, Kaline retired with a .297/.376/.480 line, with an OPS+ of 134. In terms of value, Kaline was worth almost an entire win by himself in his final season, a 0.9 WAR value (Wins Above a Replacement-level player; Baseball-Reference.com version), putting his total at 92.5 from his cumulative value through 1973 of 91.6; FanGraphs.com is a little less bullish on Kaline, a 88.1 WAR value through 1973 and 88.9 WAR through 1974, although it too has Kaline adding close to a win's worth of value in his final season as the Tigers' DH.

For Kaline to have returned in 1974 in his age-39 season to get to his 3000th hit was worth it: The Detroit outfielder did not hurt the Tigers too badly as their designated hitter—he added nearly an entire win and made his 15th All-Star appearance, his first since 1971. (The Tigers did go from a winning, third-place record of 85–77 in 1973 to a losing, sixth-place record of 72–90 the following season, but that is unlikely to have been ascribed to Kaline alone.)

On the other hand, Kaline didn't need to get to 3000 hits to be considered a Hall of Famer, although this is a retrospective assessment made with the benefit of an array of advanced qualitative metrics unavailable in Kaline's day. Several players close to Kaline's pre-1974 hit total had already been inducted into the Hall, elected by either the writers (Frankie Frisch, Charlie Gehringer, George Sisler) or the veterans committee (Zack Wheat), and it was unlikely that either body would have ignored Kaline.

But although Kaline is recognized as one of the great right fielders of the Golden Era—of any era, for that matter—his playing in the relative hinterlands of Detroit combined with a lack of "flare" put him in the shadow of contemporaries Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente, and as a contemporaneous St. Petersburg Times article suggests, Kaline, had he not reached 3000 hits in 1974, was prepared to return the following year to do so. Does Ichiro Suzuki feel the same way about 3000 hits?

The Prime of Mr. Ichiro Suzuki

Unlike Kaline, though, Suzuki had no problem being recognized. He was the first Japanese position player signed to play Major League Baseball and to actually take the field in the regular season, a historic event occurring in an age of media saturation even if Suzuki had signed with a team regarded to be in the hinterlands, the Seattle Mariners.

How did Ichiro—he became so famous that one need only refer to him by his first name (and that practice began back in Japan)—respond to the limelight in 2001? In his first week, he uncorked a throw from deep right field that nailed Oakland A's baserunner Terrence Long at third base and quickly taught baserunners not to run on his cannon of an arm; that Suzuki notched "only" eight assists in 2001 should be seen as an indication of respect and not inability: He helped turn two double plays from right, and in 344 total chances he committed just one error for a .997 fielding percentage (the league average for right fielders was .984) while his Total Zone total fielding runs was 15 runs above league average, and his fielding alone was worth nearly one win (0.9) to the Mariners, using Baseball Reference's defensive Wins Above Replacement.

Ichiro was even more auspicious at the plate: He led the American League in hits (242), batting average (.350), and stolen bases (56) while scoring 127 runs as the Mariners had an equally historical year overall, winning 116 games and matching a feat first done by the Chicago Cubs nearly a century before. With Ichiro batting .600 in the AL Division Series against the Cleveland Indians, the Mariners won in five games and advanced to the Championship Series, although the New York Yankees cooled Suzuki down—he batted only .222 and struck out four times in 22 plate appearances—as they beat Seattle in five games.

Nevertheless, Suzuki easily became the AL Rookie of the Year in 2001 and just beat out the Athletics' Jason Giambi for the AL Most Valuable Player Award to become only the second player ever to be his league's Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same year. (In 1975, Fred Lynn of the Boston Red Sox was the first to attain this honor.)

Ichiro Suzuki had conquered American baseball—and he showed no signs of being a flash in the pan. For the first ten years of his career, through his age-36 season, Suzuki hit over .300 every season, averaging a remarkable 224 hits, 105 runs scored, and 38 stolen bases per year while making the All-Star squad and earning a Gold Glove every season. Suzuki's slash line for the period between 2001 and 2010 was .331/.376/.430, with his .806 OPS yielding a 117 OPS+ when adjusted for his home ball park, Safeco Field, and all American League OPS averages.

Suzuki led the AL in batting again in 2004 with a .372 average as he banged out 262 hits—establishing a new single-season record by eclipsing the 257 hits George Sisler had amassed 84 years previously. It was a tremendous achievement, and detractors who dismissed the accomplishment by noting that Suzuki had broken Sisler's record in more games (and plate appearances) than had Sisler—shades of Roger Maris in 1961—conveniently ignored that Sisler's record had been set right at the start of the live-ball era, a time of high offense related to talent dispersion, and not the high talent compression of Suzuki's time.

In just ten years, Ichiro amassed 2244 hits—he did collect at least 200 hits in each of those first ten seasons—and at the rate he was collecting hits that 3000-hit milestone did not seem too far-fetched—if he could maintain that rate, he could accomplish the feat in less than four seasons.

Ah, but going into the 2011 season, Ichiro would be 37 years old, which in today's game of high talent compression was a superannuated age—and Suzuki's performance in 2011 showed that age. He batted .272, his first sub-.300 season, while notching "just" 184 hits, hardly a total to be ashamed of although he played in 161 games, starting all of them and finishing all but two as he played 151 games in right field and 10 as the Mariners' DH, and led the majors in at-bats with 677—in other words, he was getting his chances at the plate, leading off every game he was in.



With the Yankees—a "Dead Cat Bounce"?

Hitting just .261 during the 2012 season, Suzuki himself asked the Mariners to be traded; the team, looking to rebuild, obliged. Suzuki's first choice was the New York Yankees, who agreed to send pitchers Danny Farquar and D.J. Mitchell to Seattle in exchange for Ichiro, and in one of those seemingly-scripted moments, his first game as a Yankee, on July 23, was in Seattle's SafecoPark against the Mariners. (He went one-for-four, singling in his first at-bat and then stealing second, as the Yankees won 4–1.)

In the Bronx, Suzuki, whom the Yankees had initially moved into left field (although he would return to right field later in the season) and the bottom of the batting order, seemed revived as in 60 starts and 240 plate appearances he generated a .322/.340/.454 slash line from 73 hits including 13 doubles and five home runs for a 113 OPS+ while stealing 14 bases and scoring 28 runs. The Yankees won the AL East and advanced into the postseason, the first time Suzuki had appeared in the playoffs since his rookie year, and although Suzuki batted only .217 in the five-game AL Division Series against the Baltimore Orioles, he did hit two doubles and knock in three runs as the Yankees prevailed. The Detroit Tigers proved to be the stronger team in the AL Championship Series as they swept the Bronx Bombers although Ichiro did hit a homer, his first in the postseason, and notch a pair of RBI.

Ichiro Suzuki Yankees

Ichiro made a splash when he joined the New York Yankees--but should he have retired after his stint in the Bronx came to an end?

But was Ichiro's brief resurgence in the
Bronx simply a "dead cat bounce"? In 2013, the Yankees made Suzuki their everyday right fielder as he essayed 128 starts and compiled 555 plate appearances, but although he had a decent first half (though still nowhere near the Ichiro in his prime), posting a .283/.320/.393 line from 90 hits, 11 doubles, three triples, and six big flies, he nosedived in the second half to a paltry .228/.259/.262, and his .262 batting average for the season was the lowest of his MLB career.

Because of Ichiro Suzuki's unique style of play, batting average, usually discounted in the sabermetric age, really does become the barometer of his effectiveness. OPS and OPS+, both of which are keyed to on-base- and slugging percentages, are not kind to Suzuki unless he is hitting at a lusty clip—and those hits are overwhelmingly singles. (wOBA, or weighted on-base average, and wRC+, or adjusted runs created based on wOBA, are not his friends, either—Suzuki's career wOBA is .330 while his wRC+ is 105. League averages for wOBA and wRC+ are, respectively, .320 and 100.) Of his 2935 career MLB hits, only 545 are extra-base hits—341 doubles, 91 triples, and 113 home runs. And in 10,101 plate appearances, he has walked only 596 times, a frequency of once every 16.9 plate appearances.

Going back to his NPB days in Japan, Suzuki has made it his life's work to reach base on the perfectly-placed hit, aiming to place the ball in a specific spot and then executing the swing with the precision of a billiards player to drop it there. It is truly idiosyncratic, particularly in an era in which power-hitting is celebrated, and Ichiro seems to relish being a "banjo" hitter, albeit an artistic one who claims that "chicks who dig the long ball" don't appeal to him although he'll "flirt" with them once in a while by occasionally hitting one out.

Superficially showing that the cat may still have some life in him, Suzuki's batting average rose to .284 in 2014, but the Yankees used him as a part-time player as he made only 95 starts, mostly in right field, and his 102 hits in 385 plate appearances were the fewest of his MLB career. At the end of the 2014 season, Ichiro became a free agent and signed a one-year deal with the Miami Marlins.

Trudging toward 3000

The Marlins, marking Ichiro's first foray into the National League (other than interleague play), had planned to use Suzuki as a fourth outfielder in 2015, but a season-ending injury to Giancarlo Stanton put Ichiro into right field more than had been expected. Ichiro made 89 starts altogether, amassing 438 plate appearances, but even his mediocre first half, posting a .253/.307/.290 line in 204 plate appearances, was better than his woeful second half with its slash line, .208/.260/.269, on life support although the "dead cat bounce" came with all five of his doubles and four of his six triples hit during the second half.

With a two-out RBI double off the Washington Nationals' Doug Fister on July 29, 2015, Suzuki collected his 2900th MLB hit, and with 35 more hits by the end of the season, he has come within 65 hits of the storied 3000-hit plateau; having signed another one-year contract with the Marlins, Ichiro technically has the opportunity to reach that plateau.

But at what cost? In 2015, Suzuki's OPS+ was 56—just a little better than half as good as a league-average hitter; his .250 wOBA and 53 wRC+ were just as conspicuously sub-standard. Granted, with a 71–91 win-loss record in 2015, good for the third place in the NL East, the Marlins were the tenth-best team in the NL and thus hardly a threat, but for how much longer can the Marlins sustain the novelty of having Ichiro Suzuki, so close to 3000 hits, occupy a spot in the batting order? For the first time in his career, Suzuki produced a negative WAR value, –1.2 by Baseball Reference's calculations although FanGraphs is a bit more charitable with –0.8.

Is it worth it to the Miami Marlins to have Ichiro become "Mr. 3000" on their watch? Is it worth it to Suzuki to trudge away to reach that goal? Is his Hall of Fame legacy dependent upon reaching 3000 hits? Interestingly, the Marcels projection system, used by Baseball Reference, has Suzuki getting 102 hits in 2016, enough to cross the threshold, but Steamers Projections, featured on FanGraphs, forecasts 63 hits for him—two shy of 3000. And are 3000 hits even necessary for Suzuki to go into the Hall of Fame?

Is Ichiro Suzuki a Hall of Famer?

Every player eligible for the Hall of Fame who has at least 2800 hits has been inducted into the Hall except for Harold Baines (2866 hits), 60 percent of whose career was spent as a designated hitter; Barry Bonds (2935 hits, coincidentally tied with Suzuki) and Rafael Palmeiro (3020), both of whose careers are marred by associations with performance-enhancing drugs; and Pete Rose, the all-time MLB hit king with 4256 safeties whose violation of baseball's gambling prohibitions has been a contentious issue for much longer than the PEDs issue.

In other words, the only eligible hitters with at least 2800 hits who are not in the Hall of Fame are one whose primary position has been all but dismissed by Hall voters, one whose permanent ban from baseball in 1989 had been implemented before he was even eligible for the Hall, and two whose drug taint has made them personae non grata among Hall voters. (In December 2015, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred declared Pete Rose still ineligible to participate in "baseball operations"—but, teasingly, he passed the buck about his Hall of Fame eligibility to the Hall and/or other entities; however, the Hall had voted in 1991 to reaffirm that players banned by baseball were ineligible to be placed on any Hall ballots.)

Ichiro Suzuki does not fall into any of those categories. Another category he does not fall into is the need to have 3000 hits in order to be considered a Hall of Famer—neither he nor any other comparable hitter need be "Mr. 3000" on the dot to go to Cooperstown. Moreover, trying to land on that dot could be hurting his cause rather than helping it.

The following table lists Ichiro Suzuki's selected career qualitative statistics calculated cumulatively from 2010 to 2015, with aggregate (range) totals for those statistics between 2011 and 2015; those statistics are explained below the table.


Ichiro Suzuki Qualitative Career Statistics, Cumulative from 2010 to 2015
Ending Year Slash Line OPS+ bWAR bWAR(O) bWAR(D) fWAR
2010 .331/.376/.430 117 54.6 44.9 4.9 53.1
2011 .326/.370/.421 115 55.2 45.9 3.8 53.1
2012 .322/.365/.419 113 57.0 47.2 3.7 55.7
2013 .319/.361/.414 111 58.6 47.7 4.2 57.0
2014 .317/.360/.411 110 59.6 48.5 4.0 57.5
2015 .314/.356/.406 108 58.4 46.7 4.1 56.7
Range Slash Line OPS+ bWAR bWAR(O) bWAR(D) fWAR
2011–2015 .268/.304/.342 82 3.8 1.7 –0.8 3.6

Slash Line: Grouping of the player's career batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage.
OPS+: Career on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, league- and park-adjusted, as calculated by Baseball Reference. Positively indexed to 100, with a 100 OPS+ indicating a league-average player, and values above 100 indicating the degrees better a player is than a league-average player.
bWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by Baseball Reference.
bWAR(O): Career Wins Above Replacement for offensive performance, as calculated by Baseball Reference.
bWAR(D): Career Wins Above Replacement for defensive performance, as calculated by Baseball Reference.
fWAR: Career Wins Above Replacement as calculated by FanGraphs.

Ichiro's age-36 season in 2010 marked the last time he batted .300 (.315), collected at least 200 hits (a league-leading 214), and generated an OPS+ of greater than 100—in short, it was his last elite season as it was also the last time he won a Gold Glove, was named to an All-Star team, and garnered even token support for the Most Valuable Player Award.

It was also his tenth season, the minimum number of seasons needed to qualify for the writers' Hall of Fame ballot, and had he retired at the end of the season, Suzuki would have been only one of four hitters whose careers occurred primarily in the Integration Era (from 1947 on) with a batting average of .330 or higher—joining first-ballot Hall of Famers Ted Williams (.344), Tony Gwynn (.338), and Stan Musial, whose .331 was what Suzuki would have retired with had he done so.

Hindsight is a luxury, though, and while analysts could (and did) prognosticate on what Suzuki could expect to accomplish—or not—in the following seasons, he would have to actually enact the performances to prove them right or wrong. He did, and it is no surprise that all his qualitative measures in the table above fell in concert with his decline phase as a baseball player in his late-30s, no matter the physical condition in which he kept himself, began to pale noticeably against the high talent compression he faced. For the first ten years of his career, Ichiro Suzuki was worth, on average, about five and a half wins per season to the Seattle Mariners; for the last five, he was worth just over a win a year to the Mariners and about the same to the Yankees, while for the Marlins so far he has cost them just over a win.

But in 2010 not many were expecting Ichiro to pull a Stan Ross and abruptly retire, confident that his playing record would get him into the Hall of Fame. Indeed, unlike the fictitious Ross, Suzuki was far from the 3000-hit plateau, and his playing record put him on a bubble upon which his legacy could go either way: On the one hand, he'd had a tremendous ten-year peak, and a most unusual one as a place-hitter in an age of power; on the other hand, his counting numbers, most crucially those hits, were light. Curiously, had Ichiro retired after 2010, his hits total would have been 2244, just three shy of fellow Mariner Edgar Martinez, whose travails on the Hall of Fame ballot have been examined at length on this site and elsewhere. Of course, Suzuki had a deeper tool kit as a top-notch defender and effective baserunner. Still, padding the counting numbers has been a time-honored tradition in baseball.

The following table lists Ichiro Suzuki's selected career quantitative statistics calculated cumulatively from 2010 to 2015, with cumulative (range) totals for those statistics between 2011 and 2015. Those statistics are plate appearances, hits, home runs, runs scored, runs batted in, and stolen bases.


Ichiro Suzuki Quantitative Career Statistics, Cumulative from 2010 to 2015
Ending Year Plate Apps. Hits HR Runs RBI SB
2010 7339 2244 90 1047 558 383
2011 8060 2428 95 1127 605 423
2012 8723 2606 104 1204 660 452
2013 9278 2742 111 1261 695 472
2014 9663 2844 112 1303 717 487
2015 10,101 2935 113 1348 738 498
Range Plate Apps. Hits HR Runs RBI SB
2011–2015 2762 691 23 301 180 115

Using the table above as a baseline, had Suzuki retired following the 2012 season, he would have crossed thresholds of 2600 hits, 100 home runs, 1200 runs scored, and 450 stolen bases—all those neat plateaus we prefer—while his .322 batting average would have kept him in the top fifty all-time. From the storyline standpoint, Ichiro would have retired after his second-half resurgence with the Yankees, with whom he entered the postseason for only the second time in his career, and if his only postseason home run was not a Joe Carter moment, it would have still been a capper.

Even if he had retired after the 2014 season, he would have pushed past 2800 hits and 1300 runs scored while still having provided marginal value to the Yankees, with his final-season .284/.324/.340 slash line somewhat respectable for a 40-year-old ballplayer still in the majors in 2014. Couple that emeritus performance with the stellar, historic ten-year peak with which he began his career, and Ichiro Suzuki, while still a borderline Hall of Fame player, is still a legitimate Hall of Fame player.

However, Suzuki seems determined to press on this season. In addition to trying for 3000 hits, he is very likely to steal the two bases he needs to reach the 500-steals plateau; he could even pass a couple of Hall of Famers (Paul Molitor and Luis Aparicio) if he is near the number of bags he swiped last season. And if he and the Marlins both have good seasons, Suzuki could score 52 or more runs, which would push him over the 1400-run threshold.

All that, though, depends on Ichiro being given the opportunity to perform and then actually performing well enough to attain those goals. Baseball history has shown that it is never easy.



The Struggle for Legacy

Watching a player struggle to reach a milestone can be painful. In recent memory, Tim Wakefield battled to reach the 200-win plateau in 2011. The knuckleballing right-hander won his 199th career game with the Boston Red Sox on July 24 with a 12–8 home-field victory over Ichiro Suzuki's Seattle Mariners although Wakefield in 6.1 innings surrendered 10 hits including a pair of home runs while allowing seven earned runs. Then Wakefield pitched seven more starts while pursuing that milestone 200th win.

In 43 innings over those seven starts, Wakefield gave up 45 hits including seven home runs while allowing 33 runs, 25 of those earned, for a 4.79 ERA and a .259/.307/.454 opponents' slash line; he also walked 11 batters and hit three more although with that dancing knuckleball he did strike out 31. During that stretch, Wakefield lost three games while getting no decision in four starts as his win-loss record evened out to six wins and losses each; the Red Sox won two and lost five during his starts while losing another game, a 10–0 rout by the Texas Rangers, in which Wakefield pitched the final four innings as mop-up and did quite well, allowing no runs and only three hits while striking out three.

Wakefield finally notched his 200th win seven weeks later with a home-field victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on September 13, a wild one as the Red Sox trounced the Jays 18–6 although in six innings Wakefield allowed two home runs and five runs, all earned, while walking two batters and hitting one although he did strike out six hitters. Making two more starts to finish the 2011 season, Wakefield lost both of them and wound up with a sub-.500 record of 7–8. In the top ranks of Red Sox pitchers all-time in several categories, including first in innings pitched with 3006, Tim Wakefield will most likely be inducted into the team's Hall of Fame at some point. But although Wakefield is eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame next year, he will be a one-and-done, and he would be even on a light ballot and not the overstuffed one it will be.

However, one pitcher who is in the Hall of Fame had an epic—and painful—struggle to reach the historic milestone of 300 wins. Early "Gus" Wynn labored to reach that 300th win. At the start of his penultimate season of 1962, the right-hander stood at 292 career wins; by the end of the season, having pitched for the Chicago White Sox, he had a 7–15 win-loss record for a .318 winning percentage. His ERA was 4.46, up nearly a run from the previous season. But most importantly, he was one win shy of 300 wins. Nevertheless, the White Sox, with no interest in a 42-year-old pitcher with gout whose fastball was gone, released him.

But Wynn, renowned as a battler, signed as a free agent in 1963 with the Cleveland Indians, for whom in nine seasons from 1949 to 1957 he had posted a 163–100 win-loss record with a 3.27 ERA and 118 ERA+, notching four seasons with 20 or more wins as part of a classic rotation that included future Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Bob Lemon. (ERA+ is a pitcher's earned run average adjusted for the league's ERA and park effects, and is indexed to 100, with 100 indicating a league-average pitcher.) Wynn did not sign with Cleveland until June 1963 and made his first appearance, a start, on June 21 against, fittingly enough, the White Sox. Although he lost, he pitched a complete game in a 2–0 shutout. His next two starts were both no-decisions even though the Indians ultimately won both games.

But on July 13, Wynn took the mound for the second game of a doubleheader in Kansas City against the Athletics. With the score tied at one-all in the top of the fifth inning, Wynn led off with a single and eventually scored as part of an Indians four-run frame that staked him to a lead. However, Wynn allowed three consecutive singles in the bottom half of the fifth, with all three runners scoring on a bases-clearing Jerry Lumpe double although Wynn caught a break when Lumpe was thrown out at third trying to stretch his drive into a triple. (One of the runners who scored had been pinch-runner Tony La Russa, who would ultimately go into the Hall of Fame as a manager.)

In the sixth, Wynn was lifted for a pinch-hitter, and Jerry Walker took over on the mound; Walker scattered three hits and worked around two walks without allowing any runs, earning the save in the Indians' eventual 7–4 victory—and Early Wynn's 300th career win. It wasn't pretty, with Wynn surrendering six hits including a home run as he walked three and allowed four runs, all earned, in five innings—and as Athletics third baseman Ed Charles recounted, Wynn was throwing nothing but "bloopers and junk," with a fastball that could not have topped 80 miles per hour.

Early Wynn
Pitcher Early Wynn struggled his way to 300 wins--but did not feel proud about doing so. Will Ichiro Suzuki regret a similar slog to 3000 hits?

Wynn would go on to make 15 more appearances in 1963, including a start two weeks after winning his milestone game that saw him give up eight hits and two runs in 4.1 innings and that netted him a no-decision although Cleveland did win the game, while he was tagged with his final loss, his 244th, after pitching in relief on July 21 against the New York Yankees, who won in extra innings.

The Indians released Early Wynn after the 1963 season, and he appeared on his first Hall of Fame ballot in 1969, garnering just 27.9 percent of the vote despite becoming, at that time, only the 14th pitcher in Major League history to record 300 wins. However, he saw significant upticks in his next two appearances including 66.7 percent in 1971, and in the following year 76.0 percent of the voters elected Wynn to the Hall of Fame.

Early Wynn's career record of 300–244 (.551) and 3.54 ERA, which translates to an ERA+ of 107, is not that of an elite pitcher. He was just above league-average, which is not an insult but neither is it a Hall of Fame career. Was it the allure of 300 wins, which carried more weight 40-plus years ago, that nudged him into the Hall of Fame? Was he not a Hall of Famer at 299 wins? Tellingly, Wynn himself was not proud about hanging on to get that 300th win: "If I had pitched a good game and had gone nine innings, that would have been something. But that's not the way it was," Wynn was quoted as saying in a May 6, 1982, Warsaw, Indiana, Times-Union newspaper article.

The Struggle for Suzuki

The circumstances for Ichiro Suzuki may be completely different. Obviously, he is a hitter scrambling to amass 65 hits for the 3000-hit plateau and not a pitcher looking for a win. And this is a much different baseball environment than the one Wynn was in—an environment that is far more open about its business orientation. Do the Miami Marlins see baseball value in having Suzuki as a fourth outfielder? Is it business and public-relations value for them to have him collect his 3000th hit as a Marlin? Or will the Marlins, should Ichiro prove to be too big a liability, deem him unfit for their roster? And not to play to cultural stereotype, but would that move be considered by the Japanese Suzuki to be an unacceptable loss of face?

Moreover, this current baseball environment relies less on the traditional counting numbers and more on qualitative measurements to evaluate excellence and legacy. This environment also recognizes that for a player such as Suzuki, his legacy as a 42-year-old player has already been written, and reaching a milestone such as 3000 hits may be a neat finish but is not necessary—and hanging on to pad the numbers is recognized as such.

Not that doing so is unknown—in fact, many Hall of Fame hitters have done so. We've seen that Al Kaline returned in 1974 to try for the 3000-hit plateau and, had he not reached it, how he would have returned in 1975 to try again. Another right fielder, Paul Waner, ended the 1940 season with 2868 hits, 132 hits shy of 3000—and with seven hits more than Kaline had had at the end of his 1973 season—when the Pittsburgh Pirates, the only Major League team he had played for, released him. He signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers for the 1941 season, but after hitting .171 for the Dodgers in 11 games and 45 plate appearances, they released him too. Two weeks later, Waner was playing for the Boston Braves, and he rallied somewhat with 82 hits and a .279 batting average although only 14 of those hits were for extra bases—and still he was 44 hits shy of 3000.

Waner returned to the Braves in 1942, and in 114 games and 404 plate appearances he did bang out 86 hits to cross the 3000-hit threshold; his slash line was .258/.376/.324, anemic in terms of batting average and slugging percentage—only 19 of his 86 hits were extra-base hits—although with 62 walks his on-base percentage was impressive. But although he had reached 3000 hits, Waner played on, returning to the Big Apple as a part-time player with Brooklyn in 1943 before they released him late in the 1944 season; Waner then signed with the Yankees for the remainder of the season; he was with the Yankees the following year, walking in his only plate appearance, before the Yankees released the 42-year-old former Pirates star.

Even after reaching 3000 hits in 1942, Waner likely stuck around because Major League jobs were available during World War Two as the talent pool had been thinned by the war effort; otherwise, Waner may never have reached the 3000 mark. Paul Waner is 17th in lifetime hits with 3152, and for his career he posted an elite .333/.404/.473 slash line with 605 doubles, 1627 runs scored, 1309 runs batted in, and 1091 walks against only 376 strikeouts. And although hindsight, again, is a luxury, had he retired after the 1940 season, his slash line would have been .340/.407/.490 with an OPS+ of 136 as opposed to his actual 134 OPS+. Those are not precipitous drops, and playing on not only pushed him over the 3000-hit line, it also netted him 600-plus doubles, 1600-plus runs scored, 1300-plus RBI, and nearly 1100 bases on balls—retiring after 1940 would have left him with 558 doubles, 1493 runs scored, 1177 RBI, and 909 walks.

Paul Waner was on five Hall of Fame ballots before gaining induction in 1952 with 83.3 percent of the vote. At the time of his retirement, he was only the seventh hitter to notch 3000 career hits. Of the other six, Ty Cobb (4191 hits) and Honus Wagner (3240) were in the inaugural Hall of Fame Class of 1936, Nap Lajoie (3243) and Tris Speaker (3514) followed them into the Hall in the next year, and Cap Anson (3435) was a Veterans Committee pick in 1939 while Eddie Collins (3315) was voted in by the writers that same year, his fourth time eligible. Nevertheless, the developing policies and erratic voting habits of the early ballots make it hard to form a cursory opinion of the results, and of why Waner needed five tries for the Hall.

And once in a great while an aging player does have a bounce-back final year. In 1959, 40-year-old Red Sox legend Ted Williams had suffered his worst year, posting a .254/.372/.419 slash line in 103 games and 331 plate appearance, which netted him just 69 hits including 10 home runs; it was the only time in his career that Williams had posted a sub-.300 batting average. In the previous year, he had slugged 26 homers and led the American League in batting average (.328) and on-base percentage (.458), but in 1959 it looked as if age had finally caught up with the Splendid Splinter.

But Williams soldiered on for another season—and he redeemed himself in splendid fashion. In 113 games and 390 plate appearances, he fell just two hits shy of 100 as he produced a robust .316/.451/.645 slash line while driving in 72 runs and slugging 29 long balls, which did push him over the 500 mark for career home runs. His final home run came in his last at-bat, at Boston's FenwayPark before the hometown crowd, a moment that had it appeared in a movie would be branded as contrived sentiment. (We'll leave opinion on The Natural for another time.)

Is Ichiro Suzuki the Real Mr. 3000?

And speaking of movies, will this year's Mr. 3000, Ichiro Suzuki, be able to script himself a triumphant exit that includes his reaching the 3000-hit circle? It is possible, although not likely, and it is more likely to be an embarrassing exit—it is 2016, not 1960, and the talent compression even in the National League is too high. Even if 2015 was an "adjustment year" to a new league, Ichiro is a luxury for the Miami Marlins in an environment in which luxuries are superfluous and cost more than they are worth, even if in current baseball financial terms Suzuki's one-year, $2 million contract is relative peanuts—Suzuki is taking up a valuable roster spot.

Ichiro Suzuki could retire before the season starts, even before spring training starts, without having reached 3000 hits and still not diminish his legacy—he could even keep from tarnishing it with a sub-par performance. As I've noted previously, Suzuki is a borderline Hall of Famer, but his ten-year streak from 2001 to 2010 is a powerful argument, and, unfortunately, his continuing on only chips away at that argument.

Ichiro Suzuki Mariners

Ichiro Suzuki's singular Hall of Fame legacy was established with the Seattle Mariners--does he really need to become "Mr. 3000" to guarantee that?

True, 3000 hits is a cherished hallmark, maybe even more so than in Paul Waner's day when it was even scarcer. But unlike the asinine premise of the sports comedy film Mr. 3000, a player is not automatically in or out of the Baseball Hall of Fame for falling on one side or the other of a neat and tidy milestone. Al Kaline managed to nudge past the 3000-hit mark but is just under three other thresholds. Early Wynn struggled to reach the 300-win threshold over the course of two seasons, a struggle that even he regretted, although he is not much different from the pitcher who had begun the 1962 season with eight fewer wins—Wynn's legacy had been written already.

Ichiro Suzuki will not be any more of a Hall of Fame player for reaching 3000 hits, and he will not be any less of a Hall of Famer for not doing so. But if has another season as he did in 2015, costing the Marlins just over a full win above a replacement player, it could be hard for the Marlins not to replace him. Contemporary baseball has little room for sentiment. Ichiro Suzuki may be the real Mr. 3000 now, but he has no need to be.
Last modified on Thursday, 22 June 2023 19:55

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