Ichiro’s Opposite Field Magic
I hope you all have had as much fun dissecting opposite field splits this week as I have. Today, we take one more look with another odd example: Ichiro Suzuki. Ichiro’s style is so different from anything else that we’ve seen in United States baseball that projection systems still have issues nailing down a forecast for him.
A major part of that is that Ichiro has a definite ability to get more hits on balls in play than other major league hitters. As ground balls have a higher BABIP, his roughly 2.3:1 GB:FB ratio is part of that. Still, ground balls only fall in for hits about 24% of the time on average, and Ichiro’s .357 career BABIP is well above that. How do we account for this?
Naturally, we look at his pull-push splits. Looking specifically at balls hit the other way, Ichiro’s .327 wOBA to left field is good, but not terribly impressive. With the average lefty push split at .316, that makes Ichiro only about two runs above average per 200 balls – approximately how many he hit to left field last season.
What makes him amazing is that he manages this with a microscopic amount of power. Ichiro’s career ISO of .112 is certainly below average, but it’s not terrible. When he goes the other way, though, his ISO is only .047, nearly 100 points below the lefty-to-left average, in large part due to a 0.2% HR/FB. That’s not a typo – Ichiro is essintially the anti-Ryan Howard when it comes to opposite field hitting, as he has only hit 1 opposite field home runs in his career, and that’s out of 1663 batted balls.
However, unlike the typical hitter, Ichiro actually hits more ground balls to the left side than fly balls. His speed out of the box and a roughly 4:3 GB:FB ratio to the left side results in a high infield hit percentage – exactly 20% – and a BABIP over 60 points above the typical lefty push split. This is wildly different from most hitters, regardless of handedness, as the fly ball is about 2 to 2.5 times more likely for the average hitter when going the other way. That’s how Ichiro manages to get around his lack of power and remain a productive hitter even to the left side, and this highly elevated BABIP to the left side is a large part of his high career BABIP.
Ichiro will turn 37 in October. He has maintained his speed throughout his career, a key to his success pushing the ball. It will be interesting to see if this kind of magic can hold up as his career continues. He’s shown no sign of slowing down, in any sense of the word, and I certainly don’t expect any downturn in 2010.
4
Is there any way to get a date on that opposite field home run? I didn’t know he had done that and I’d love to try to track down a video.
I’m also looking for this, it sounds as improbable as a 450 Jose Lopez HR.
Hit tracker plots one in 2006 but doesn’t have any data on it (they have a lot of missing data from ’06 and earlier). So if that’s the one it’s still something of a phantom. (If you have a subscription to B-R you can get the list of his homers for that year and start tracking down video). I know that’s not anything you couldn’t find with a few minutes’ work, but maybe it helps?
That’s weird, Fangraphs’ splits data says the only oppo HR Ichiro’s ever hit came back in ’02. Going to B-R (no subscription needed) and clicking on him HR log shows us that he hit a HR to left-center on 6/29/02 at home against Mike Hampton and the Rockies. Look from there, I guess.
“He’s shown no sign of slowing down, in any sense of the word, and I certainly don’t expect any downturn in 2009.”
Is this article old?
Amazing. I don’t make the mistake a single time in the first two months of the year and now I do. Fixed.
I wonder if it a demonstration of control, and he chooses to hit to the left side?
Which then makes me wonder if Figgins should bat first. How often has Ichiro been up with the first baseman holding a runner? Not a very high percentage of the time I’d imagine. Whether Figgins is on 1st or 2nd, and Ichiro can “pick his side” based on the defense, is it crazy to think he’d benefit from Chone’s speed influence more than the reverse?
I don’t know how they’ll structure the 3-4 spots. Have to project them to be near the top of total RISP for next year eh?
Ichiro’s bat control is legendary, but I don’t know if it manifests itself as the ability to hit the ball a certain way, or the ability to hit the ball in any chosen way.
Ichiro’s ground balls (this is purely an observation with no data behind it) seem to be hit harder when he goes the other way, as well. Balls he pulls on the ground are more often gentle rollers than hard bouncers.
Though, I was at a game once where Ichiro hit a ground ball straight to Kevin Youkilis – who was playing first – and still got an infield single out of it. Youk didn’t bobble the ball or anything; Ichiro just beat him to the bag (despite having to run about 4 times as far).
There are three players I know for sure I’ll tell my kids I remember being in the stands for (unfortunately, I don’t get to many games).
Ichiro – No TV angle can do justice to his speed down the line vs seeing it live. The pressure he puts on infielders is astounding.
Gary Sheffield – Hit the ball harder, at least on that day, than anyone I can remember seeing in person. Made everyone else’s line drives look like they were in slow-mo.
Raul Mondesi – Best OF arm I’ve ever seen in a game. (Of the dozen or so Mariners games I went to while living there, I was bummed that Ichiro never had to fire his cannon.)
Gary Sheffield was also the King of majestic foul balls. True, he hit over 500 home runs, but he must’ve hit at least 1,000 home run distance foul balls.
Methinks Figgins would get mighty tired if he had Ichiro bat behind him. Suzuki fouls off a lot of pitches, making for a lot of running back and forth for Chone when he gets on base.
Ichiro has come to the plate with a man on first 942 times, which is ~14% of his 6607 total PA. His batting average in those situations is .331, essentially the same as his overall career BA of .333 (it’s also exactly the same as his batting average with nobody on, and just slightly lower than his .340 average with RISP). I’m not sure how he does it, but if you pick just about any BA split for him that has enough data behind it to be worth considering, the number comes out to right around 1/3. (He is significantly better with 2 outs and RISP, though — aka “clutch” — and there’s 648 PA there to back it up).
Ichiro doesn’t foul off as many pitches as people think (at a career average of 3.60 P/PA, he’s actually slightly below MLB average) but he still might be a frustrating guy to have at the plate for a theft-minded Figgins. Probably the best argument for having Ichiro bat second is that he’s hit into only 71 total double plays; Figgins with just 4075 career PA (and 527 with a man on first), has already hit into 68 (though obviously that’s also affected by who was on base for Figgins, the Angels haven’t been known as a slow-footed team).
But at the end of the day (as the M’s FO would say) Ichiro is happiest batting first, and as long as that’s true and there isn’t a strong case to be made otherwise, that’s where he will stay.
There seem to be – and again, this is purely observation with not supporting data at all – plate appearances wherein Ichiro decides he’s not going to get a good pitch to hit, so he just decides to foul them all off. Watching the game, you can see these at-bats develop, and he’ll proceed to foul back 6-10 pitches in a row, before swinging weakly at a pitch nowhere near the plate. Once he gets it in his mind that he’s fouling stuff back rather than hitting it square, he swings at everything, and eventually strikes out. On 12 pitches.
But yes, most of the time he seems to put the first or second pitch in play.
Yeah, I’ve seen those too. Usually it’s when the pitcher gets him 0-2, and then he goes into “defensive” mode. It doesn’t happen often enough to really drive up his P/PA numbers, but it’s definitely a noticeable behavior. Whatever the case, those situations are pretty easy to spot, and I’m sure Figgins could spot them too…. and stop trying to steal.
Ichiro is that one guy I never want to get old
Me too. But he’s starting to have visible gray hair, I’m sorry to say.
Ichiro has several strange splits with enough data behind them to know they are real. He bats as well with the bases empty as with men on. He has reverse platoon splits.
He’s just a remarkable player unlike almost any other, which is probably why he tends to break so many projection systems.
I wonder how much of this is due to his goofy swing
However “goofy” it might be, it’s inarguably effective. There are plenty of players in the majors (and many, many more in the minors) who would love to have that many hits by whatever means they can find, goofy or not.
A few years ago, Ichiro claimed that he intentionally sacrifices power for batting average. Would hitting 40 home runs at the expense of a lower batting average, and thus on base, really hurt Ichiro’s run scoring output? Maybe this is what he should do if he really could as the speed goes kaput into his 40-years…
Under Tango’s MOBLWTS, the average home run is worth +1.42 runs, while the average single is worth +0.49 runs. This means that a home run is roughly equivalent to 2.9 singles. Ichiro has averaged about 8.5 home runs in his 9 year MLB career. If we graciously assume that Ichiro could hit 40 jacks, that means that he would need to increase his home run output by 31.5 to match his claimed ability.
Using the relative weight of home runs to singles and singles to outs (assuming all non-home run hits sacrificed by Ichiro would be outs), we get a proportion of 1.42(Y)-.3X=.49X, where X=the number of singles Ichiro would have to hit to “break even” in regard to his run scoring output. Thus, for Ichiro’s run scoring output to “break even,” he would need to hit these additional 31.5 home runs at the expense of 56 or fewer singles. This, of course, ignores any changes that may occur in Ichiro’s peripherals (K-rate, doubles rate, etc.) in making the adjustment. Nonetheless, 56 singles is a large margin of “outs” to work with.
Ichiro averages about 678 AB’s per season with a BA of .333 (~226 hits). The loss of 56 singles (again, we are pessimistically assuming that all of Ichiro’s forgone singles would become outs) would cause Ichiro’s BA to plummet to approximately .250.
Conclusion: If, as Ichiro claims, he could hit 40 home runs at the cost of a .220 BA, then he shouldn’t do it. But if he can’t hit at least as much for average as Adam Dunn (a career .249 hitter) does and if his wheels start to get rusty, then perhaps he should re-evaluate his approach at the plate.
taken partially from
http://gameofinches.blogspot.com/2010/03/linear-weights-and-ichiro-suzuki.html
Ichiro did hit significantly more home runs when playing in Japan, in stadiums that are slightly (but not significantly) smaller. The stats section at Japanesebaseball.com is down, but I recall seeing an average of about 20 per year. It may be that he toned down his power moving to bigger US parks, especially in Seattle. I would love to see what he could do in a place like Philly or Baltimore, that is friendly to LHB.
Also, there is no argument that Ichiro should be hitting ahead of Figgins. Ichiro hits for the higher AVG and Figgins gets on base more. That makes Figgins 1, Ichiro 2 the ideal order.
How does that Avg/OBP split favor Ichiro first?
I would think you’d want the higher BB% to hit first. With Ichiro on base, a walk only advances him one base…or no bases if he’s on second. If Figgins is on first, then a single can get him to third or drive him in if he steals a base beforehand.
I thought you want the better OBP first and the best contact hitter second.
Actually Safeco Field helps LHB. Check it out. http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2010/1/11/1246547/visual-hr-factors-safeco-field
I was looking up ichiro’s stats yesterday and had a similiar random thought. Then i come here and see a post about it lol..