Pete Rose vs Ichiro Suzuki Projected Hits: Still the Hit King (but barely)
"It sounds like in Japan, they're trying to make me the Hit Queen. I'm not trying to take anything away from Ichiro -- he's had a Hall of Fame career -- but the next thing you know, they'll be counting his high school hits." - Pete Rose on Ichiro Hit Count
Well... the bitter old man probably lost some bets on Ichiro's high school games, but he has a point. We can not add Michael Jordan's college basketball point totals, we can not add Doug Flutie's CFL Touchdown passes, and we can not add Ichiro's Japanese hits just like we can't add in Minor league hit counts into career totals. It makes no sense. That said, lets not forget that Ichiro is about to hit his 3000th hit and only started his MLB career at age 27 (vs 22 for Pete Rose). No, we can not add his 18-26 years from the Japanese league (different talent, different game count (132 vs 162), and different system (Minor Leagues vs No Minor Leagues). But what if Ichiro started his minor league career at 18, and made it to the Majors at 22 like Pete Rose did? We can not use the Japanese statistics, but we can objectively project Ichiro's statistics. But for those that keep quoting Ichiro's all up number, at the very least include Rose's Minor League stats. If you are going to add in stats from Ichiro's lower league you have to at least add in Pete Rose's as well. When you do that, Rose is still king anyway (4683 vs 4257). The dotted lines and bars below denote the Japanese league for Ichiro and the Minor Leagues for Rose
But lets play a different game. Adding in Japanese league and Minor leagues just aren't apples to apples. How do they compare apples to apples in years they both played in the Major Leagues (age 27-41)
In the below graph, the Red is for Pete Rose. The Blue is for Ichiro. The solid Blue is his actual career. The dotted black is his Projected years. In the 27-41 age, Ichiro had a slightly better batting average (+0.001), thats a 0.2% better batting average but had 1.4% less at bats over that time frame. If you take those %ages difference between the two and apply it to the 5 years before he got to the MLB and the additional 3 years to end his career, you would get the below. They truly are VERY VERY SIMILAR. With this simple analysis, the banned Pete Rose would have barely held on to this prestigious record 4256 vs 4205 (51 hits difference).
Ichiro had a better peak than Rose. But Rose had better longevity (this year for Ichiro not withstanding). Baseball is often obsessed with career marks which overshadow impactfull greatness.
Check out my article on Adjusted HR list. It goes to this point. Longevity is great, but Greatness is greater. What if Babe Ruth didn't start his career as a pitcher. What if Ted Williams didn't lose several prime years to war, what if Ken Griffey Jr didn't get hurt, etc etc. We can not add statistics that don't exist in the MLB database. Not from Japan, and not from time lost in war. But its fun to project and debate.
Pete Rose was right on 2 fronts. 1. You can not take into account Ichiro's Japanese stats. 2. Don't take anything away from Ichiro as one of the best hitters of all time. He started his career at age 27 with 10 consecutive 200 hit seasons (lead the league (7x) with a 0.331 batting average and to top it off 10 consecutive gold glove awards and an MVP to his collection.
Congrats to Ichiro. I wish he would have started in the USA so this debate could be put to rest.
