Posts tagged IchiroSuzuki at FanHouse

Seeing as how the Mariners really suck this season, I've kind of stopped paying attention to them. Of course, because of that, I forgot just how bad the team really is. Thankfully the three games I just saw them play against the White Sox in Chicago this week reaffirmed everything I previously knew.

One of the reasons the Mariners are so horrible this season can be attributed to the Erik Bedard trade. The Mariners sent Adam Jones, George Sherrill, the Space Needle, and majority ownership in Starbucks to Baltimore for the southpaw. While a lot of people thought the addition of Bedard would help the Mariners win the AL West (I only had them as the wild card, so I guess that makes me slightly less stupid), thanks to his injuries and ineffectiveness, they're fighting just to avoid 100 losses this season.

Bedard cost the Mariners their season, and the jobs of John McLaren and Bill Bavasi. Fortunately for all involved, the odds of Erik returning this season to claim the livelihoods of others are slim at best.

Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre and [Jim] Riggleman both say that Bedard did not come out of his last throwing session feeling well, as he had in previous outings.

Maybe the All-Star Game is a meaningless to the players and just an excuse for Bud Selig to admire himself for a week. That doesn't mean that the selections should be stupid. Today, the MLB 'Haus gives you All-Star Grievances.

Grievance: John Lackey deserved a spot. While the Angels pitching staff is very well represented with Francisco Rodriguez, Joe Saunders, and Ervin Santana all making the team, John Lackey is probably deserving of a spot as well. I know he missed about a quarter of the season thanks to an injury, but in the ten starts he has made since coming back, he's been damn near untouchable. His record is only 6-2, but his 1.96 ERA and WHIP of 0.92 are better than his three teammates that did make the squad.

Grievance: Ian Kinsler should be starting. While Ian Kinsler did make the All Star team, the fact he did so only as a reserve is insulting. While Boston fans stuffed the ballots for their man Dustin Pedroia (don't get me wrong, it's their right to do so) Kinsler was busy being the best second baseman in baseball. Pedroia deserves to be on the team, but he should be the man on the bench. He's hitting .313 with an OPS of .815 with nine homers and 41 RBI, but Ian checks in at .332 with an OPS of freaking .936 with 14 homers and 53 RBI. Tell me, who deserves the starting spot more?

Grievance: Ichiro making the team. Ichiro Suzuki is one of my favorite players in the game today, for reasons that have to do with his playing ability and the things he says, but he shouldn't be on the team this season. His starting spot should probably go to Jermaine Dye (who didn't make the team), Grady Sizemore, Carlos Quentin, J.D. Drew, or Milton Bradley. I know that each team has to have a representative, so Ichiro is Seattle's, but when a team has absolutely no chance of making the playoffs they really shouldn't have any say in who gets homefield advantage during the World Series.

While Monday was already a great day of change in Seattle with the deserved firing of general manager Bill Bavasi, it wasn't the only thing that changed with the Mariners yesterday. For the first time since August 19th, 2006, Ichiro Suzuki started a game in right field.

Right field was where Ichiro spent his first five years in Seattle, and after the team sent Wladimir Balentien back down to Tacoma in favor of Jeff Clement, there was an opening in right and John McLaren says he'd been thinking about making the move for a month or so. Still, this may not be the last move that Ichiro makes this season, as McLaren also said he's toying with the idea of dropping him out of the lead-off spot in the Mariners lineup.

McLaren said he's also spoken to Ichiro about a move out of the leadoff spot in hopes of jump-starting an offense that ranks last in the American League in runs scored and second-to-last in team batting average.

Such a move does not appear imminent, however, because McLaren said there is currently no other obvious candidate to hit leadoff.

"Ichiro is on board with anything we want to do to help the club, and I think most of these guys are from the same school in that clubhouse," McLaren said.

Things just keep going along greatly for the Seattle Mariners this season. The team has the worst record in baseball, their manager and general manager could get fired any second now, and the organization is thinking about blowing the whole thing up and starting over (I wish them good luck finding anybody on the team they can trade, maybe Raul Ibanez).

To make matters worse for Seattle, they just had to place closer J.J. Putz on the disabled list for the second time this season with a bad elbow. Still, there is some good news amidst all this sadness, as Putz's elbow isn't going to require surgery.

The Mariners closer felt better in one important way, though, after finding out his elbow injury would not require anything more significant than rest to heal.

"I'm very relieved that it was nothing structural," Putz said. "Just take a few days off and start throwing again."

While Putz's injury really means nothing to the team this season - closers are quite irrelevant when you never have a lead to protect - it's a relief that surgery won't be needed. If the Mariners do blow things up and start getting rid of everything that isn't nailed down, I highly doubt J.J. is one of the pieces they'd like to move (along with Ichiro and Felix Hernandez), so knowing there's no structural damage to the elbow and that it won't carry into next season is a plus.

Too bad they've still got 95 games left on the schedule this season.

The first two months of the 2008 season haven't been very kind to the Seattle Mariners. A team that was a darkhorse candidate to win the AL West or wild card amongst some morons who think they know what they're talking about (like me, for instance) has been nothing of the sort. Instead Seattle is 18-31, 10.5 games behind the Angels, and they're in danger of being out of contention before June makes it's appearance this year.

So obviously, it hasn't been the easiest few months in the lives of Mariners fans. It's never fun to watch your team suck (well, unless their suckiness is of epic proportions), and while it's not fun to watch, you can be pretty sure it's not fun to play for a team that sucks either. It may even drive you to the bottle, just ask Ichiro Suzuki, who said this after Seattle's 13-2 loss to the Yankees on Friday.

"Playing on this team and seeing what is happening around me, I feel that something is beginning to fall apart," Ichiro said through a translator. "But, if I was not in this situation, and I was objectively watching what just happened this week, I would probably be drinking a lot of beers and booing."

Ichiro's being too kind when he says things are beginning to fall apart. That's kind of like saying Amy Winehouse is starting to show signs of a serious drug addiction.

If you look at Ichiro's numbers so far in 2008, he's hitting .284/.348/.373 (well below his career averages of .332/.378/.434), you might think he's already had one too many of those Sapporos. Unfortunately, considering that the Mariners hitting and pitching are both at the bottom of the AL, they have a run differential of freaking -52, and there are no major injuries to the club right now (Putz' time on the DL doesn't count because closers mean nothing when you don't have leads to give them), it doesn't look like things are going to get any better.

Ichiro Suzuki made headlines last season when he said he would "punch myself in the face" if he ever saw himself saying that he was excited about going to Cleveland. How that would actually work aside, not an entirely unfair statement. (Kidding, Cleveland. You totally rock.)

Ichiro has now somewhat changed that opinion. Or at least he realized how to give a backhanded compliment, as evidenced by his latest statement about the Land of Pronk to some local mag named Punch.

'As you know, we came to Cleveland many more times than were expected,' said Ichiro through his interpreter - after they shared a long, animated discussion in Japanese. 'To come all the way from Seattle, as you can imagine, is a headache. That's what I meant by the statement. But the way the fans understood it, they became angry. I think all the booing and the screaming was entertaining for the fans, so I don't think it was a bad thing. And, if I was a fan, I'd boo me too.'

But, we pressed, what do you think of Cleveland?

'Looking back on it, in the four days I spent here, I found a really cool pair of sneakers. So for that, I like Cleveland.'

See, in comparison to wanting to slug oneself in the grille, that comes off like a really nice thing to say, no? But anytime you spend four freaking days somewhere and the best thing you can say about that place is that you "found a really cool pair of sneaker", you hate the place. And you are insulting it. But in a crafty manner.

Unfortunately for Cleveland, I'm sorry. You're going to deal with Ichiro not liking you. The quotes are too enjoyable for the rest of us.

Previously on FanHouse:
Ichiro Is Not a Big Fan of Cleveland
Ichiro Suzuki's Soul Yearns for Daisuke Matsuzaka
Ichiro:"Once I Turn 40, I Can Become A Pitcher."
Ichiro Versus
Baseball Is Snowblind

Our MLB editor provides weekly dispatches from major league games in Notes From the Clubhouse.

The season is still very young, but the Cubs look very good. Two rookies -- right fielder Kosuke Fukudome and catcher Geovany Soto -- have them looking more like a 90-win team than the 85-win version that won the NL Central last year.

Fukudome arrived with great fanfare, hitting a game-tying three-run home run in the ninth inning on Opening Day at Wrigley Field. Soto, though less heralded, has been even better than Fukudome. He has more home runs and RBI than his Japanese counterpart, as well as a higher batting average and slugging percentage.

Chicago manager Lou Piniella, speaking with reporters before Friday night's game against the Nationals, made no secret of who he would pick for NL Rookie of the Year if it ends up coming down to Fukudome and Soto (and even though that's a long way off, it's a very real possibility.)

"I don't consider Fukudome a rookie. I didn't really consider Ichiro a rookie when I was in Seattle either," said Piniella. "It'd be like sending Alex Rodriguez to play in Japan and having him win Rookie of the Year over there. ... [Fukudome's] a seasoned professional baseball player."

When you talked to MLB scouts this spring about what it would take for the Seattle Mariners to overtake the Los Angeles Angels in the AL West this season, to a man they all said just about the same thing. "Oh, it's totally on Mike Morse's shoulders. If Mike Morse doesn't carry this offense all by himself throughout the season, the team has no chance. I mean, Ichiro can only do so much, you know?"

Well the sky is falling, Seattle, because reserve infielder Mike Morse's shoulders just couldn't handle the load, and he's done for the season.

Morse on Tuesday underwent what was termed "shoulder reconstruction" to repair a torn labrum in his dislocated left shoulder, suffered on the April 13 dive.

Surgery was performed by Dr. Edward Khalfayan, the Mariners' medical director. Khalfayan said the surgery "went well," according to a team release.

While Morse didn't sign a release to let the Mariners talk about his injury, it's safe to say he's not going to be back anytime soon. Generally the surgery he had requires a six-month rehab, and Morse probably isn't going to be able to swing a bat for at least four months.

Tis a dark, dark day in Seattle.

Ichiro Suzuki is one of the most popular athletes in Seattle, and he's also incredibly popular in his home country of Japan, so it's no surprise that there are plenty of young baseball players around the world that want to be just like him. This fad isn't even relegated to just young children and fans, either, as it's starting to look like one of his teammates and countrymen is trying to emulate Ichiro.

Remember during the spring when Ichiro was hitless and loving every second of it? Well apparently sarcasm is an American phenomenon that Kenji Johjima hasn't picked up on yet, because he seems to be taking Ichiro a bit too literally. After getting two hits in the Mariners second game of the season on April 1st, Johjima has gone hitless ever since (0-for-22), and is only 2-for-28 this season. Unlike Ichiro, though, Kenji doesn't seem to be enjoying it too much.

"I just need one hit," he said through interpreter Antony Suzuki. "And it is very tough to get that one hit when you are in this situation.

"You don't want to think too much. You want to put yourself in position to just hit naturally. I've always felt that when you think too much, you just frustrate yourself. Yes, that's what I think I'm trying to do."

What makes Johjima's start to the 2008 season a little more alarming is the way he finished 2007. Kenji only managed two hits in his final 23 at bats of last season, so really, he's 4 for his last 51. Which is a nice average of .078. Of course, in baseball, all it takes to get out of one huge slump is one pitch, so I wouldn't expect Kenji's slide to last too much longer.

Though if it does, Ichiro better pull him aside and explain to him he was only kidding.

Maybe the reason the Boston Red Sox don't want to go to Japan has nothing to do with whether or not their coaches are going to be paid. Maybe it's because they're all afraid that the Japanese are going to run weird experiments on their brains. That's what they did to Ichiro Suzuki last season.

Apparently there's a television show in Japan, which in English is loosely translated to "Secrets of the Ultimate Professional." The premise of the show is that a team of scientists and a camera crew follow a person around through their daily routine in hopes of finding out what makes them so good at what they do. Ichiro was the first athlete ever chosen for the show.

"When it comes to a genre like business, it's really hard to tell who is absolutely the best," [Dr. Kenichiro]Mogi explains. "But in sports it's very easy to tell who is the best. So I think the executive producer from the beginning had this idea that if we are ever going to profile an athlete, it can only be somebody who is unquestionably at the very top. Ichiro was a very natural choice."

For 70 days over three different spans of last season, a four-person, one-camera crew (of which this writer was a member) followed Ichiro's every move, trying to discern his professional methodology.

What did they learn? The reason that Ichiro is awesome is because he eats the same things over and over again. When he's at home in Seattle, it's his wife's Japanese curry. On the road it's cheese pizza. At least, that's what I think they learned. Considering that the show did the same thing with me a few months back, and all they were able to find in my brain was a couple of Lego's and old baseball cards, the article is way over my head. (Actually, it's pretty interesting and I suggest you read the whole thing.)