What will Ichiro’s final career MLB numbers look like? Could Ichiro have gotten 4,000 hits had he played his entire career in the Majors?? The FantasyBaseballGenerals tinker with The Favorite Toy to attempt to answer these questions.

To say that Ichiro is a unique, one of a kind ballplayer is merely stating the obvious. A model of consistency at a very high level, Ichiro has posted over 200 hits and a .300+ batting average (3 years at .340+) in all six MLB seasons. So far this year, Ichiro has been fantastic, hitting .347, scoring 75 runs, swiping 29 bases, and only twice caught stealing; not to mention his eye popping performance in the All Star game, earning the All-Star MVP.

Perhaps it is Ichiro’s unique, unorthodox style that makes it difficult to determine where he will place among baseball’s all time greats. But it can at least be the subject of some juicy speculation and analysis. Lets start with the numbers.

Ichiro is in the middle of his 7th major league season. According to Baseball Reference, Ichiro’s 162 game average (and his MLB career low is 157 games played) is:

AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG

691 114 230 26 8 10 62 40 9 48 65 .333 .379 .438

Incredibly, Ichiro has averaged 230 hits per 162 games, and in his seven MLB seasons has been extremely durable, with at bats in the high 600’s each year (topping out at 704 in 2004). Ichiro is over half way to 3000 MLB hits, with 1509 through August 2, 2007. What are his odds of reaching 3000 hits?

In the 1980’s, Bill James developed a forecasting tool called the Favorite Toy. Thankfully for the mathematically challenged (like me!) ESPN has set up a way to plug in the numbers and get a projection here.

The Favorite Toy does not work in mid season. Since we are more than half way through the 2007 season, and Ichiro is having another Ichiro-type year, it only seems fair that he receive credit for the 2007 season when we use the Favorite Toy.

For the remainder of 2007, we turn to Baseball HQ, which, through games of August 2, projects 70 more hits for Ichiro the rest of the way, giving him 222 for the year. Assuming Ichiro has 1579 hits at the end of the year, the Favorite Toy tells us that Ichiro is expected to have 4.5 more seasons, at an average of 220 hits per year. Ichiro’s 50% likelihood projection is to reach 2569 for his career (75th all time), with a 19.7 % chance at 3000. Ichiro is also expected to reach 453 stolen bases, with a 29% chance to reach 500.

Ichiro spent 7 years in Japan. How do we account for those numbers? Since we are speculating here, we can translate his performance in Japan to the Majors, and get a rough idea of how many hits he could have at this point. The heavy lifting has been done for us by The Baseball Guru, Jim Albright.

In 2004, Jim wrote a fascinating article: How Close is Ichiro to Cooperstown? which, aside from the obvious title, contains translated MLB equivalent statistics for his performance in his seven seasons in Japan. The numbers from the projections yield 1320 hits and 154 stolen bases, which would give Ichiro 2899 hits and 432 stolen bases by the end of 2007.

The Favorite Toy tells us that, using Jim’s information, Ichiro would be expected to finish with 3896 hits (and a 23% chance to reach 4257 hits), and 607 stolen bases (with a 15.5% chance to reach 700). That is not a typo. He could have been a legitimate contender, with a 3-1 chance to knock Rose from the top of the all time hit list.

Even with only 4.5 years left at Ichiro’s level of production, the 50% projection would place him 3rd all time in career hits, and 18th all time in stolen bases. Ichiro’s .333 career batting average is 25th all time, with only recent Hall Of Fame inductee Tony Gwynn ahead of him among modern players.

Looking at the remaining season number from The Favorite Toy, the 4.5 remaining seasons figure seems a bit low. Ichiro has so-called “young player’s skills.” Rose played far longer, while slogging his way towards immortality and generally playing like Neifi Perez for personal gain. Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projection has Ichiro getting 143 hits at age 37 (hitting .302 in 496 plate appearances).

Baseball Prospectus also has an intriguing chart called the Stars and Scrubs chart. Essentially it tells you an estimate of the chances of a player being a star, fringe, regular, superstar etc at a given stage of the particular player’s career. Ichiro’s chart tells us that he has a 40% chance of still being a regular at age 38. For a player of Ichiro’s reputation and notoriety, it certainly seems reasonable, and could be conservative; it certainly passes the “laugh test.”

In fact, the facts reveal the 40% figure to be pessimistic. On July 13, 2007, Ichiro signed a 5 year contact extension, keeping him a Mariner through age 39. Undoubtedly, given Ichiro’s durability and barring anything more than the typical age-related expected decline, all signs point to Ichiro playing as a regular with the Mariners at least through age 39.

For ages 38 and 39, we will assume 450 at bats (480 plate appearances) and a .290 average, both conservative projections in line with his PECOTA forecast. This results in 130 hits per year; the Favorite Toy has already given Ichiro credit for a half season at 220 hits per, or 110 hits. We will add another 20 for that year and will add another 130 for the following year, for a total of 150 more hits than that credited by the Favorite Toy. This increases the total MLB hits (including NPB translated hits) from 3896 to 4,046 hits.

Given the evidence, it certainly appears that there could have been a significant, and decidedly non-zero chance that Ichiro would have reached the 4,000 hit plateau. It is impossible to account for the unknowable: whether he would have reached MLB as early as he reached the NPB, and whether he would have developed as rapidly into a superstar.

However, Jim Albright’s article also indicates that Japan’s “loyalty” culture caused him to stay with his NPB team longer than he “should” have, as a reward to a manager who gave him a chance, despite his unorthodox style. This undoubtedly cost him several hundred MLB hits. Had he began his career in MLB, we could be talking about what year he would be in line to challenge Pete Rose’s record for all time hits.

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