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Let me first start off with stating that Ichiro Suzuki is one of the greatest baseball players ever and if wasn't for the fact that he started off in Japan we would likely be looking at him becoming the all time hits leader. I mean over his first 10 years in the MLB he had an average of .331 and had over 200 hits every season, that's absolutely amazing. That being said Ichiro is not that guy anymore, he just isn't we see flashes of it but he hasn't been that player in three years and he wont be coming back, you know why? Because he is 39 and he just isn't as good at anything that used to be able to do, that's not a personal criticism of him as a player its just that players age and when you age your ability diminishes. Over the last three seasons Ichiro has hit .276/.308/.361 and has looked like a declining player for that entire time except if you look at the 67 games that he played with the Yankees last season and don't get me wrong he looked really good in pinstripes last season and people were talking about how he'd been revived and maybe the playoff race did bring back some of that Ichiro of old but the fact of the matter is that this season has been pretty bad, when Ichiro was traded to New York he hit .322/.340/.454 with 19 XBH, including Five Home Runs and 14 stolen bases and that earned him a two year contract worth $13 million, I wrote about how this was ridiculous especially because the Yankees are trying to reign in spending and the Yankees decided to ignore an obvious trend in his statistics. Before the season people were talking about how Ichiro was going to continue his Bronx revival and hit 15-20 home runs and steal a bunch of bases all while hitting for a solid average and frankly he has done none of those things. In 200 more Plate appearances that last season with the Yankees he has two more extra base hits and three more stolen bases, pretty much he has had the exact same season he had in Seattle in 2011 and while those stats are absolutely atrocious they are not what a starting Right Fielder on a contending team needs to produce.You can't even claim BABIP correction on this one he has a .272 average and .292 Batting average on balls in play, he just doesn't have the speed to beat out all those hits that he used to. I will say that he has produced 2.1 WAR according to baseball reference and 1.4 according to fangraphs, the big discrepancy is because its basically all defense and base running, Ichiro has a wRC+ of 78, remember an average wRC+ is 100. You know what you call a guy who doesn't hit well or get on base much and all most all his value comes from defense? A fourth Outfielder and that's what Ichiro is at this point in his career a 4th outfielder for a contending team and maybe a starter for a bad team but instead he will start for the Yankees next year too. When Ichiro was butchering his way through April and May people did start to say that he was washed up but then he went on a hot streak through June and July and everybody forgot, but now he has a .237/.260./.247 slash line since the all-star which is about on par with Chris Stewart and nobody seems to have acknowledged this. The reason for this is more than likely just that Ichiro is a star and there are just too many other problems with the Yankees for people to worry about Ichiro. I really will just conclude this by saying that I would have much rather had Russel Martin and Nate Schierholtz than give a declining star $13 million.
