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Saturday, August 02, 2003
 
ichiro
the work we've done so far has been especially cruel to ichiro suzuki. his greatest offensive component is his speed, which so far we have totally ignored. let's see what we can do about that. first, we run the numbers, a la pete rose.

year tm ab sb cs hbp gdp wal con pow AVG/OBP/SLG pav/pob/psl pra hus
1993 Orix 64 0 2 0.6 0.4 .039 .891 .298 .188/.212/.266 .265/.294/.343 3.34 -77
1994 Orix 546 29 7 5.5 3.7 .094 .903 .325 .385/.445/.513 .293/.360/.421 5.22 92
1995 Orix 524 49 9 5.5 3.5 .123 .901 .337 .342/.432/.544 .304/.389/.506 6.87 38
1996 Orix 542 35 3 5.5 3.6 .102 .895 .320 .356/.422/.504 .286/.359/.434 5.31 70
1997 Orix 536 39 4 5.5 3.6 .112 .933 .324 .345/.414/.519 .303/.381/.477 6.32 42
1998 Orix 506 11 4 5.1 3.4 .087 .931 .322 .358/.414/.518 .300/.360/.460 5.75 58
1999 Orix 411 12 1 4.2 2.8 .107 .888 .346 .343/.412/.572 .308/.382/.537 7.19 35
2000 Orix 395 21 1 4.1 2.7 .128 .909 .321 .387/.460/.539 .291/.382/.443 5.81 96
2001 Sea 692 56 14 8.0 3.0 .052 .923 .306 .350/.381/.457 .283/.320/.390 4.22 67
2002 Sea 647 31 15 5.0 8.0 .101 .904 .306 .321/.388/.425 .276/.350/.380 4.47 45
2003 Sea 449 27 6 5.0 1.0 .063 .904 .312 .341/.382/.465 .282/.327/.406 4.50 59

data from espn.com. hbp and gdp were unavailable from japan, so i used career averages. that's why they're not integers.

what's our "how good is he" stat? it's pra. remember, pra is a bit lower than our rc/27 estimate. ichiro looks pretty good by this metric, especially in japan, but we haven't taken speed into account at all.

how are we gonna do that? it's not easy. our crude method for now will be to use the hustle factor, introduced in the pete rose article. these numbers may be the highest you'll ever see. we should probably call the stat "ichiro" instead of "hustle".

being avg - pav, hustle is a good estimate of speed to first. but the problem is batting average takes a long time to be meaningful. much more than one season, as you can see in the variation of hustle. speed to first should be relatively constant, but these numbers are all over the place.

it doesn't seem like ichiro has slowed down yet, so in this case we're gonna use career hustle, and call it speed to first (spd). for ichiro, that number is 58.

spd can be added to pav to produce new pra, thusly:

year pra new
1993 3.34 5.05
1994 5.22 7.42
1995 6.87 9.45
1996 5.31 7.51
1997 6.32 8.79
1998 5.75 8.11
1999 7.19 9.88
2000 5.81 8.12
2001 4.22 6.19
2002 4.47 6.44
2003 4.50 6.54

that's a huge jump. and we're not even done. we've considered the increase in hits, but we haven't used the other effects of speed, ie stolen bases, stolen base percentage, and groundball double plays. for that, we use the complicated formula for pra.

here are the final results. pra final v. original.

year orig final
1993 3.34 4.87
1994 5.22 8.57
1995 6.87 11.20
1996 5.31 9.06
1997 6.32 10.57
1998 5.75 9.12
1999 7.19 11.45
2000 5.81 9.91
2001 4.22 7.10
2002 4.47 7.06
2003 4.50 7.61

it's ridiculous that a player can get that much value out of his speed, but ichiro does it. and we haven't even considered defense.
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