Skip to main content

Drive a Suzuki

The most prolific batsman of the 21st century is coming to Shea Stadium with a flaw in his game, and it's one that he won't be able to fix in the next couple of days.

Ichiro Suzuki, he of nearly 1,700 career major-league hits, has not had a walk-off hit since coming to the United States.

Every active major leaguer with at least as many hits as Ichiro has had a walk-off hit at some point in his career.

Breaking this down further via Baseball-Reference.com, I took a look at every walk-off chance that Ichiro has had in his career.

* He's had 19 career regular season plate appearances in the bottom of the 9th inning, with the score tied.

In those 19, he is 4-for-13, but more notably, he has 6 intentional walks. That's an indication that opponents are so fearful of his capabilities, that they won't give him a chance to get a walk-off hit.

* He had 33 plate appearances in the bottom of extra innings with the score tied.

In those 33, he is 13-for-27 with 3 walks and 3 sacrifice bunts. That's a .481 batting average. And yet, on none of those 13 hits did the winning run score. The problem with those hits...only 1 came with a runner in scoring position, thus making a walk-off scenario much more difficult.

I should note, one of Ichiro's walks was a walk-off (against the Rangers and former Met, Rich Rodriguez). I didn't say he had zero walk-off RBI. He's just never had a walk-off hit.

* He's had 2 plate appearances, with his team trailing in extra innings, in which he could have brought in the winning run.

He was 0-for-2.

* He's had 18 plate appearances with his team trailing in the bottom of the 9th, in which he could have brought in the winning run.

In those 18, he's 5-for-15, with 2 walks and a sacrifice bunt. However, he hasn't had a hit in such a scenario since 2002 (0-7, 2 walks from 2003 to 2008).

In fairness to Ichiro, it does appear rather difficult to get a walk-off hit from the leadoff spot, and the guy does enough other things well to offset this weakness. Current Mets leadoff man Jose Reyes has only one. The Mets most frequent leadoff hitter, Mookie Wilson, had two walk-off hits in his Mets career, but both were home runs.

True Metzukis know...

Some other Mariners walk-off trivia, thanks to MikeMav.com

* On June 6, 1978, the Mariners beat the Yankees by walk-off, with the winning run scoring on an error by future Mets manager Willie Randolph.

* On July 13, 1985, the Mariners beat the Red Sox by walk-off, with the winning run scoring on an error by none other than Bill Buckner.

* 5 players have had a walk-off hit for the Mets and Mariners.

Walk-Off Hit for Mets and Mariners
All-Time

Mike Cameron
John Olerud
Carl Everett
Butch Huskey
Kevin Mitchell

* The Mariners are one of 6 current teams that the Mets have never beaten by walk-off. The others are the Rangers, Rays, Indians, Twins, and White Sox

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Been There, Won That

The Dodgers had 19 hits in their loss to the Mets on Thursday night in a game that, no offense (pardon the ironic pun), was excruciating to watch for many, many reasons, none of which I feel like getting into at this hour. Willie Randolph summed it up in his press conference afterwards, saying simply "It's not fun!" I wonder if Tom Hanks, Alyssa Milano, Ray Romano and Kareeem Abdul-Jabaar (all in attendance) stuck around for the finish? I do wish to note briefly, again with the aid of Baseball-Reference, that the last time the Dodgers had 19 hits and lost a game, it was to the Mets. The difference between that game and this one was that this contest, of May 24, 1973, lasted an interminable 19 innings., with the Mets winning, 7-3. Rusty Staub's fifth hit of the game drove in the go-ahead run. Ken Boswell added an RBI single and Ed Kranepool salted the game away with a two-run double. Some other noteworthy anecdotes from a quick box score gleaning: * Like Thursday's...
9 comments
Read more

The best Mets ejections I know

When you think of the Mets and famous ejections, I'm guessing you first think of the famous Bobby Valentine mustache game, when after Valentine got tossed, he returned to the dugout in disguise. You know it. You love it. I remember being amused when I asked Bobby V about it while we were working on Baseball Tonight, how he simply said "It worked. We won the game." (true) But the Bobby V mustache game of June 9, 1999 is one of many, many memorable Mets ejection stories. And now thanks to Retrosheet and the magic of Newspapers.com , we have a convenient means for being able to share them. Ever since Retrosheet's David Smith recently announced that the Retrosheet ejection database was posted online , I've been a kid in a candy store. I've organized the data and done some lookups of media coverage around the games that interested me post. Those newspaper accounts fill in a lot of blanks. Without further ado (and with more work to do), here are some of my findings ...
Post a Comment
Read more

They Don't Make Em Like The Mook Any More

"There are certain things that stay with you, your whole life in sports. Mookie flying is one of those things." -- Blogger's father, 1:10pm on Feb 9. During the 1987 season, Mookie Wilson was on first base in seven instances in which the batter at the plate hit a double. How many times do you think Mookie scored? I'll give you a hint: Every time. According to some recent reading I've done, The average runner scores from first base on a double around 40-45 percent of the time. Mookie's career percentage: 65 percent (45 of 69) The average runner goes first to third on about 27 percent of singles hit. Mookie's percentage: 50 percent (120 of 240) The average runner scores from second base on about 58 percent of singles hit. Mookie's percentage: 75 percent (162 of 215) How good was Mookie Wilson? Let me put it to you this way. The guy turns 54 years old today (and got an early present by being re-hired by the Mets as a minor league instructor). I'd take...
8 comments
Read more