What's Happening to Ichiro?

Of course, you know Ichiro Suzuki - that craftsman hitter in baseball. Hideo Nomo was there, so was "Godzilla" Matsui and all the rest of Japanese baseball players who have made names in MJB but Ichiro Suzuki is in a world of his own. 

Something is happening to Ichiro, though. Masayoshi Niwa has covered him the past few months for the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, his reactions to his own statistics and all. This episode is a liberal transcription of his observations.

Ichiro broke the Japanese record of the number of runs batted in long-held by the legendary home run slugger Sadaharu Oh and surpassed Ty Cobb's in the number of hits (second in the major league). 

But, Ichiro was not brilliant this season. He hit only 91  at 438 times at bat with a batting average of mere 229 and an on‐base percentage of 282. 

How "not brilliant" was he this season as compared with the past seasons? His stas began dropping in 2011 but never was his batting average below 250. He was at bat 438 times, so that does not account for his declining hitting average. His on-base percentage did not show so drastic a drop because he was walked 7.1%, second highest in his career. Yet, the percentage was his career worst.

The most disturbing figure is his number of hits this season- 91. His 100-hit streak terminated at 21st season throughout his career in Japan and US combined. This seems to explain how "not brilliant" he was this season.

Here, Niwa points one interesting set of data on the directions Ichiro hits into. At his peak Ichiro tends to hit more to the left than to the right, he says. During a brief period from August 1 to 21, Ichiro was brilliant, hitting more to the left and less to the right; his hitting average dropped from August 22 to September 9 as he tended to hit more to the right.

Stoic as he is, Ichiro may rather look into himself for reasons why and not accept such objective analyses, but there seems to be some truth in what this sports analyst points out.