MLB: Nine Very Cool Things to Look Forward to in 2017

Adrian versus Ichiro

Two of the more entertaining players in baseball in 2017 will undoubtedly be Adrian Beltre and Ichiro, who only needs one name because, well, he’s Ichiro. Beltre has had a long-running big brother/little brother bromance with the guy who plays to the left of him in Texas, shortstop Elvis Andrus. They have a love/hate relationship, with Andrus playing the part of that annoying little brother who is constantly needling big brother Beltre. One of his favorite ways to bug Beltre is by touching his head, which Beltre absolutely hates. They are a joy to watch.

Ichiro currently plies his trade with the Miami Marlins. He’s 43 years old and coming off a season in which he hit .291 and passed the 3,000 hit mark as a major league player. Add in the 1,278 hits he had in Japan before coming to the U.S. and he’s in the elite company of Pete Rose and Ty Cobb as the only professional players to have more than 4,000 hits at the highest levels.

Ichiro has been in the news recently for his training regimen, which includes the use of a customized machine that he kept in a storage trailer at the Miami Marlins’ spring training facility. It looks like an exercise machine an android would use, if androids needed to stay in tip-top shape. Ichiro prides himself on his fitness and says he wants to play baseball until he’s 50, in part because he has no other hobbies. Maybe he’s an android.

This year, Adrian Beltre and Ichiro are likely to cross paths statistically, as well as on the baseball diamond when the Marlins play the Rangers in Texas from July 24 to July 26. This particular statistical connection goes back to the 2005 season, when they were teammates on the Seattle Mariners.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Adrian Beltre began his career as a 19-year-old with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1998. He collected 338 hits in his first three seasons to take a 338 to 0 lead in career major league hits over Ichiro, who was still playing in Japan at that time. In 2001, Ichiro came over from Japan and had 242 hits in his first season with the Seattle Mariners, while leading the league in batting average and winning the AL Rookie of the Year and AL MVP Awards. Beltre had 126 hits that year. The race was on, with Beltre still ahead 464 to 242.

Jumping ahead a bit, we find both players having terrific seasons in 2004. Ichiro broke the single-season record for hits set by George Sisler back in 1920 and once again led the AL in hitting, with a .372 mark. Beltre broke out with a .334/.388/.629 season that included a career-high 48 home runs and 121 RBI. When the season ended, Beltre still led in career hits, but his lead was down to just 25 knocks (949 to 924). As fate would have it, Beltre signed a free agent contract with the Seattle Mariners, so the pair would be teammates in the 2005 season.

With his blazing speed and slashing style of hitting balls to all fields for a high batting average, Ichiro was banging out hits at a faster pace than Beltre and he stalked his teammate like a Puma on the prowl in the first few months of the 2005 season. By the end of June, Beltre’s lead was down to just three hits. Ichiro caught him on July 4, 2005, when he had three hits to Beltre’s one, but Beltre re-claimed his lead the next night when he had three hits to Ichiro’s one. It was a valiant effort by Beltre to hold off the surging Ichiro, but Ichiro would not be denied. Another three-hit game on July 8 put Ichiro in the lead, a lead he has yet to relinquish.

After passing Beltre in career hits on July 8, 2005, Ichiro added to his lead over the next six seasons. He led by 395 hits at the end of the 2011 season, which was also the first season of his major league career in which he didn’t hit .300 or better. That was a sign of things to come. He’s slowed down over the last five years and now Beltre is making a comeback in the career hits competition.

Heading into the 2017 season, Ichiro leads Beltre by 88 hits. Beltre is still going strong as the everyday third baseman for the Rangers, while Ichiro has become a fourth outfielder for the Miami Marlins. Beltre is projected by the FanGraphs Depth Charts to collect 165 hits this year. Ichiro is projected for just 60.

Based on these projections and my back-of-the-envelope mathematical skills, I believe Beltre will once again re-take the lead in career hits over Ichiro. I expect he will do so during the Rangers’ homestand beginning September 8 that includes three games against the Yankees and four against the Mariners. I’m rooting for it to happen against the Mariners, just to complete the circle.

In related news, if Adrian Beltre reaches his projected 165 hits this year, he will have passed 12 players total this season, including 10 current Hall of Famers and nine members of the 3,000-hit club. He and Ichiro could end the season ranked 22^nd and 23^rd on the all-time hits list. Of course, if Ichiro plays until he’s 50, he might come back and pass Beltre sometime in 2023. Stay tuned.