Miami Marlins: Another day, another milestone for Ichiro
With the 5,863rd total base of his career in the U.S. and Japan, Ichiro Suzuki passed his idol, Japanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh.
Miami Marlins outfielder Ichiro Suzuki achieved another baseball milestone during the Marlins’ 8-1 loss to the Washington Nationals on Wednesday. When he knocked a pinch-hit single off Gio Gonzalez in the fifth inning, it gave him 5,863 combined total bases at the highest levels of the game in Japan and the United States. The hit moved him past the legendary Sadaharu Oh, who had 5,862 total bases in his 22 years playing in Japan.
Among major league players, Ichiro would be fifth all-time if his Japanese numbers are included, just behind Barry Bonds and ahead of Ty Cobb. If you don’t include his Japanese totals, Ichiro is 94th among major league players, right behind Carlos Delgado and ahead of Joe Morgan.
Passing Oh was a proud moment for Ichiro, who played for Oh when the legendary slugger managed Japan to victory in the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006. Oh is revered in Japan and Ichiro has said many times that he’s honored whenever he’s compared to the all-time leader in home runs. Oh famously hit 868 long balls in his career in Japan and once squared off against U.S. home run champ Hank Aaron in a Home Run Derby following the 1974 season. Aaron won the derby, 10-9.
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
Despite being so close in total bases, Ichiro and Oh went about their craft in very different ways. Oh was a slugger who hit 30 or more home runs in 19 of his 22 seasons. Ichiro has never hit 30 homers in a season. They were both left-handed hitters, but Oh used his peculiar one-leg-in-the-air batting stance to hit the ball with authority. Ichiro resembles a speedy left-handed fastpitch player who often slaps the ball to the left side and beats it out for an infield hit.
Their different hitting styles can be seen in the statistics they put up. In his career in Japan, Oh’s 868 home runs accounted for 59 percent of his total bases. Just 25 percent of his total bases came via the single. Ichiro, on the other hand, produced just 16 percent of his total bases via the long ball, with 58 percent coming from singles. If they were football teams, Oh would make his yardage with a long bomb passing game, like many teams did in the 1970s, while Ichiro would be the quick-and-short passing West Coast offense type.
Ichiro added another base to his career total with an RBI-single in Thursday’s game to give him 5,864 combined total bases in Japan and the U.S. Using that combined total, he’ll need to play a couple more years to catch the next guy on the list, Barry Bonds, who had 5,976 total bases in his career. Bonds is much more like Oh than Ichiro. His 762 career home runs accounted for a little more than half of his career total bases.
Next: Highly-Paid, Zero-Production Team
If you don’t count Ichiro’s total bases from Japan then he’s on the cusp of catching Carlos Delgado on the U.S.-only list. His next single will pull him even with Delgado and eight total bases behind Garret Anderson. With 22 games left in the season, the part-time outfielder will need to have a strong finish to catch Anderson this season, but he does hope to play until he’s 50 years old, so who knows how many more bases he can rack up?