Summer 2013 Video Highlight (courtesy of Fastclax98)

Even though Summer is winding down, we hope to keep the fun going by sharing some of our favorite Blitzball video highlights of the 2013 Summer, starting with this one by YouTube's "Fastclax98"!  Fastclax98 is an up-and-coming young Blitzball star who already features a nasty 2-seam fastball, slider, and knuckle-curveball and shares a number of his outstanding pitching tutorial videos with our Blitzball community.  A strong contender for our upcoming 2014 Video Contest, Fastclax98 plans to produce even more great Blitzball content in the future so look out for his latest stuff by subscribing to his YouTube Channel!

Could Ichiro Have Reached 4,000 Hits in the U.S.? (A numerical analysis of Adam Wells Bleacher Report Article)

Bleacher Report's Adam Wells recently wrote a Bleacher Report article estimating that Ichiro projects to have 3616 current hits if he debuted as a 22 year-old rookie (Ichiro debuted as an 18 year-old rookie in Japan, but Wells adds a few years of minor league development time) and played his entire career in the U.S.  He arrived at this number by substituting for Ichiro's early career numbers with those of Lloyd Waner and Willie McGee, which I thought was completely crazy (but looking back, perhaps not as crazy as I thought).  So being something of a stats geek, I decided to delve into the numbers a bit to arrive at my own projections after adjusting for league differences, games played per season, initial learning curve, and BB/AB differences between both leagues which were surprising. Here's the deal:

1. 1. League Differences: Obviously there is an overall skill difference between the MLB and its Japanese counterpart, so I used Ichiro's 3-year total average (1998-2000 statistics) of .363 in Japan and equated it to his 3-year total average (2001-2003 statistics) of .328 in the U.S. (convenient for comparison since the league switch occurred in 2001 when Ichiro was 27 years old -- a baseball player's peak year according to many experts).  This gave me a conversion factor of .903, meaning that you could knock roughly 10% off of Ichiro's batting averages in Japan to arrive at a U.S. adjusted equivalent for each season. For example, Ichiro's hypothetical rookie year batting average (in 1996 at age 22) of .356 in Japan would be adjusted downward to .322 in the U.S.
2. 2. Games Played Per Season: Since the Japanese league played a 130 game schedule until 1997, and then 135 games until Ichiro's MLB debut in 2001, his Japanese "At Bat" totals need to be bumped up (25% and 20% respectively) in each season to accommodate for 162 game seasons in the U.S. Ichiro's hypothetical rookie year AB total of 542 in Japan would get bumped up to 675 in the U.S.
3. 3. Learning Curve: Since it takes time for rookies to adjust to MLB pitching, I worked under conservative assumptions that 1st year batting averages are generally 70% of their prime year numbers, that an 85% figure can be applied in year two, and that star players are usually pretty close to their batting average prime by year three. Ichiro's hypothetical U.S. adjusted rookie average of .322 gets pushed down further to .225 and his adjusted 2nd year average falls from .312 to .265.
4. 4. BB/AB Differences: Even after adjusting for the differences in games played, Ichiro's adjusted AB totals still seemed a bit low to me, so I started snooping around his walk totals in both leagues.  I was surprised to find that Ichiro walked at nearly twice the rate in Japan (.113 BB/AB) as he did in the U.S. (.060 BB/AB) which now makes sense since he was much more of a slugging/home run threat in Japan.  Adjusting for this would give Ichiro an extra 36 AB during his rookie year pushing his total to 711 AB in the U.S.

After making all four of these adjustments, I arrived at the following Japan-to-MLB projections for Ichiro's early career:

1996 - 711 AB, .225 AVG, 160 HITS (Rookie year, Age 22)

1997 - 677 AB, .265 AVG, 179 HITS

1998 - 639 AB, .323 AVG, 207 HITS

1999 - 519 AB, .310 AVG, 161 HITS

2000 - 499 AB, .350 AVG,  175 HITS

5-Year Japan Hit Total Adjusted for U.S.: 882

13-Year U.S. Hit Total as of 8/21/13: 2722

Projected MLB Hit Totals if 22 Year-Old Rookie in 1996: 3604 (eerily close to Adam Wells 3616 estimate)

But what if Ichiro broke into the big leagues as a 21 or 20 year-old?  Using the same exact methodology, we would arrive at a current MLB hit total of 3819 if Ichiro began his U.S. career as a 21 year-old, and 4059 if he started out as a 20 year-old rookie.  Could Ichiro have made a run at the hallowed MLB 4,000 hit mark if he played his entire career in the U.S.? It really depends on his age as an MLB rookie (purely conjecture) and other factors like injuries and how much longer he can continue playing, but just by looking at the numbers, it seems very possible.