Ichiro playing baseball in high school

DerekJohnson

Go to the 4:45 mark if you want to see him hit a home run

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLfvKVGDNpo&t=524s

BleachedAnusDawg

He should've hit 25 home runs a year if he didn't care more about hitting soft singles to keep his batting average up.

Fishpo31

BleachedAnusDawg said:

He should've hit 25 home runs a year if he didn't care more about hitting soft singles to keep his batting average up.

He could have…

Fishpo31

When I was a scout, I had to cover the M's for a week, every September, after the call-ups. My first year, I was really stuck on one guy...Ichiro. It is usually a simple process to evaluate guys: grade them out on their tools...Hit, Run, Throw, Field, and POWER. For MLB players, you look at "the back of the baseball card", over their career, and apply numerical grades to each (20-80, 50 is MLB average). I think he had 6-7 HR's at the time, which is a grade of 20 on the scale. Yet every day, for 7 days in a row, in his last round of BP, 7 off the glass of the cafe.

I called our pro scouting director, and told him I had no idea how to grade his power...well, neither did he. He created a sixth category (Raw Power) going forward, and re-named Power into Useable Power. The combined grades is called OFP (overall future performance)...My OFP for Ichiro was 75 (out of 80), which is described as "Perennial All-Star, Best in the game, First-ballot HOF"...I gave him 80s across the board, with a 25 power grade. I got some flack about it from some of the guys, and one night after a few beers, I told them, "When he goes in on the first ballot, think of me, and then think of me telling you to fuck off"...csb

I had a good friend with the M's, and we would meet up post-game for beers. Ichi hit a lead-off bomb that night, 1st pitch. He went into the clubhouse after the game, and asked him if he tried to hit a HR there. He replied yes. "How many times have you done that this year?" Ichiro said, "How many home runs have I got?", started laughing, and walked away.

DerekJohnson

Fishpo31 said:

When I was a scout, I had to cover the M's for a week, every September, after the call-ups. My first year, I was really stuck on one guy...Ichiro. It is usually a simple process to evaluate guys: grade them out on their tools...Hit, Run, Throw, Field, and POWER. For MLB players, you look at "the back of the baseball card", over their career, and apply numerical grades to each (20-80, 50 is MLB average). I think he had 6-7 HR's at the time, which is a grade of 20 on the scale. Yet every day, for 7 days in a row, in his last round of BP, 7 off the glass of the cafe.

I called our pro scouting director, and told him I had no idea how to grade his power...well, neither did he. He created a sixth category (Raw Power) going forward, and re-named Power into Useable Power. The combined grades is called OFP (overall future performance)...My OFP for Ichiro was 75 (out of 80), which is described as "Perennial All-Star, Best in the game, First-ballot HOF"...I gave him 80s across the board, with a 25 power grade. I got some flack about it from some of the guys, and one night after a few beers, I told them, "When he goes in on the first ballot, think of me, and then think of me telling you to fuck off"...csb

I had a good friend with the M's, and we would meet up post-game for beers. Ichi hit a lead-off bomb that night, 1st pitch. He went into the clubhouse after the game, and asked him if he tried to hit a HR there. He replied yes. "How many times have you done that this year?" Ichiro said, "How many home runs have I got?", started laughing, and walked away.

Ricky Henderson once said if he changed his approach he could hit 40 home runs a year. He was thinking of doing that for one year before his career ended. I remember he hit about 30 in 1990, but he still hit for average and stole a ton of bases.