Milestones Ichiro Will Reach in 2008
Friday, February 1st, 2008Barring injury, Ichiro will reach the following milestones in his professional career in 2008:
3,000 hits
500 stolen bases
4,000 total bases
1,000 RBIs
He also has an outside shot at reaching 200 home runs, though to do so he would need to equal his MLB-high from 2005 of 15.
Interestingly, home runs is the only one of these statistics where the NPB and MLB totals are clearly apples and oranges. RBIs is also somewhat problematic, though perhaps not as much as home runs. In the other categories, his production in MLB is equal or greater than his production in NPB. In part this is clearly due to the fact that he now accumulates hits, bases and steals over a 162-game season rather than a 130-game season. But that would be a reason to adjust his NPB totals upward, not down as with home runs. Over the course of seven full seasons in NPB, the disparity in games exceeds 200 versus MLB. That’s pretty meaningful for a guy who averages in excess of one hit per game. Overall, I think these stats are probably safely translated on a 1:1 basis. In which case I look at those totals being reached by a guy only turning 34 and say, wow.