Ichiro Suzuki's Career Spray Chart Is About What You'd Expect It To Look Like
There are probably only three players in major league history who I’d feel pretty confident in being able to guess their career spray charts without having their name attached to it. I’d say Barry Bonds would be really easy to guess, given that there would be a huge mass of dots over the fence in both center and right field, with several dots being an absurd distance from home plate. I think I’d be able to guess Wade Boggs, if I was provided with the information that the unnamed player was a left-handed hitter. And I’d be able to guess Ichiro, because I’d know that the infield would look like a ball pit at a McDonald’s playground, which it does.
I’ve heard this point made several times, but it was made most recently by Mazz last night on the Baseball Reporters — why didn’t Ichiro hit more doubles in his career? Last month, I wrote about how Bonds said that Ichiro could win the Home Run Derby “easily” if he participated, and I also touched on the narrative that has existed for as long as Ichiro has been in the league, which is that he could hit more home runs if he wanted to.
Forget home runs. Why did he never hit more doubles? A guy with “easy” home run power, and the speed that Ichiro has should definitely hit a ton of doubles, right? The most doubles that Ichiro has ever hit in a single season is 34, and that was in his rookie season when he had 242 hits. Only 14% of his hits were doubles that year. Of Ichiro’s 3,000 hits, he’s hit 113 home runs (4%), 93 triples (3%), and 350 doubles (12%). That means that of his 3,000 hits, 2,444 of them were singles (81%). I’m not knocking the guy — he’s a first ballot Hall of Famer, no doubt — but I’m honestly just confused at his lack of doubles over the course of his career, given his skill set.