My latest for The Athletic crunches the numbers on the 15 hitters to make the move from Nippon Professional Baseball to the major leagues without prior experience in a western-hemisphere league and uses them to make projections, and set expectations, for what Shohei Ohtani’s performance at the plate in 2018. As you’ll see, I discovered a surprising consistency in the manner in which those hitters’ production translated to MLB. It will be interesting to see if Ohtani’s performance follows suit this season.
Tag Archives: Ichiro Suzuki
The Athletic: Ichiro, the Mariners, and the history of late-career reunions
I somehow managed to get a Detroit Wolverines reference in the last two pieces I’ve had published. This one concerns the late-career returns of Hall of Fame-caliber players to the teams with which they formerly starred. I compiled a list of 53 such players stretching back to the 1893 Giants and found that such reunions aren’t always as depressing as you might think. However, at 44, Ichiro Suzuki is among the oldest of all of them.
CliffCorcoran.com 