Quote:
Originally Posted by BobC
The fact that no one has even mentioned his name yet tells you how underrated he is. In 2004, Ichiro Suzuki batted .372 while collecting 262 hits to set the all-time ML record for hits in a single season. He broke Rogers Hornsby's previous record of 257 hits set in 1920, 84 years earlier. And despite leading the majors in hits and average that year, he only came in a distant 7th in the MVP voting. Think about that, he set an all-time batting record and topped the previous record that had existed for over 80 years, and couldn't even crack the top 5 in MVP voting. All during the height of the steroid era.
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Mariners were horrible that year to. Bunch of guys on that team who used to be good. If he had a better lineup behind him, he might have gotten more at bats and maybe 10-15 more hits that year then he already compiled, and probably more MVP votes.
Never helped him that he didn't exactly pile up the extra base hits or walks. Reason why I always ranked Boggs and Gwynn well ahead of him, offensively at least. Ichiro was probably superior defensively for the first half of his career anyways, even though Boggs was always better defensively, then he got credit for.