Ichiro breaks record.

[HermDogg]

Originally posted by: SludgeFactory

Originally posted by: GroundZero
plus look at it this way, he is playing in a time where the pitcher rarely throws 100 pitches in a game, there are relievers and closers. back in Sisslers' day the pitcher would be the pitcher for the whole game and sometimes throw a double header. think about having to hit against some guy who has thrown 150 or so pitches already...alot easier to hit than someone that goes a batter or two every few games.

untrue

All teams had relievers back then and they used them, go look up the IP for the relievers on some of those teams. The starters were averaging 120-130 pitches per start, which is essentially what they did up through the 70's. The notion that starters were gassed by the 6th and the manager just sat and twidled his thumbs while the opposition teed off is false.

There are a lot of different points that can argued for either player. Ichiro's record is going to be tough to break, last I checked it looked like he was on pace to break the all-time record for AB's as well. The next guy to be able to challenge this will almost have to be a leadoff hitter in order to get enough AB's, and then be able to bat .375+ and play nearly every single game of the year. That type of player doesn't come around too often, the best hitters on a baseball team are usually placed in the 2-4 spots like Sisler was (he mostly batted 3rd that year).

Ahem. You might need THIS to help get yer facts straight. Or maybe you'd prefer THIS better.

Hope this helps.

 

[Shlong]

In 1920, year Sisler had the record. Highest Innings Pitched for Pitchers was 363 Innings Pitched for the NL Pitcher in 46 games or 7.89 innings per game Pete Alexander he pitched 33 complete games out of 46 games!! Started 40 games out of the 46 games played. 340 Innings Pitched for AL Player in 48 games or 7.08 innings per game Jim Bagsby he pitched 30 complete games out of 48 games!! Started 38 out of the 48 games played. The pitchers of that era had less variety of pitches & most likely less velocity as well.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: KLin

Originally posted by: RedPickle

Originally posted by: raystorm
Congrats to Ichiro. He's a hitting machine. Can you imagine if he started his career here instead of Japan??

Originally posted by: yankeesfan
I wish he hadn't. 🙁 I like old baseball records and hope they never get broken.

Well..you know what they say... records are made to be broken. I know some baseball certain records are so special. Some records like the strikeout record and maybe even DiMaggio's hitting streak may never be broken though.

Wasn't the strikeout record just broken days ago by Adam Dunn?

I think he means strikeouts in a career by a pitcher, which is held by Nolan Ryan with 5714 strikeouts.

That's one of the ones we'll never see broken.

 

[kranky]

Breaking Sisler's record is a giant achievement. 200 hits is considered a great season for a hitter and Ichiro is 30% beyond that. Amazing.

Pete Rose claimed to be the best hitter in history and he never came close to breaking the single-season record.

I'm more impressed by this than by McGwire breaking the HR record. You have to put a heck of a lot of hard-hit balls in play to amass 257+ hits.

 

[KLin]

Originally posted by: kranky
Breaking Sisler's record is a giant achievement. 200 hits is considered a great season for a hitter and Ichiro is 30% beyond that. Amazing.

Pete Rose claimed to be the best hitter in history and he never came close to breaking the single-season record.

I'm more impressed by this than by McGwire breaking the HR record. You have to put a heck of a lot of hard-hit balls in play to amass 257+ hits.

I wonder how many of his hits were infield hits? He's very quick. He basically starts running while swinging the bat too.

 

[Lounatik]

I think that his next trick will be a .400 season. Or two. He is that capable of doing it too.

I am so fortunate that I was hunting around on ESPN's myriad of channels last night and actually came upon "Baseball Tonight" which switched to the game as he came up to bat and I got to see it! I was giddy and making a lot of noise and the wife is telling me to shut the hell up so I don't wake my daughter.I am seriously impressed that this record was broken. Man, it took 80 friggin years for someone to break it.

I still think that Johnny vanDermeer's back to back no hitters may be the most impressive record of ANY in pro sports.


Peace

Lounatik

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: HermDogg
Hope this helps.

yeah that's nice, listing the league leaders in IP year by year. Try getting your own facts straight and looking at more than one outlier per year. There's only 8 teams per league in 1920, you can look at the rosters pretty easily and see most teams in the AL were lucky to have one guy above 300 IP, maybe a couple starters in the 250 IP range, and then some below 200 IP. And I recognize some of your outliers in the early lively ball era as being grandfathered spitballers, who generally didn't have to rely much on overpowering people and as a consequence could throw a lot.

I never said they didn't pitch more than they do now. In fact I said they did pitch more up through the 70's, which is basically what the trend of outliers shows. But this idea that they pitched 150-200 pitches every other day or whatever is wrong. And if a pitcher was not getting people out he got pulled, he didn't stay out there and throw batting practice, they had relievers to come in and finish the game.

 

[HermDogg]

No one ever said that they sat there and threw batting pratice. The idea is patently ridiculous. However, you WILL find that pitching dynamics have changed substantially. Pitchers DID pitch more back then. It's fact. Stop trying to argue it. Chances are it was a great deal easier to get a hit because of that, the fact that they didn't throw as hard as they do now, and the lack of variety in pitches. [Link=Try here as well] http://www.baseballprospectus....cle.php?articleid=2627 [/LINK]

 

[candicec]

Ichiro is cuute!!! : )

 

[memo]

my favorite baseball record has to be cy young's 511 career wins. thats about 25 20 win seasons.

 

[hytek369]

ichiro is awesome

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: HermDogg
Pitchers DID pitch more back then. It's fact. Stop trying to argue it.

I DIDN'T dispute that in either of my replies. Do you have a problem with reading comprehension?

I'm not arguing that starters weren't used more, I'm arguing that the degree to which they were used in 1920 is not as high as some people seem to think. I spent some time looking at numbers for AL starters in 1920 and 2003, as opposed to plopping out a list of league leaders. If you look at an upper tier of pitchers that corresponds generally to the top 3 starters for each team in both eras (the backbones of the pitching staffs), you will see that the 2003 starters pitch about 75% of the innings that the 1920 pitchers did, almost exactly 200 vs. 265 IP. Seasonal pitch count estimation shows the same trend, 3150 vs. 4010. The game was not as radically different in this regard as certain posters seem to think, throwing 300+ innings in 1920 was *not* the norm, and pitchers were not throwing 150 pitches/game @ 40 games a year.

And since workloads were still relatively higher up through the 70's/80's, that leads to questioning what's so great about the recent reduction in starters' workload in terms of overall quality of pitching, which is ironically what your linked article is hinting at. Check out the followup as well, where they use analysis to advocate safely going back to a 4-man rotation. Or this one that I saw a month ago. The obsession with pitch counts combined with the insistence on a 5-man rotation has led to a point where the best pitchers on the team, the starters, are likely underused. Teams are shifting innings toward relievers, many of whom are simply not all that good compared to starters and elite closers/setup men. That last article posits that this trend is a possible factor in the increased offense of recent times.

Chances are it was a great deal easier to get a hit because of that, the fact that they didn't throw as hard as they do now, and the lack of variety in pitches.

They had enough pitches that I wouldn't call it a "lack of variety," that seems to imply they had about 2 pitches. But yeah, they have more pitches now, primarily the slider and variations of sinking fastballs. What about the knees-to-letters strike zone, the allowed 15-inch pitcher's mound, the fact that the pitcher got to face another pitcher instead of a DH in the lineup, the completely opposite culture in baseball about brushback pitches and throwing inside -- did that make it easier to get a hit too?

Like I said, there are points that can be argued for both. The average player is better on both sides of the ball in 2004 because of the increased diversity and population of the talent pool and evolution in the game over time, but the talent wasn't spread as far back then, and the pitchers had some rules in their favor that they don't have right now.