Act Two?

Why Yankees Fans Should Pop Themselves Some Corn

Another trade deadline approaches, and another long-time star looks weird in a new uniform as a rapidly-declining Ichiro heads to the Bronx. 2012 has been a rough year for him; he was "given the day off" for the first time in his career, was dropped from the leadoff position in the M's lineup in similar fashion, and has posted (relatively) disappointing numbers to date. This is to be expected during the breakdown of any aging ballplayer. Dude is 38, for crying out loud. It's not been fun to watch him fall apart. And when stars in decline are traded to new teams, you can't help but think of Michael Jordan in a Wizards uniform, or Joe Montana the Chief, or Wayne Gretzky playing for the St. Louis Blues. It's just never a pretty thing to see, and it always just looks weird and wrong in some deeply unsettling way.  

Despite his obvious statistical falloff during the past two seasons, I don't believe that we're witnessing the depressing end of Ichiro Suzuki quite yet.  Surprisingly, statistics indicate that there are a number of positive potential angles to Ichiro the Yankee.  And while it is important and completely rational to acknowledge that he is in the decline stage of his career, it is also important and completely rational to critically examine where he will be doing his declining.

In his fifty at bats at New Yankee Stadium during the period of 2009-2011, Ichiro hit .380.  With comparable or larger sample sizes, he hit better in only two MLB parks: Oakland Coliseum (.382 in 102 ABs) and Kaufmann Stadium (.404 in 57 ABs).  It could be argued, however, that the superior numbers he put up in Oakland and Kansas City were more a function of mediocre pitching than how the parks played for him.  I’m fairly sure that nobody on the A’s or Royals have recently signed any contracts with Cy Young incentive bonuses included, and if they have, then they need to go all Cushman in Jerry Maguire on their respective agents, and immediately call in some mega-douche like Scott Boras, who will descend from the heavens in his chariot of fire/DeLorean to do his thing and be a titanic pain in everyone's ass.

To return somewhat to the point: despite their oft-criticized performances, Yankees pitchers are generally good.  CC Sabathia (who has same-side of plate advantage on Ichiro, if you believe in that sort of thing) has been pitching pretty well in Yankee Stadium since it opened.  Andy Pettitte makes some interesting choices in friends, but nobody has ever debated his skills as a starting pitcher.  Mo Rivera- the greatest closer of all time- threw in the Bronx against Ichiro, as well.  What's crucial to note is that the 2009-2011 statistics show that Ichiro has simply batted well against his opposition in Yankee Stadium. There is no higher place to compete in baseball than in the Bronx... period.  Interestingly, Ichiro has hit just about as well as he possibly can, against legitimate to elite pitching, in one of the toughest visiting environments in professional sports, while in decline.  2012 Ichiro might not need that stadium to live, but his career surely does.  And seriously, who could blame anyone for picking Jay Mohr over Tom Cruise?  Dude totally got the meaning of “Cush Lash” as a premise and a work of artistic genius.  Pfft. Tom Cruise.

Aside from the closeted homosexuality offset by long-term contractual puppet marriages to co-stars of James Van Der Beek, roughly one-quarter of Ichiro’s 19 hits in the new Yankee digs have been for doubles or home runs.  This power spike is a bit of an anomaly for him- his .560 slugging percentage at Yankee Stadium is the second-best rate in the aforementioned 2009-2011 period, topped only by his rate at Camden Yards (where the Yankees will be playing four games in September).  The best slugging year of Ichiro’s career to date was 2009, when he slugged .476.  His second-best year came in his legendary rookie MLB campaign at near-prime age of 27, with a result of .457.  Although "slugging" isn't one of the first things that comes to mind when you think of Ichiro, that aspect of his game is enhanced in the Bronx. His Yankee Stadium slugging rate in the past three seasons has exceeded his career best slugging performances by roughly 20 percent.  

Yankee Stadium itself could very easily translate to Ichiro’s game with power-boosting results that may well extend his meaningful career by a handful of years (see also: Bronze Age Johnny Damon as Yankee).  The current Yankees team average in terms of slugging percentage stands at .459, and while Ichiro's 2012 season slugging rate has panned out to .429 as of right now, he clearly hits well in his new home stadium. Brian Cashman may have just picked himself up an above-average slugger, who- by the way- can still steal a base relatively easily, and who has a lazer arm to boot.  This transaction also gives ample rest opportunities for the Yankees outfielding platoon- and at the very least, it gives Nick Swisher more time to contemplate what kind of totally bodacious and radical patterns he’s going to shave into his bleached facial hair during the next offseason.  Swisher, you are Baseball Guy Fieri. You suck. And- let's face it- Guy Fieri is just Food Corey Feldman. But for as big of a turd as I find Swisher to be, I cannot deny that he's played well in that bandbox of a stadium the Yankees call home.

That’s the thing about this trade- the stadium itself adds immense upside to it.  The right field wall is notoriously tater-friendly.  The 2009 Yankees’ lefties posted a 51 percent increase in their home run rate from the previous year in the Old Yankee Stadium, which was never a place that was known to keep a lefty down (295 feet down the right field line when it opened in 1923!). Coupled with the deep run to the left centerfield wall, the build of the park itself strikes me as an ideal setting for one of the greatest lefty hitters of all-time to play.  Yankee Stadium could delay Ichiro's offensive decline while giving him an opportunity to slightly reinvent his batting approach and swing for the fences.  Remember, they never made the basket bigger for Michael Jordan the Wizard, but they’re moving in the fence for Ichiro the Yankee.  And, mark my words, Ichiro Suzuki will not be the last aging left handed batter who will find new life in pinstripes.

Let's go a step further and contrast the Yankee Stadium dimensions with that of Safeco Field in Seattle, where Ichiro has played for his entire Major League career. Home plate to the foul pole at Safeco measures 326 feet; Yankee Stadium's pole is 314 feet from home. The distance from home plate to the right centerfield alley is 385 feet in Seattle; in the Bronx, it is 371 feet. On average, that's about 13 feet in Ichiro's favor if he hits a fly ball into deep right field. Here comes some math; the true alley of a ballpark is measured as the halfway point of the opposing foul line- so the distance from the right field foul pole to the right centerfield alley at Yankee Stadium would be half of the distance of the left field line (318 feet from home to pole). Therefore, the distance from the right field foul pole to the right field alley would be 159 feet.  Follow me?  Although it's not a straight line, due to the contour of the outfield wall as it moves towards centerfield, we can roughly estimate the "safe hitting" area that Ichiro will gain for himself in Yankee Stadium. That would be 13'x159', or 2,067 square feet, of estimated additional space in which no outfielder can catch a ball. Brian Cashman basically just gave Ichiro a single family home to aim at from 300 feet away.

There is no reason to think that this trade will be a bust, in my opinion.  Gaining a potentially rejuvenated Ichiro is well worth the price of trading a 10th-round pitcher with control issues (DJ Mitchell) and a 25 year-old pitcher who was cut by both Toronto and Oakland in the past month (Danny Farquhar)... one hundred times over.  Pending the results, I have to say that this is a no-lose situation for the Yankees.  Brian Cashman at best should be viewed as a genius for this move, and at worst as a dude in a suit picking low-hanging fruit from the bounty of branches in the grove of Yankee money trees.  We all know that money was, is, and will never be of any object when it comes to Bronx baseball.  But cheap home runs?  You can hang about twenty-seven World Series banners on them.

Sources: Baseball-Almanac.com, Baseball-Reference.com, BleacherReport.com, ESPN.com