First player to reach 3000 hits not to make the HOF?

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by seanofjapan

What exactly is the case against Ichiro being in the Hall? Nat in a previous post lists three weak points on his resume (low power for an OF, not many walks, played in Japan for most of his 20s) but none of those individually or cumulatively come close to outweighing the stuff in his favor. He just seems like a no-brainer first ballot guy with like 95-97% of the vote to me.

He played like he was in the dead ball era. He had some amazing abilities, but the way he used them weren't necessarily the best for winning baseball. He was literally dropping balls in front of outfielders almost every time he made contact. It led to tons of hits and very few extra bases, advanced runners or RBI's.

In his lead off at bat or when he was at bat with nobody on base he was a superior player, although even then if he was on 2nd (or even third with his speed he should have had a lot more triples) he would have scored even more often.

Any time there was a man on base he hurt his team. Balls dropping in front of outfielders mean a guy on first usually only gets to second and a guy on second can't score. Not all singles are created equal, outfielders were almost always coming in on his hits setting them up to throw.

People compare him to Boggs and Gwynn which is crazy. They both had a TON more extra base hits than Ichiro and neither of them will ever be mistaken for a power hitter. Plus I hate when a guy hangs on at the end of his career for milestone numbers. Ichiro has been pretty useless since 2010 if I recall correctly.

If you like WAR he had 2 superstar seasons and 5 additional all-star seasons (again trusting memory here) that pales in comparison to Boggs or Gwynn.

He is, to me, Hall of Very Good. Maybe if he hadn't lost 3 or 4 years of his prime to Japan the case would be different, especially if they were superstar caliber seasons like his best two.