tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1977384970015233286.post5019481655081319397..comments2023-11-03T06:13:31.161-04:00Comments on Prince of New York Baseball Blog: Sunday Lightning 10.3.2010PAUL LEBOWITZhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03726846731779145384noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1977384970015233286.post-29415952555556351262010-10-04T22:23:45.048-04:002010-10-04T22:23:45.048-04:00Actually, Prince, both Figgins and Ichiro are simi...Actually, Prince, both Figgins and Ichiro are similar offensive players. I was just trying to point out that asking Ichiro to hit 20 or 30 homers is as unfair as asking Figgins to do the same. Citing Ted Williams' advice and saying that Ichiro could work the count in his favor and use his hand-eye coordination and bat control to bang out home runs is to say that anybody could do the same thing. If Ichiro, then why not Dom DiMaggio or Richie Ashburn, both of whom are the same size as Ichiro. Imagine Ozzie Guillen going up to Juan Pierre, a player similar to Ichiro and saying: "Look Juan, Magglio Ordonez has gone down with an injury. We need you to move down in the order and hit more homers. I know you can do it because you have 14 career home runs. All you need to do is double that total this year. You can do that by looking for a good pitch to hit and using your superior bat control to knock it out of the park. No less an authority than Paul Lebowitz says it can be done." This of course is absurd. As for citing Iwamura, Kaz Matsui, Fukudome, and Hideki Matsui, you completely ignored my larger point, that those players showed dramatic declines in their power numbers when they moved from Japan to the U.S., declines that you seem to think that Ichiro should be immune to. To simply say that Ichiro has more ability than they do is to damn him with faint praise, while imputing to him a skill (power hitting) that he doesn't have in order to denigrate him.Macwhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08828247037694400473noreply@blogger.com