Great thread, as usual, at Mariner Central. In the space of ten posts, they triangulate the truth ;- ) into a narrow little parsec of Romulan Sector IX ...
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Q. For the purposes of naming a hits king, would Ichiro's NPB + MLB hits have to exceed Rose's MLB + MiLB hits? If it did, who cares who has the most MLB + MiLB anything?
A. Tell the MLB All-Stars that Team Japan is a PCL-level ballclub. You think a team of Bees, Rainiers and SkySox are going to kick Peavy's, Oswalt's, Braun's, and Jeter's butts the way that Japan does -- every time?
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Q. If NPB isn't minor league, what is it then?
A. Ichiro's NPB stats are analogous to Negro League stats. It would be quite offensive to call Negro League stats "minor league stats," don't you think?
It's not like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige and Larry Doby were in the Negro Leagues because they were outplayed by white guys who were promoted ahead of them. And it's not like Yu Darvish got outpitched by Chris Seddon and that's why he's not in Safeco yet.
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An old Alabama white supremacist would have looked pretty stupid, sneering at the Negro Leagues as "minor leagues," if the Negro Leagues were winning every time they played the MLB All-Stars. (*Edit to add: not that anybody in Seattle is doing this. I don't think they are.)
Here is the latest 2009 semi-final game, where Roy Oswalt got brutally crushed by a lefty-swinging lineup of Japanese "minor leaguers." Oswalt was throwing like Oswalt, no walks or anything, credited for having good stuff ... but Japan knocked him out of the box for 6 runs in the first three innings. They cruised, 9-4, on the U.S.' home turf with the U.S. wanting the game badly.
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Q. C'mon. One game?
A. It's not one game; Japan has never lost a WBC championship. These championships consist of more than one game each.
But anyway, there are many things that confirm the NPB's world class, such as Ichiro, Godzilla, the injured Matsuzaka, Nomo, Sasaki, etc. NPB teams aren't quite up to the American League, maybe -- check Fukudome's transition -- but Bobby Valentine's considered opinion is that a champion there could give a playoff ML team all it wanted.
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Q. Bobby Valentine?
A. The one ML coach in the world who understood Ichiro was before Ichiro got here.
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Good stuff Doc.
I think its safe to assume that Ichiro would have accumulated MORE hits if he were an MLBer from Day One, not less.
The short NPB schedule actually hurts his hit total and its pretty clear Ichiro would have been an impact player from Day One.
That Ichiro would have had more MLB hits than he had NPB hits, over the same sequence of years. Like G said, he'd probably have been in the bigs at 19, and then he'd have played the long seasons...
Though he'd have been denied the benefit of training against the NPB off-speed game ;- )
Ya, Ichiro has pretty much average 40+ hits more per season in the MLB.
Don't know how much Ichiro needed to train in the NPB, since he pretty much hit from Day One once they stopped messing with his swing in the minors. :-)