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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: The Honorees
Vol. 16, No. 142
January 22, 2025
The thing about Ichiro Suzuki, who is now a Hall of Famer, is that it was hardly certain to go this way. In 2001, he became the first position player to make the move from Nippon Professional Baseball to MLB. Six years prior Hideo Nomo had made it clear that Japan’s best pitchers could hold their own, but there was real doubt about whether NPB’s hitters could. Before there was Hideki Matsui, before there was Shohei Ohtani, there was Ichiro.
His popularity was tied to his style of play, which stood out in the power-soaked game of 2001. Ichiro hit just eight homers as a rookie, had an isolated power of 107, walked just 30 times...and none of it mattered. He hit .350 that year and stole 56 bases, showing bat control like something out of the Deadball Era. He was the best defensive right fielder in the game on arrival, with one of the best right-field arms in the sport’s history. Arriving mid-career, he racked up most of a Hall of Fame resumé in just ten seasons, then spent a few more years as a credible fourth outfielder, eventually picking up his 3000th MLB hit in 2016.
In some ways, Ichiro’s arc resembled that of another great leadoff man, Rickey Henderson. Ichiro was better loved during his playing days, but it was only later in his career that his personality became well known, with Ichiro stories lining up the same way Rickey ones have. Ichiro was funny and profane, dedicated to his craft and just as dedicated to making his teammates laugh. Like Rickey, Ichiro couldn’t let go of the game. He played in the majors until he was 45, then showed up a couple of years ago to pitch -- yes, pitch -- against a team of young women at 50.
We can’t hit like Ichiro, can’t throw or run like him. What we have in common with the legend, though, is that passion for baseball. Ichiro was one of a kind, and yet he was one of us.
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CC Sabathia, with three months to free agency in 2008, was traded by the Indians to the Brewers just before the All-Star break. When I look back at his time in Milwaukee, I’m struck by the way they didn’t mess around with him out of the gate.
Sabathia made his Brewers debut July 8, going six innings in a 7-3 Brewers win. They brought him back on four days’ rest the last day before the All-Star Game, and with Sabathia not invited to New York for the Midsummer Classic, slotted him to start their very next game, on four days’ rest, in San Francisco. He joined the Brewers and started three of the team’s next six games. He’d end his time in Milwaukee throwing a whopping 130 2/3 innings in 17 starts, earning Cy Young and MVP votes in a league he was just visiting. The Brewers, who hadn’t played a playoff game since 1982, won the NL’s wild card thanks in no small part to Sabathia’s left arm.
That run came amid a three-year stretch in which Sabathia went from a vaguely disappointing mid-rotation starter to a potential Hall of Famer. Sabathia won the AL Cy Young Award in 2007, became a Brewers legend in 2008, then pitched the Yankees to a title in 2009, with two quality starts in the Series against the Phillies. Sabathia would extend that peak for a few years, then lose his effectiveness as he struggled with a knee injury in 2014, and then alcohol abuse in 2015, eventually leaving the Yankees towards the end of the latter season. He returned to finish out his career in New York, and in some ways was more popular in the Bronx in his later seasons than he was before, despite being diminished as a pitcher.
Sabathia’s arc reminds us that we’re not just who we are in our worst moments, that it is possible to step back from the abyss rather than fall into it. That Sabathia had 519 strikeouts and eight WAR after his own worst moments means less than that he was able to pitch, and be a husband, father, and friend, at all.
Sabathia goes into the Hall third in strikeouts in this century, first in innings, first in starts, second in complete games, second in shutouts. He’s sixth in bWAR behind one Hall of Famer and four others he’ll be sharing a dais with down the road. He put up less than 10% of that figure in one glorious Milwaukee summer, but he’s a Wisconsin legend forever.
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We’re bored by ridiculous strikeout totals these days, with the average leverage reliever striking out 30% of the batters he faces and the best ones around 50%. The numbers don’t mean anything any more. A Josh Hader or Craig Kimbrel or Felix Bautista comes along every couple of years and treats hitters the way Bob Nutting treats Pirates fans.
So you have to think back a bit to what it was like when Billy Wagner broke into the majors. Before Wagner established himself in 1996, the highest strikeout rate ever recorded was 38.5%, by Rob Dibble. Dibble was over 35% for every one of four years from 1989-92, an absolute freak in his time. Just one other pitcher, Tom Henke, had posted better than 35% in any season. There had been just 23 pitcher-seasons, ever, with at least a 30% strikeout rate (min. 60 IP).
This is what the top of the K% leaderboard looked like after 1995...
Rob Dibble 1992 38.5%
Rob Dibble 1991 37.1%
Rob Dibble 1990 35.4%
Yom Henke 1987 35.3%
Rob Dibble 1989 35.2%
...and this is what it looked like just four years later:
Billy Wagner 1999 43.4%
Armando Benitez 1999 41.0%
Billy Wagner 1998 39.3%
Rob Dibble 1992 38.5%
Billy Wagner 1997 38.3%
In all of baseball history through 1996, one pitcher had struck out 38% of the batters he faced in a season. Wagner did it in 1997, 1998, and 1999, and set a new all-time mark the last two years, including an unheard of 43% strikeout rate in ’99.
Why are we talking about Wagner today rather than Dibble or Tom Henke or Armando Benitez? Longevity. Wagner would pitch for 11 seasons past the end of that chart, and while he rarely hit that peak again, he struck out 31% of the batters he faced over the rest of his career. Wagner finished with a 2.61 ERA and 1196 strikeouts, the latter figure ninth all-time among primary relievers, and fourth among pitchers with fewer than 1000 innings pitched.
Wagner represented an evolutionary step forward in what pitchers could do, how dominant they could be. Others would come along later and raise the bar even higher, but it was Wagner, for three seasons at the end of the 1990s, who reset the scale for dominant relief pitching.
