Comparing Ichiro to Other Players

Jeff Passan wrote an article last week talking about poor sabermetric comparisons for Ichiro Suzuki. He also talked about how Ichiro could reach 4,000 MLB hits by playing well into his mid-forties. In his criticism of sabermetric comparisons (Baseball-Reference’s top match is Ralph Garr, and PECOTA’s is Lance Johnson), he’s quick to dismiss (or he never actually researched) statistics that are extremely similar. Instead of Ichiro being “beyond the comprehension of computers,” as he puts it, instead Passan doesn’t take a deep enough look into the sabermetrics to understand the comparisons.