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The story
Ichiro, who serves as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Mariners, appeared in a video on the official “Power Pros / Pro Spirits” YouTube channel, and when asked who holds the highest career batting average in NPB history, he reacted with “Huh, is that me?” But it turns out his own .353 career average falls 381 at-bats short of the “4,000-at-bat minimum” required to qualify for the all-time rankings, so he isn’t even counted. The “-381” in the headline refers to that shortfall. On 5ch, opinions split over whether batting-average eligibility should be based on at-bats or plate appearances, and over how to weigh Ichiro’s unusually high number of infield hits.
Ichiro Baffled by His .353 Average: “Isn’t That Me?”—The Shocking “Not Qualified,” and the “-381” That Comes With Being a Genius
Appears on the official “Power Pros / Pro Spirits” channel… “Guys like Leon Lee, or Leron Lee…”
Ichiro, Special Assistant to the Chairman and instructor for the Mariners, appeared in a video on the official “Power Pros / Pro Spirits” YouTube channel. Asked who recorded the highest career batting average, he reacted with “Huh, is that me?” But his own .353 career average left him outside the all-time rankings.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Even batting under .100 the whole time, he'd still be the all-time #1 by a mile.
Re: #14
Doing the math, if he got just 3 hits in 381 at-bats, he'd clear the bar to take the top spot.
If so, that seems unfair to guys with a good batting eye—they'd end up excluded.
At-bats should be fine as the standard.
I think walks count toward plate appearances but not toward at-bats, right?
That's exactly why OPS—where walks are a huge factor—started getting valued so much.
A walk counts as a plate appearance but not an at-bat.
If that's the case, it seems unfair to guys with a good eye, or guys who get pitched around—their at-bat count drops.
The standard should just be plate appearances.
If that were the case, I'd agree.
A .700 batting average?!
You'd think any baseball fan would just read that as .280.
He obviously knows that and is writing it that way on purpose.
I get it, but I'd still prefer batting averages written with the decimal point, like ".280".
Well, for a single season the qualifying standard is plate appearances.
Impossible unless you've got an insanely good eye and are a master at fouling pitches off.
.353 Ichiro (3619 AB, 1278 H)
.337 Bass (2208 AB, 743 H)
.327 Yoshida Masataka (2703 AB, 884 H)
.325 R. Rose (3929 AB, 1275 H)
.321 Cromartie (2961 AB, 951 H)
.320 Lee (4934 AB, 1579 H)
.31918 Wakamatsu Tsutomu (6808 AB, 2173 H)
.31915 Harimoto Isao (9666 AB, 3085 H)
.317 Boomer (4451 AB, 1413 H)
.3150 O'Malley (2603 AB, 820 H)
Bass was ridiculously slow and had almost no infield hits, while Ichiro, by contrast, turned a ton of infield grounders into hits—so you can kind of tell what the "real" rankings and numbers would look like.
I thought Harry's career at-bat count was insane, but then there's a monster named Katsuya Nomura ranked above him.
https://npb.jp/bis/history/ltb_ab.html
Huh? Tanizawa Kenichi isn't on here. He was always battling Wakamatsu for the batting title with averages over .350.
Though these days he's a total old man.
Fans: "What's even the point of that (lol)"
Today
Murakami: .207, 35 HR
Okamoto: .232, 33 HR
Fans: "Great job!"
Why is that?
Back then it wasn't yet an era where OPS got valued.
If today's style had been fine back then, I feel like guys such as Joshima and Iguchi could've easily hit 30+ home runs too.
Fans over there (in MLB) genuinely seem pretty okay with that approach.
Satoteru (nickname for Yakult's Murakami Munetaka) will probably keep swinging for the fences the same way.
Well, honestly, Ohtani's the same type too.
He came so close to winning the Triple Crown.
He'd just end up being called the worst Triple Crown winner in history.
I used to think that too, but apparently that's not really the case.
Doi actually used him on the first team fairly often and gave him chances, but Ichiro just couldn't deliver.
I remember seeing him come in as a pinch hitter in Kobe, maybe his second pro year—he looked scrawny and unreliable and made a quick, easy out.
Though he was completely dominant in the minors.
Both his first and second years he played in 40+ first-team games, but with no results to show for it he got sent back down.
Career average: .338 (3141 hits)
Infield hits: 282 (approx. 9%)
"Real" average: .307
Ichiro
Career average: .311 (3089 hits)
Infield hits: 713 (approx. 23%)
"Real" average: .239
What even is a "real" batting average? 😂
To begin with, sabermetrics generally holds that whether a ball hit into the infield turns into a hit or an out has a strong element of luck—
so you could actually argue it's more impressive to beat out a ball hit right at an infielder using sheer athleticism.
They should just use something like 1000+ hits.
Why's it 4000 at-bats, a number nobody can even picture?
Kaneda: "It's because I won 400 games."
Probably this. (A joking nod to pitcher Masaichi Kaneda's 400 career wins.)
That's precisely to exclude the foreign hired guns who played before the Lee brothers.
Background and Key Points of Debate
The NPB career batting average rankings require a minimum of 4,000 career at-bats to qualify, and Ichiro falls 381 at-bats short, leaving him outside the list. The biggest point of debate in the thread was the inconsistency between single-season averages, which are qualified by a plate-appearance minimum, and the career ranking, which alone uses at-bats. Some pointed out that an at-bats-based standard disadvantages batters who draw a lot of walks, while others calculated that switching to a plate-appearance standard would make Ichiro the overwhelming No. 1. Opinions also clashed over Ichiro’s high number of infield hits: some argued his “real” average is lower than it looks because of them, while others countered that turning infield grounders into hits is itself a form of skill. His old remark that he could have hit 40 home runs if a .220 average were acceptable also reads, in hindsight, as ahead of its time given today’s power-focused trends. As for where the “4,000 at-bats” threshold itself comes from, some in the thread guessed it’s a nod to Masaichi Kaneda’s 400 career wins—though that’s just speculation, not an official explanation.
*This article is composed from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geisoku+) thread “[Baseball] Ichiro Baffled by His .353 Career Average: “Isn’t That Me?”—The Shocking “Not Qualified,” and the “-381” That Comes With Being a Genius.”
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