by A.J. Coltrane
Is that enough exclamation points?!!??
Seriously though, I’m floored. Imagine that Somebodies such as Tony Gwynn or Barry Larkin had experienced a late career trade — I was absolutely convinced Ichiro would retire, from American Baseball at least, as a Mariner. I’m about equally as surprised that Ichiro requested the trade himself, and that it was months ago.
And to the Yankees no less. Yeesh.
My buddies T’s reaction: “Oh God. It’s perfect for him. At least now Buhner won’t vomit.”
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Ichiro realizes what I realized a few weeks ago – he can’t hit lefties anymore and he is effectively done. He wants to win a world series title and the Yankees represent his best hope for that because they can bury his bat in the lineup. Sadly, I don’t understande where the Yankees will play him. Granderson is in center and is their best hitter. The Ibanez/Jones platoon in left isn’t great, but it is still better than Ichiro. Swisher in right is better than Ichiro on both sides of the ball. My guess is that Eric Chavez loses his job as DH, the Ibanez/Jones platoon becomes the DH, Swisher moves to left and Ichiro moves into RF. This actually makes the Yankees lineup worse. I can’t see the Yankees batting Ichiro at the top of the lineup and I think he ends up as a platoon player before the month is over. I doubt that he will handle either of those two things particularly well.
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Coltrane I thought you were pulling my leg. Oh what a happy girl I am today, it’s an early birthday present to me. They just announced he is batting 8th tonight.
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Don’t look now, but he has a nine game hitting streak going since leaving the M’s.
It’s exactly one hit per day though.
He’s now 9/36 with 8 singles, 1 HR, and no walks for a line of .250/.270/.361.
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