Collecting Ichiro
I’m not sure how many readers of this site collect or collected sports cards. Whether that number includes you or not, though, I’ll wager that you may find something entertaining at the Collecting Ichiro site, which documents many of the Ichiro cards made available from 1993-2003.
Besides the photo of a young Ichiro holding up autographed cards of himself, there is much to explore here. This includes those rare cards available only at certain Japanese pharmacies due to a deal with Sato Pharmaceuticals to endorse their Yunker energy drink.
As we talked about a bit a year and a half ago, Ichiro shills Yunker here in Japan while eschewing similar ads in the U.S. This certainly isn’t unique to Ichiro — Hideki Matsui was ubiquitous in commercials when I was here last two years ago, although that seems to have subsided a bit.
Still: Holy crass commercialism, Ichiro! For those of us used to your absence from product placements in the U.S., it’s mighty jarring to hear about, say, the “Batter in the wilderness” commercial.
A town in the Wild West in dead calm. When gusty wind blows up dust, a giant pitcher tries to take away a beauty over her strong protests. A boy who wants to help her finds Ichiro, rushes to him, and hands him a bat instead of a gun. In the midst of mounting tension, Ichiro holds the bat at the ready. The pitcher throws a fastball. Ichiro swings and strikes back the ball at ultraspeed. At this moment, the scene changes to a baseball stadium. After the narration of “Powered by Yunker!”, Ichiro holding a Yunker bottle in his hand declares “It works!”
This raises two issues. One is about the social role of the star: do superlative performers have obligations to adopt consistent standards for commercial endorsement? You should see, for example, Tommy Lee Jones and Cameron Diaz hack out for coffee and cell phones over here. Is there an overriding ethical or socioeconomic concern about this practice?
Well, I don’t know, and I don’t care.
The second issue is Yunker itself. Does it really work, as Ichiro claims? Would it work in the Wild West? Will it work to help one meet beautiful women and defend them against dastardly, um, pitchers — especially in historical fiction narratives?
While in Okinawa, I’m tackling many research topics. This may be the most important issue I have to resolve. Before I leave, I will report. Count on it.
Graph for the holiday weekend
Position players only.
Offensive contributions only.
As you can see, the correlation between last year’s performance and the annual value of the player’s new deal is extremely high (the correlation’s .85). There are a number of interesting possibilities raised here:
– overall ability has mattered less than last year’s stat line
– defense hasn’t mattered that much
– age (and projections, etc) hasn’t mattered that much
– the price of a free agent starts at about $4m, climbs to $8m for a 20-run player, and then only really goes up for the 50-run guys (making the 30-40 run guys huge bargains)
– all of the above
– none of the above
Wednesday news-a-go-go
Actual headline “Matsuzaka dines with Red Sox, leaves deal to Boras“. It’d be better if Borat did his negotiating.
Jeff Francis signed a 4y, $13.5m deal with the Rockies. Nice.
Added By Dave: Angels spend $50 million on Gary Matthews! Woohoo!
Derek says: As Mariner fans, we should all be extremely happy about this latest signing
On ESPN, Barry Melrose, who I find to be one of the most vapid and obviously uninformed analysts ever to grace ESPN’s sets, raved about Morneau and said that at 25, Morneau would win “5 or 6 more”.
Multiple MVP winners:
2 (about twenty players)
3, only 7 players: Berra, Campanella, DiMaggio, Foxx, Mantle, Musial, Schmidt
7, only one player: Bonds
So Justin Morneau is going to go down in history as the second best hitter in the history of baseball. I know Melrose is Canadian and over-excited about this, but it also makes it clear that he has no idea what he’s talking about or what it takes to win more than one MVP.
Also, my nearly-new Logitech laser mouse is totally flipping out on me, making it really hard to do work. Grrrrrrrrrr.
More PMR defense goodness
David Pinto’s been putting out the 2006 defensive ratings in bits and pieces, so let’s catch up on the first three.
LF: Raul Ibanez is horrible. He’s above Carlos Lee, Chris Duncan, Bobby Kielty, and Manny Ramirez.
CF: Ichiro is ridiculously good. Reed was the worst in the league in his limited time.
1B: Sexson’s pretty bad.
Update: Dave’s comment makes me want to clarify this — he’s right, and I should have said “Raul Ibanez’s rating is horrible” or something similarly clear.
News of Tuesday, November 21st
Morneau is the AL MVP. I’d have voted for Jeter.
Alou signs 1 year, $8.5m deal
Juan Pierre gets a 5y, $45m deal. Boggle boggle.
Nintendo (and for that matter, Microsoft) have still not supplied USSM Labs with evaluation units
Monday’s signings, rumors
Catalanotto signs with Rangers for 3y, $13m
Garciaparra reups with Dodgers for 2y
Added by Jason: Ryan Howard wins NL MVP
Soooo… hitters, apx 2006 win value from offense, new contract annual value
Henry Blanco, 0, $2.6m
Sean Casey, -1, $4m
Alex Cora, -1, $2m
Mark DeRosa, 2, $4.3m
Jim Edmonds, 2, $9.5m
Alex Gonzalez, 0, $4.6m
Wes Helms, 2, $2.7m
Aramis Ramirez, 4, $15m
Alfonso Soriano, 6, $17m
Scott Spiezio, 2, $2.3m
Frank Thomas, 4, $9m
By the way, here’s the contracts of Frank Thomas. The 2006 base salary of $500k was so low I felt obligated to include the incentives he made, but otherwise this is straight:
Don’t Call It A Comeback …
… I’ve been here for three weeks. And my log-in and password still work. Excellent!
Folks, Dave has on occasion kvetched about cross-country flights, which is certainly a truism. Let me vouch for the fact that moving across the International Date Line is no less trying. Between getting my project set up, trying to furnish a home, fill out myriad mystifying forms and leap headfirst into two mutually-unintelligible languages (three, if you count English), chores aplenty have rolled in. This has left me wondering whether there is an opposite of “combobulated.”
Oh yeah.
Keeping up on baseball news has been shuffled down on the priority list somewhere just above “is there any drawback to living with wild geckos?” and just below “register for the health care system.” I’ve been a lot better at keeping up my Okinawa blog, but then, this place is the epicenter of the next year for me, so I’d better. If you’re interested in mundane details about my apartment, political and environmental news about a place you might not know much about, and the occasional bit of strangeness, pop on over.
Though my absence is no doubt helping the average Post Intelligence Quotient over here, I’ve been looking for an excuse to duck in, say “hi,” and hopefully bring something in the way of Japanese baseball news to the table.
It’s the offseason here, too, but here’s what I’ve got: the Yokohama Bay Stars train in Ginowan City, where I live now. They just did a little meet n’ greet with some American kids. The Bay Stars (along with many Japanese teams) will be back in Okinawa in February for spring training.
That’s right, they have two offseason camps. Rumors that they force pitchers to throw hundreds of pitches during each are unsubstantiated, but let’s just say I’m bringing the camera in three months.
Mariner fan photo blogging: while I was strolling around Highway 58 today trying to sign up for local cultural activities, I ran into these two kids, who were anxious to try out the only English word they know — and, coincidentally, the phrase that I popped over here to say — “Hi!”
Always happy to meet another Mariner fan, I pointed out in Japanese that I’m from Seattle, where the Mariners play. They looked perplexed and then laughed, as it became readily apparent that the young fella wasn’t so much a baseball fan as someone who thought the hat looked sweet.
I also saw a weird advertisement featuring Ichiro today, but neglected to bring my camera, which is always — always — a mistake. At least it will give me fodder for another post sometime in the next several months.
Kidding. Kind of.
Friday’s roundup
Terse headlines
A’s bench coach Geren steps up to manager
Frank Thomas signs 2y, $18m deal with Blue Jays
USSM still not supplied with Wii despite constant promotion of Nintendo-owned team
Even though they’re sending everyone else one and we’re local
And we promise we’d write an article
A’s talking to Bonds
MLB owners approve new TV deals worth $3 billion+
Meteor shower! Good thing we live in a city with near-total cloud cover for nine months a year.
Other good stuff
Over in an article at Baseball Prospectus, Nate Silver’s quoted saying the dollar cost teams are paying per win a player contributes looks like it’s jumped 30% or more this season. Teams have money to spend, labor peace, and there aren’t many free agents worth having.
I still can’t believe Scott Spiezio got 2y, $4.5m from the Cardinals and he’s trash talking about the M’s.
Thursday news
Devil Rays are top Iwamura bidder (mlb)
Frank Thomas may sign with Blue Jays (mlb)
Bonds, Giants spar
Also, because a reader emailed to point out we haven’t mentioned this beyond “the Missions left us”, the M’s had a whole affiliate shuffle.
AA swaps from San Antonio to the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx. The extra ‘X’ is for eXtra.
Their Cal League affiliate for A ball moves from Inland Empire to the High Desert Mavericks.
The world has not ended
The announcement of the Daisuke posting bid sent columnists across the country to their keyboards, ready to crank out an easy day’s work wringing their hands about how this is the end of baseball.
It’s not. This is ridiculous.
He’s not an everyday player.
Starting pitchers don’t play everyday. But they’re involved in far more outcomes each game than position players. We might as well say that Alex Rodriguez doesn’t deserve his money because he only has a chance to affect the outcome of a game four or five times each day.
The Red Sox are paying more for the right to talk to Daisuke than great players make in a year
So what? The posting process is strange. MLB’s arrangement with Japanese baseball is weird, and it produces results like this. It results in crazy one-time payments that don’t have an equivalent in domestic baseball.
But this is a lot like the wailing about draft pick signing bonuses, or international signings of young undrafted players. “Oh, how can some Felix Hernandez kid get a million dollars when he hasn’t even thrown an inning of minor league baseball?”
Baseball is not a free market. Teams are constantly trying to keep their labor costs down and where they can’t control it, we get these kind of extremely strange values.
This changes everything
Dogs and cats living together!
No it doesn’t, any more than Ichiro’s posting did. It’s true this is unprecedented, but so was Ichiro’s posting, and that didn’t destroy baseball.
Teams are flush with cash and crazy!
Yup. Baseball’s been doing quite well for itself, and good teams spend that money improving the quality of their product. So be it. The fans win when baseball is a more lucrative option for athletes who have choices between sports.
Other athletes get paid far less!
Boo hoo. Football and basketball both broke their unions and, because they went through near-death experiences, are a lot more… socialist? in their structure, where revenue comes from national sources and gets evenly distributed (though, as always, this wavers).
Should we really be celebrating that Peyton Manning is underpaid in the NFL because their ownership groups control labor costs and are able to pocket more money?
We should be celebrating. That smart teams are willing to spend so much on a Japanese player, no matter what the circumstances or how foolish the system may be, is a sign of baseball’s great health, its increasing international reach. It’s an endorsement of the talent in NPB, and how far that league has come.
Yesterday was shocking, but if you’re a baseball fan it should also be a bit thrilling. How many people are going to follow Matsuzaka’s starts this year? How can that be a bad thing?