Ichiro is Great but not worth $20 Million

Imagine what A-Rod is going to get come the winter....

Ichiro is a slap hitter, so bat speed is no concern. .300 and 8 homers? Red Sox wish they could get that from JD Drew.

Ichiro is the face of the Mariners. You just have to re-sign him.

He just won the All Star Game MVP with an inside the pask home run.

oh and i think he will be great until he gets old and as we found out with Julio Franco, 38 is young. I think until he reaches the 40's, he ill continue to be a big base stealer with a high average. As hard as he works in the off season, age won't stop him in the next few years. He does not have "meager power", he is actually a very strong player. I've been to a few Seattle games and if you watch him during warmups, he can drive that ball exceedingly far when he wants. Jerry Remy also said, "When he [ichiro] wants, he can hit one out with no problem". He hits for contact, not power in games. Would you rather have 30-40 HR's or 200+ hits in a season? I would rather have 200+ hits and rely on my teammates a little more to drive me in. In this era (the Homerun Era), 200 hits is considered to be a much greater acheivement than 40 homeruns, by that I think he's worth it. Go to a mariners game early enough to see him hit, them tell me if he has "meager Power" or not.

I agree with Gamer. I used to watch the Red Sox in the '80's with Rice and Evans and Lynn, etc, and the guy who used to hit the biggest bombs in BP was Wade Boggs. Then the game would start and he'd start slapping the ball around like a girl.

He brings over $20 mil a year to the team in sales of stuff...

20 mil a year for the Mariners is too much for him in my opinion cuz he's getting older. 20 mil a year is definitely all right for a team like the Red Sox where they want/need an outfielder or the Yankees, who have a really high payroll.

The reason Seattle is giving Ichiro this contract is because they have let go former "faces" of their franchise and don't plan on doing it again. See Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., and Omar Vizquel. Nothing is more synonymous with casual baseball fans when talking about Seattle than Ichiro Suzuki.

I think if three New York Yankees are worth $20 million, then Ichiro is damn well worth it too. It's just too bad he hadn't played his entire career in the MLB, would've been awesome to see him make a run at Pete Rose's hits record. Ichiro's at 2,750 for his entire career.

he's a great player and I'd love him on the Mets...but that's a rediculous contract the Mariners will later regret giving.

$20 million for an Ichiro-type player is too much, I agree...

But Ichiro will do more than enough to make the mariners back their 20 mil...he's the most well known and respected asian player in the league (in my experience among americans) and probably the most well known MLBer in Japan (sorta like if jeter went to japan...). His earning power for seattle is well worth that 20 mil...and since there's no salary cap...it makes sense

Not to mention, he puts people in seats...

Here's Ichiro's Brock2 projection, updated to include numbers from the first half of 2007:

Is that worth $100 million?

Ichiro is worth every dollar!