On June 15, the Miami Marlins’ Ichiro Suzuki collected his 4,257th professional hit. In one sense, he passed Pete Rose on the all-time hits list. In another, he didn’t, since 1,278 of those knocks came during Ichiro’s days in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.
You can read my ruminations on the subject here. The point, though, is that some stats are controversial.
Others are mostly neat and clean. Like, for example, the ones we use to determine Bleacher Report’s Team of the Week.
There’s always room for argument and subjectivity—that’s what the comments section is for. But for the most part, this is a straightforward exercise.
In case you’re new to the party: These are the players—one per position, including a designated hitter and starting pitcher—who blew up box scores over the past seven days.
It’s primarily about individual achievement, but we award bonus points for gaudy numbers that translated to ticks in the win column.
Ichiro didn’t make the cut, milestone hits aside. Who did?
Tap the pine tar off your virtual helmet, dig into the box and find out.