But there appears to be no backsliding for Ichiro. The man keeps getting better. He reached base five times in Sunday's series-sweeping victory at Toronto, putting together a single, double and triple for the second straight day, raising his batting average to .360 and extending his hit streak to 19 games. This is getting ridiculous. It has been too easy.
Nobody comes into the big leagues and immediately hits everything thrown their way.
That just doesn't happen. At this rate, the man will get a hit in 153 of the season's 162 games. The major-league record is 135 games by Wade Boggs in 1985, Chuck Klein in 1930 and Rogers Hornsby in 1922. That one hitless game is all that prevents Ichiro from sitting on a 36-game hitting streak this morning. In the past century, only five players put together hitting streaks of 39 games or longer.