The No. 1 spot in the American League West may depend partly on the No. 1 hitters in the division. Three teams will be using new leadoff hitters this season while the fourth, the Angels, have Darin Erstad, who last season became the fifth player in history to amass 240 hits, 25 home runs and 100 RBI in one season. Ichiro Suzuki, Johnny Damon and Rusty Greer won't approach those amazing numbers, but each should have a major impact on his team.
Suzuki is the most intriguing new leadoff man -- assuming he hits there. Mariners manager Lou Piniella has considered hitting him second or third, but has nearly ruled out third because Suzuki is going to have enough pressure as the first Japanese position player to play in America.
|  | | Ichiro Suzuki begins this season as the Mariners' leadoff hitter. |
But Piniella still thinks enough of Ichiro -- as he is known in Japan -- as a hitter to consider using him in the middle of the order. ("What we need to do is to get another hitter," says Piniella. "You're supposed to know who's hitting third by this time."). Ichiro is listed in the spring training media guide at 156 pounds., but he actually weighs 182. He has dropped the high leg kick, and has a firmer swing than the one he had two springs ago when he worked out with the Mariners.
Ichiro has a chance to be a terrific leadoff guy. He has blazing speed -- he's 3.7 seconds to first base. "Once a week," says Mets manager Bobby Valentine, who saw him play in Japan, "he'll beat out a routine grounder to the shortstop." He can really bunt, but he rarely bunted in Japan because he was the best hitter in the country, and fans came to watch him swing the bat. He averaged 28 steals a year in Japan, which is remarkable since most of the pitchers there are 1.1 seconds to the plate, which is very fast. Plus, they rarely, if ever, call balks in Japan.
"He might steal 60 or 70 bases," says Lenn Sakata, a manager in the Giants minor-league system who scouted Ichiro for three years. "I can't wait to see how well he does," Sakata says.
Dodgers pitching coach Jim Colborn, who knows Ichiro and his game better than anyone, having scouted him and signed him, says Ichiro will hit .311 his first year. Colborn says within five years, Ichiro "will make an All-Star team and win a batting title." Ichiro has great bat control, he can turn on a ball and pull it, he can shoot it to all fields. During one 16 at-bat stretch in Japan, Ichiro didn't swing and miss or foul off a pitch: he put everything in play. And remember, they didn't pitch to him in Japan, but he kept swinging because the fans came to see him hack, not walk. "He swung at balls over his head and in the dirt," says Sakata, "and he still got his hits." He'll be more selective here than in Japan.
And Damon will be more patient hitting atop Oakland's order than he was in Kansas City. The A's, who preach on-base percentage, want Damon to get on base, steal occasionally and wait for Oakland's big hitters to knock him in. A's general manager Billy Beane believes, as do many in the game, that the stolen base is overrated -- the risk of an out is far greater than the reward of advancing 90 feet. Damon's 46 steals were six more than the A's had as a team last year, but nine caught stealing (Damon's total last year) is about all Beane wants to see.
Still, says Beane, "We were a little too one-dimensional last year. Now we have an extra gear." And that gear is a perfect addition to this dynamic lineup.
But Damon won't be slapping singles to left field. Last year, he had 68 extra base hits, exactly as many as Ben Grieve and three more than Ken Griffey Jr. There are few things better than a leadoff guy who starts a game with a homer, or leads off the seventh inning of a close game with a double. That's what Damon brings to the A's. Terrence Long hit 17 homers out of the leadoff spot last year, but he can be more productive hitting down in the order.
Greer has over 2,000 at-bats from the No. 3 hole the last five years, but now he's needed at the top of the order for the Rangers. We know this -- he's a high-average hitter from wherever he hits: his career .307 average is 10th highest among active players with at least 1,000 hits; a higher average than Chipper Jones, Bernie Williams and Jeff Bagwell.
Greer will hit leadoff for Texas because the Rangers have three potential Hall of Famers (Alex and Ivan Rodriguez, and Rafael Palmeiro) hitting in the middle of the order. Greer's career on-base percentage is .392, which is plenty good, especially for a guy who might open a game with a home run.
With the Rangers pitching as bad as it is -- "They have no chance of winning with that pitching," insists one scout -- they're going to need to score 1,000 runs to make the playoffs. That could happen, especially if Greer gets things going with a great year from the one-hole.
One division, four potentially marvelous leadoff guys. May the best No. 1 man win.
ESPN The Magazine's Tim Kurkjian writes a weekly column for ESPN.com.
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