Could the Seattle Mariners Trade Ichiro at the Deadline?

Here I am. A diehard Mariners fan. I grew up watching Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, the list goes on. But now who am I watching? I can name about three players on the Mariners team that should actually be known by the rest of the world: "King" Felix Hernandez, Eric Bedard, and Ichiro Suzuki. Felix Hernandez and Bedard both have established their selves as solid starters in the Mariner roster, but what has Ichiro actually done for the franchise recently?

It is undeniable that Ichiro has helped this franchise probably more than any other player. He sparked national interest and he quickly became the face of this franchise. He opened up the pipeline into Japan for the Mariners and brought in players like Shigitoshi Hasagawa, Kazuhiro Sasaki, and Kenji Johjima. International interest also was brought on the Seattle franchise because of the success of Ichiro; Seattle's fan base almost doubled with the support of the Japanese fans. By having this support, the entire city of Seattle has received much more revenue by the support of Japan.

Aside from what he has done for just the city of Seattle, Ichiro Suzuki has provided the team with 200+ years for every single year he has played for the club. How valuable are these hits though? Most of these are singles and he has no intention of hitting for any more power or stealing extra bases. In 2008, Mariner's manager Mike Hargrove begged Ichiro to be more aggressive on the bases, and he only improved his stolen base total by 6 from the 2007 season, from 37 to 43. Though these are good numbers, the way he goes about getting them are not helpful to the team. Out of Ichiro's 213 hits in the 2008 season, only 33 of them were extra base hits. That figures to be 85% of Ichiro's hits were only singles. Someone who is making 18 million dollars a year should be doing a little more for a franchise than just getting his hits and not caring about how the team fares.

Though this may seem a little harsh, I am an avid Mariners fan who has struggled watching Ichiro swing and miss at some ridiculous pitches. He does not do any of the little things that are needed to actually be a successful ball player. My main complaint of him is that he does not walk nearly as much as he should be. Over his 9 year career playing for the Seattle Mariners, he has walked over 51 times in a season only once. This is a miniscule number when compared to the league leaders each year. Ichiro should be at least in the top 20 each year in walks for how good of a hitter he is, yet he ranked out at tied for 98th in the MLB. This is just unacceptable and is one of many reasons that Ichiro should be traded.

Now I know that Ichiro is an outstanding player, but he just does not fit in to the Mariners system any longer. The Mariners are in a rebuilding process right now, and the team does not need a player eating up 18 million dollars of salary each year when they could get at least 2 or 3 sure-fire prospects out of trading Ichiro. It would kill me to see Ichiro go and the team would not look anywhere the same as it would with him, but for the success of the future Mariner's baseball teams, Ichiro Suzuki needs to be playing in a town outside of Seattle.