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Originally Posted by Supreme Olajuwon
Personally I buy in to the idea that a guy with good pitch recognition can choose what kind of hitter he wants to be.
Still waiting for the year when Ichiro finally says fuck it and hits 35 homers. And he could do it rather easily.
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Comparing Ichiro and Brady Anderson is a bit extreme. Anderson is a career .260 hitter, far from a superstar and I doubt he has this ability to suddenly chose to go from being a pretty mediocre hitter to being a prodigious power guy, especially at the age of 32 when he did it.
Ichiro, yes, I bet in his prime he
could have hit 35 homers. But he's a once in a generation type talent.
Yeah, Brady could have had a career year, and I'll say that even if he was on the roids he certainly was a better hitter that year regardless (.297) than at any other point, so he was a better hitter that year, yes. But in the dead middle of the steroid era, when a guy jacks 30 more homers than his career high, slugs over 200 points better than his career average, and bulks up, you have to at least be suspicious. Players don't just get better like that, especially at 32, without going on the gas.
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Anderson was a pretty great athlete and if you look at his swing, he had a noticeable Griffey style uppercut.
I wouldn't consider him any more a suspect than Javy Lopez, Luis Gonzalez, Todd Hundley (think it was him who hit 45 homers randomly one year), or Adrian Beltre.
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Javy Lopez did do the roids dude:
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/20...ids-i.html.php
And Todd Hundley was in the Mitchell Report:
http://www.baseballssteroidera.com/b...-baseball.html
And Beltre had his career year when he was 25.