The Seattle Mariners clearly aren't in a hurry to re-sign Eugenio Suarez in free agency.
But there's one crazy Ichiro Suzuki stat going around that maybe should make them rethink that.
It surfaced in a post on X on Friday:
- In Ichiro's MVP 2001 season, he had a 126 OPS+.
- In Suarez's 2025 season, he had a 126 OPS+.
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OPS+ is an era-adjusted slugging stat, where league average is 100.
The premise here is that Suarez, with his 49 home runs (aka a lot of slugging), had a similar offensive season to Ichiro in his MLB debut season in 2001, when he won MVP while hitting.350 and having 242 hits.
Of course, Suzuki was a premier defender and baserunner, too, which aren't accounted for in OPS+.
Still, though, it's intriguing.
Some will say it shows the flaw in such a statistic.
Others will say it shows Suarez is still a quality player that Seattle should try to bring back.
Offense is offense, in all its forms.
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The one note about Suarez from 2025 is that he was a superstar for the Diamondbacks before the trade deadline, then struggled in the second half after being traded to the Mariners. So Seattle may not believe they're getting that full slugging package.
Besides, Ichiro is still around the Mariners all the time. Maybe they can just get him back on the field.
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