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TAMPA — OK, so in order for the Yankees’ two-year commitment to Ichiro Suzuki to make sense, we have to know what clicked for him last September, right? How he went from a seriously fading icon to a resurgent, ultra-popular superstar in the final 16 regular-season games, with a solid postseason to boot.
They don’t expect Ichiro to take that .394 batting average, .405 on-base percentage and .563 slugging percent from those 16 games and carry it over 162 games. It’s more a matter of, “OK, he must have really found something, because otherwise, you gave him one year per great week and ignored his first 51 games as a Yankee, not to mention his final year-and-a-half with Seattle.”
So, are you ready? The secret to Ichiro’s revival is …
“Baseball is a tough sport to really pinpoint what [the] reasons are that [someone] goes well or goes bad,” he said, through interpreter Allen Turner. “It’s not like track and field, where you’re timed and you can base it off of other times. Because baseball is a sport where [it’s not just you playing].”
“As far as mechanically, or something there, I would agree with him that there was nothing really special,” hitting coach Kevin Long said.
Oh.
So if you want an explanation behind Ichiro’s transformation from short-time Yankee to one of only a handful of players signed beyond this year, you must look to an intersection of factors: He had the passionate support of ownership because of his Q rating, and the baseball operations folks didn’t object too strenuously because they didn’t love any of the alternatives.
Put it together, and you get a guy who, if nothing else, is very, very happy to be here and seemingly has a fan base in agreement. Which is no small thing when it comes to these 2013 Yankees.
“I got to New York and the fans were very welcoming to me and warm,” Ichiro said, “and obviously, that turned into me having energy towards the game. Obviously, that helps. But I feel like the Yankees’ fans are very sophisticated fans, where I think they look at a guy in the way they play the game. They’re not too into the outer appearance, how they act. They’re really into just how they play the game.”
For sure, there is the “too many home runs!” lobby in Yankees Universe that welcomed the arrival of Ichiro and his small-ball essence. Of course, you can play small ball only when you get on base, and Ichiro’s season-ending surge drove his 2012 OBP up to .307, which ranked him 71st out of the 82 players with 600-plus plate appearances last year (thanks, Baseball-Reference.com).
The Yankees surveyed this past winter’s free-agent class and hated it. They identified 12 outfielders they regarded as good enough to play for them every day — an appallingly low count, when you think of all the teams looking for outfield help. Their desire to get their 2014 payroll under $189 million eliminated most of those options.
At $6.5 million per year, Ichiro looked as quite affordable in comparison. If he could raise his OBP to the .320 level, which he hasn’t reached since recording a .359 in 2010, and contributed his solid defense, the Yankees would be thrilled with the rate of return.
Long is one of many Yankees who said he believes the 10-time All-Star benefited from playing under the September scrutiny.
“It was different for him because he hadn’t played meaningful games at that point of the year in … how long had it been for him?” Long asked (My answer: Since 2003, really). “I’m sure that had quite a bit to do with it. I think what you saw was
a player who enjoyed the spotlight, enjoyed playing meaningful games.”
He also appreciated his new teammates.
“When I first came to the Yankees organization, I really thought the Yankees organization was very simple in that they had a very simple goal and everybody puts their energy towards that goal. … I just enjoyed and liked the approach to the game that everybody had,” Ichiro said. “Also after the game, the mentality of wins and losses after the game — how guys handled it.
“Those are things that I wanted in a clubhouse and on a team, and I didn’t know that it existed. I kind of had given up hope that I would find that ideal clubhouse, kind of how I felt how about a clubhouse should be. And I was able to find that last year, and that was here.”
Maybe his newfound happiness can help him defy both personal and industry-wide trends. Maybe he will prove to be a huge bargain for the newly thrifty Yankees.
Still, you would feel better if you knew how he rose from the ashes last September, wouldn’t you?
kdavidoff@nypost.com