These are scary times: Ichiro appears to be human.

After last night’s game against Texas, he was hitting .282. That’s far from the worst mark in the American League, but Ichiro has set himself spectacularly high standards. With the Mariners failing to live up to the pre-season hype that some showered on them, the form of their star hitter has naturally come under the spotlight. The M’s need a hero and Ichiro has performed that role pretty well (to say the least) since he landed in the U.S. back in 2001.

His plight provides a good excuse to showcase some fantastic new batting data that is available for free on the brilliant Fan Graphs website. Back in March, I posted about the pitching data that had been launched on their site and they’ve now added to the goldmine by publishing similarly illuminating data about batters.

If you use the search box and select an active hitter, you then need to click on the ‘Season stats’ tab and scroll to the bottom of the page to find these new delights. You will be confronted by headings such as ‘O-Swing%’ and ‘Z-Contact%’. Have no fear, a quick glimpse at this introductory guide reveals that they are less complicated than they appear. Essentially the data tells you:

• The percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside/inside the strike zone.

• The overall percentage of pitches a batter swings at.

• The percentage of pitches a batter makes contact with outside/inside the strike zone when swinging the bat.

• The overall percentage of pitches a batter makes contact with when swinging the bat.

• The overall percentage of pitches a batter sees inside the strike zone.

Put them together and they provide a unique insight into the batter’s plate discipline and hitting characteristics.

But do they provide any clues as to why Ichiro’s batting average is lower than normal? Fan Graphs shows the data (when available) for the previous three seasons and the batter’s 2008 season to date. This allows you to compare their approach year on year. Looking at Ichiro’s 2008 stats, two things come to mind. Firstly, his success rates so far at making contact with pitches in the strike zone when he swings at them (97.69%) and making contact when he swings regardless of the location of the pitch (94.14%) are ridiculously good. Secondly, far from being worse than his previous years, his stats in these plate discipline categories are generally better than his 3 and a bit year averages. So, his lower than usual batting average is nothing to do with him missing more pitches.

If he’s still making good contact with pitches on a frequent basis, the obvious line of thinking to pursue is that he is just being unlucky. ‘Luck’ is a dirty word in professional sports, but it can play a much larger part in performances (whether individual or as a team) than some would like to admit. Maybe Ichiro’s batting average is purely a result of him hitting infielders at an unusually high rate?

I will test that theory tomorrow in part two.