The Hardball Times examines if Ichiro Suzuki should try to hit more home runs. This is based on the assumption that Ichiro has the ability to hit more home runs, which Suzuki himself believes. I’m not so sure. Ichiro would need to learn some plate discipline. Maybe Vladimir Guerrero can swing at anything and hit home home runs, but in general, players who hit 40 home runs are those willing to wait for their pitch. That would be a huge adjustment for Suzuki.
If you ever watched him in BP he has lots of power. He wants hits though, not walks, and hitting HR’s leads to more walks and less pitches in the zone to hit. Pitchers know Ichiro can’t hurt them much, especially with nobody on and those sad sacks hitting in the order behind him. So he gets pitches to hit, gets his hits (some of them should be errors but there is serious official scorer bias in Seattle) , and gets LOB a lot, and his team loses. Not a team player.
If he played on a better team with a better lineup, he might get fewer hits since pitchers would need to pitch him more carefully, but he would score more runs. Ichiro is in the perfect placed to add to his hit totals, and a short hop (relatively speaking) to Japan to boot.