Ichiro Suzuki finished his fabulous season with two more hits and his second American League batting title, then faced one important question.
How can he top this?
“Your goals aren’t in putting up the numbers that I did,” Suzuki said. “Going to spring training and starting from zero again, I’ll make goals then and go from there.”
Suzuki’s 2-for-4 game gave him a .372 batting average, 32 points better than the next-best hitter in the league, Baltimore’s Melvin Mora.
Suzuki singled to center field in the third inning off Chan Ho Park and in the eighth off Brian Shouse, capping his major league single-season record at 262 hits.
“There’s a chance this will never be approached again unless he does it,” manager Bob Melvin said. “It was an incredible year for him.”
Suzuki’s .372 average was the eighth-highest in the major leagues since 1950. Tony Gwynn’s .394 mark in 1994 leads the list.
Numbers game: Here’s a look at some final numbers after Sunday’s game.
* Raul Ibanez went 0-for-4 but batted .300 for the first time in his career. His .304 average topped his previous high of .294 each of the last two seasons.
* Sunday’s crowd of 45,658, the 11th sellout of the season, gave the Mariners a final home attendance of 2,940,731, an average of 36,305 per game. The Mariners became the fourth team in history to draw at least 2.9 million while finishing last in their division. They also are the sixth team to draw 2.9 million while losing 90 or more games.
* Sunday’s loss was the Mariners’ 99th, giving them the fourth-worst record in franchise history. They lost 104 in 1978, 103 in 1980 and 102 in 1983.
* Laynce Nix’s third-inning home run off Gil Meche was the 212th homer allowed by the Mariners’ pitching staff, second most in team history (they allowed 216 in 1996). It’s the second time the Mariners have allowed more than 200 homers.
Hoping to return: Like everyone else in the Mariners’ clubhouse, catcher Dan Wilson took a long look at the room Sunday, knowing many of the players won’t return next year.
He hopes he does.
“I’d like to be back,” said Wilson, who will be a free agent after finishing his 11th season with the Mariners.
The Mariners thought they’d acquired Wilson’s successor when they got Miguel Olivo in the Freddy Garcia trade with the White Sox this season. Olivo struggled both offensively and defensively, and will spend time this fall in Arizona working with the Mariners’ minor league catching specialist, Roger Hansen.
Wilson, who wound up getting a majority of the playing time, said he would consider returning to the Mariners in any role.
“Yeah, but you just don’t know what’s’ going to happen around here,” he said. “There could be a lot of changes.”
Milestone: Mickey Lopez quietly celebrated his best moment as a baseball player when he recorded his first major league hit in the ninth inning. Lopez had played 10 full minor league seasons before he became one of the Mariners’ minor league callups last month.
“Once I got to first base, it was such a sigh of relief,” Lopez said. “It was my first hit, I got to the big leagues this year, I got to see Edgar and Ichiro. It has been so awesome. Out of 30 teams, I couldn’t have picked a better team to get called up with. It has been awesome to go through this.”
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