Ichiro Suzuki finds his old form with the Marlins

For some fans, baseball without Ichiro Suzuki just doesn’t make sense. He’s played for three teams in his 17-year MLB career, and most of those years were spent with the Seattle Mariners, with a two-and-a-half-year sojourn playing for the New York Yankees before he came to his current team, the Miami Marlins. No matter what team he plays for, knowing Ichiro is playing baseball, what he was clearly born to do, is comforting.

You can watch Ichiro and the Marlins take on the Tampa Bay Rays today in Yahoo Sports' Free Game of the Day. First pitch is at 1:10 p.m. ET, and you can stream it on Yahoo's Sports Home, MLB index and video home. Local blackouts apply, according to MLB rules.

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It wasn’t always a given that Ichiro would continue playing, or that he’d be as good as he’s been this season. His last two seasons with the Yankees weren’t his best, and his stats cratered in his first year with the Marlins. With Miami in 2015, he had the worst year of his career. He hit .229/.282/.279, his lowest marks in each category ever. And he did it in 438 plate appearances.

All of that makes his resurgence with the 2016 Marlins even more incredible. He’s not playing full time for the Fish, so he’s had 78 plate appearances in 36 games. But even with that small sample size, he’s batting .357/.416/.400. Due to Christian Yelich’s back problems, Ichiro has started the last five games the Marlins have played, and in those games he’s hit .435/.458/.478.

And thanks in part to his rebounding numbers, Ichiro’s reaching some significant career milestones. He currently has 2960 career MLB hits, so he needs just 40 more to reach 3000. He’s currently just four hits away from reaching the number 31 spot on the all-time MLB hit list. And he’s already the active leader in stolen bases with 500, which he hit last month.

With Ichiro’s records, it’s important to establish which league you’re talking about. Since he played nine years in Japan for Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), his MLB stats don’t tell the whole story. If you combine his MLB hits (2960) with his NPB hits (1278), Ichiro is getting incredibly close to Pete Rose’s all-time hit record. How close? Ichiro has 4238 professional hits, and Rose’s record is 4256. Ichiro needs just 18 more hits to tie it, and 19 to become the new reigning hit king.

There’s very little doubt that Ichiro, with his long career and sustained success, will be granted a spot in Cooperstown when the time comes. But to do that, he needs to retire first. And looking at his resurgence this year, Ichiro could put that off one more time because he might not be done yet.

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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher