Card Of The Week August 22

Last week, Daisuke Yamai of the Dragons took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against the Giants. Hayato Sakamoto broke it up with a home run. This would be the second time Yamai would throw eight innings of no hit ball - the first was game 5 of the 2007 Nippon Series, where his eight perfect innings were followed by one perfect inning from Hitoki Iwase for the first perfect game in Nippon Series history (plus the first championship for the Dragons since 1954).

Despite these outings, Yamai has had a fairly mediocre career - currently he's 22-22 for his career with an ERA of 4.13. (Looks like his strikeout-to-walk ratio is pretty good: 349-161 in 427.1 innings, but he gives up roughly a hit per inning. I got the stats from NPB's site.) This is reflected in how BBM treats him - he hasn't had a card in the regular BBM sets since the 2008 1st Version set (although I expect that he appears in the Dragons team sets). Here's his rookie card from the 2002 BBM 1st Version set (#148):