The Gary SouthShore RailCats of the independent American Association announced that they signed former Baystar and Fighter pitcher Takahiro Matsuka. Matsuka was taken in the ninth(!) round of the 2005 draft* by Yokohama from Tokyo University. He only made 14 appearances at the ichi-gun level during his career in Japan - 9 with the Baystars in 2009 and 5 with the Fighters the following year. His complete stats are available
here.
*I didn't realize that an NPB draft ever had went nine rounds
Matsuka doesn't have many cards and what he does have appear to all be BBM cards. His rookie card is #486 in the 2005 1st Version set although he also appears in the 2005 Rookie Edition set (#80). His only other appearance in one of BBM's flagship sets is in the 2010 2nd Version set, where he shows up in the 1st Version update subset (#749). Most of his other cards are from the Baystars team sets from 2005 to 2009 and the Fighters team sets from 2010-2012. Two other cards of note - as one of the rare Tokyo University alumni to make it professionally in baseball, he shows up in both the insert set for the 2011 Tokyo Big Six Spring Version set that shows famous OB players for each team (#SP12) and the 2011 Legend Of Tokyo Big Six set (#099).
Here's the four cards of him that I have:
 |
| 2005 BBM Rookie Edition #80 |
 |
| 2005 BBM 1st Version #486 |
 |
| 2010 BBM 2nd Version #749 |
 |
| 2011 BBM Legend Of Tokyo Big Six #099 |
4 comments:
Drafts don't usually go much over 6-7 rounds these days unless you count ikusei in which case teams regularly take 10+ players. The longest recent draft I can find is Orix Blue Wave going to the 15th round during the 2001 draft (though that's really 14 players as it's kibouwaku era)
For regularly truly long drafts you have to look really far back. The Swallows went 16 rounds in 1970, the Carp went 18 rounds in the very first draft (1965). Marines went 15 rounds in 1965 and 1971. Seibu went 16 rounds in 1965 and 1968.
Anyway, I kinda hope I can go see Matsuka at some point. I met him in Kamagaya a few times so maybe he'll remember me :)
Thanks for the information Deanna. I keep thinking to myself that I really need to sit down and build a draft database of some sort for NPB...
In my oodles of spare time, of course.
There are already a bunch of them online, but I think they're all in Japanese. (You could talk to Westbay and see about putting one together in English. It wouldn't be that hard.)
I've used the Japanese Wikipedia pages sometimes so I figured I could start there. I hadn't thought about Westbay-san but that's a really good suggestion. I have thought about either Michael Eng's Japanese Baseball Database and/or talking to Mischa Gelman about the Baseball Reference Bullpen wiki.
But then there's that time thing again. I'm still trying to get my card database built, follow baseball in two different countries and I think the project that I'm on at work is going to keep me VERY busy this summer. Not to mention spending time with my wife and kids. It's not happening any time soon.
Post a Comment