Tomita was drafted by the Baystars from the Kagawa Olive Guyners of the Shikoku Island League Plus (the plus is for the teams in Kyushu) in the 1st round of the ikusei draft in the fall of 2011. He was placed on the 70-man roster ("registered") in mid 2013 and made his only ichi-gun appearance that season, going two thirds of an inning facing four batters, giving up one hit, one walk and two earned runs. He spent all of 2014 at the ni-gun level and was released by DeNA at the end of the season.
The Rangers were apparently interested in him based on his performance with Ponce in the Puerto Rican Winter League in December of 2012. He faced 33 batters in nine innings over the course of five games and only gave up three hits and two walks while striking out nine and not allowing any runs.
As you might expect from his career description, he doesn't have a lot of cards. He's in the 2012 BBM Rookie Edition set (#096) and the 2012-14 BBM Baystars sets. He's never made one of BBM's flagship sets. He might have made it to one of the Baystars fan club sets but I've never seen a checklist for any of them. Here are the only two cards I have of him (one of which I received today from some 2013 Baystars packs I won off Ebay):
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| 2012 BBM Rookie Edition #096 |
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| 2013 BBM Baystars #DB38 |
3 comments:
Nice timing for this post - I've decided to start a mini collection for MLBers from Japan. I'll have details eventually on my blog. Interesting that there is only one making the trip this year, and only to the minors.
I'd really like to see a Shikoku game. I should check out their schedule to see if I can make it to any.
Ironically because of this, I might see guys from that league before you do :-)
Oh, that's really cool! Too bad there aren't exactly tons of Shikoku cards floating around.
I'm going to be in Okayama and Kyushu before that... I won't get to Shikoku to see any games, though. I need to see where the league's teams play.
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