Japanese Baseball Cards: Dennis Sarfate

Monday, September 18, 2017

Hawks closer Dennis Sarfate broke the NPB single season record for saves a couple weeks back when he notched his 46th save this season, breaking the record of 45 held jointly by Hitoki Iwase and Kyuji Fujikawa. He has since extended the record to 51. Now that the Hawks have clinched he's going to take some time off but he'll get some more chances to add to the record starting this coming weekend.

I don't do retrospectives on gaijin players very often so I thought I'd take the opportunity to do one on Sarfate. He originally came to Japan in 2011 to join the Carp. After two years in Hiroshima he moved to the Saitama Seibu Lions for one season. He then moved to Fukuoka in 2014 and has been there ever since. He's been a closer every season except for 2012 when he was the set up man for Kam Mickolio with the Carp. Here's a card of his from each year he's been in NPB:

2011 Bandai Owners League 02 #128

2012 Front Runner Carp Starting Lineup #11

2013 BBM 2nd Version #577

2014 BBM 2nd Version #506

2015 BBM Hawks #H32

2016 Calbee #150

2017 BBM 1st Version #039

Anonymous said...: I remember Sarfate from his two years with the Orioles so I'm happy to see that he set a new record. In fact, he and Mickolio used to pitch together in Baltimore (although neither was the closer... or the set up man, if I recall).; September 18, 2017 at 9:00 PM