Card Of The Week January 5

The news broke on Friday that Fukuoka Softbank Hawks farm hand Oscar Colas has defected from his native Cuba and is seeking a contract with a Major League team.  Colas and pitcher Livan Moinelo joined the Hawks as ikusei players in May of 2017.  While Moinelo (who is three years older than Colas) quickly moved to the official roster and became an integral part of the bullpen for the Hawks Nippon Series winning teams of the past three years, Colas remained with the ikusei squad for the next two seasons.

He only appeared briefly with the Hawks ni-gun team in 2017, hitting .250 in four at bats in two games.  He apparently spent more time with the Hawks san-gun team which is a kind of an unofficial level.  The Hawks have enough ikusei players to form a team so they play games against corporate and independent league teams.  I don't know of any statistics for the league so I don't know how well he played.  One of the intriguing things about Colas is that he has pitched some in Cuba and did it as well at the san-gun level in Japan - here's video of him pitching against the Tokushima Indigo Socks of the Shikoku Island League on August 1st, 2017 - if you watch the full video you'll also see him hitting in games against the Kagawa Olive Guyners of the same league on July 29th and 30th (H/T Jim Allen for the video):



He hit .212 in 158 plate appearances in 55 games with the ni-gun team in 2018.  He showed some power with five doubles, three triples and seven home runs.  I suspect he still spent a lot of time that year with the san-gun team.

Colas had a break through year this past season.  He hit .302 with 11 home runs (one of which I saw at Koshien on May 31st) in 66 games with the ni-gun squad which earned him a promotion to the official 70 man roster on June 24th (to be clear - he hadn't played in 66 games by June 24th but there's no differentiation in his stats between him being ikusei and being on the 70 man roster).  He made his debut with the ichi-gun team on August 18th and did this in his first at bat (H/T Jim Allen again):


I like how his teammates gave him the traditional cold shoulder for rookie home runs when he got back to the dugout.

He ultimately got into 7 games with the top team in 2019, hitting .278 with just the one home run in 21 plate appearances. 

Colas is being touted as the Cuban Shohei Ohtani which I view as a bit ridiculous.  Colas has now played in 7 games at the top level in Japan, all as a batter.  At the same age, Ohtani had played in 234 games at the top level as a hitter as well as appearing in 59 games as a pitcher and earning a win/loss record of 29-9.  Colas has not thrown a pitch at even the ni-gun level in Japan and I don't know how long ago he pitched at the san-gun level.  Comparing him to Ohtani is a stretch.

I've been asked by a couple people about baseball cards for Colas.  He only has a couple that I know of.  Since BBM doesn't include the ikusei players in their team sets he didn't appear in their sets for the Hawks in 2017 or 2018 but he was registered to the 70 man roster this past year in time for the 2019 edition:

2019 BBM Hawks #H65

He also has two Epoch One cards - one commemorating his registration and the other celebrating his debut home run.  The print runs are 35 copies for the first card and 27 copies for the second one.

I do not know of any cards of him beyond those three.  It's possible that there are Hawks team issued sets from the past three years that included ikusei players but I haven't seen any of them.