Players Missing Regular Calbee Cards

For years now I've been noticing an odd phenomenon in Calbee's annual baseball card sets - there will be several players each year who appear in one of the subsets but don't have a "regular" player card.  I decided to sit down and figure out how often this happens.  I've got every complete Calbee set since 2012 so it was pretty trivial to figure this out for every set from then to last year - obviously this year's set isn't completely out yet so I can't make any conclusions about it yet.

Some notes on my methodology - there were a couple subsets I didn't take into consideration.  I ignored any subset that didn't primarily include active players (obviously) so I didn't count the "Memorial" subset Calbee did in 2012 featuring reprinted Calbee cards (although about a third of this subset did have active players in it).  For similar reasons I didn't include the "Managers" subsets from the 2015 and 2018 sets (or the two managers who appeared in the 2016 "First Win" subset).  I also didn't consider any of the players in the subsets featuring the previous years' first round draft picks from the 2013, 2017 and 2018 sets (with two exceptions) since typically these players don't have "regular" cards - although a couple of them did in 2018.  (The exceptions are Shohei Ohtani in 2013 since he also appeared in the "All Star" subset and Kotaro Kiyomiya in 2018 because he also appeared in the "Exciting Scene" subset.)  I'm also not including the "Star" insert cards or the checklist cards.  Bear in mind that if I had included any of these subsets, the following counts would have been worse.

What I found was that there were 89 instances of a player appearing in one or more subsets and not having a "regular" card in Calbee's set between 2012 and 2022 which is an average of a little over eight a year.  Here's the full list:

Year	Player	Team	Subsets
2012	Alfredo Figaro	Buffaloes	Opening Day Pitcher
2012	DJ Houlton	Giants	Title Holder
2012	Kenta Maeda	Carp	Title Holder, Opening Day Pitcher, All Star
2012	Norihiro Nakamura	Baystars	All Star
2012	Masahiro Tanaka	Eagles	Title Holder, Opening Day Pitcher
2012	Hideaki Wakui	Lions	Opening Day Pitcher
2012	Kazuki Yoshimi	Dragons	Title Holder, Opening Day Pitcher
2013	Tony Barnette	Swallows	Title Holder
2013	Jun Hirose	Carp	All Star
2013	Hirotoshi Masui	Fighters	Title Holder, All Star
2013	Shohei Ohtani	Fighters	All Star
2014	Ryota Arai	Tigers	Clutch Hitter
2014	John Bowker	Eagles	Clutch Hitter
2014	Itaru Hashimoto	Giants	Clutch Hitter
2014	Anderson Hernandez	Dragons	Clutch Hitter
2014	Kenshin Kawakami	Dragons	Opening Day Pitcher
2014	Mitsuo Yoshikawa	Fighters	Opening Day Pitcher
2015	Tony Barnette	Swallows	Exciting Scene
2015	Ikuhiro Kiyota	Marines	Exciting Scene
2015	Hiroki Kuroda	Carp	Exciting Scene
2015	Tomoya Mori	Lions	Exciting Scene
2015	Masahiro Nishino	Buffaloes	Exciting Scene
2015	Rainel Rosario	Carp	Exciting Scene
2015	Takahiro Suzuki	Giants	Exciting Scene
2015	Hayato Takagi	Giants	Exciting Scene
2015	Masahiro Yamamoto	Dragons	Exciting Scene
2015	Yasuaski Yamasaki	Baystars	Exciting Scene
2016	Kohei Arihara	Fighters	Title Holder, First Win
2016	Miles Mikolas	Giants	Title Holder
2016	Yasuhisa Naruse	Swallows	First Win
2017	Takahiro Arai	Carp	Title Holder
2017	Ayumu Ishikawa	Marines	Title Holder
2017	Kris Johnson	Carp	Title Holder
2017	Katsuya Kakunaka	Marines	Title Holder
2017	Ryosuke Kikuchi	Carp	Title Holder
2017	Brandon Laird	Fighters	Title Holder
2017	Scott Mathieson	Giants	Title Holder
2017	Naoki Miyanishi	Fighters	Title Holder
2017	Takahiro Norimoto	Eagles	Title Holder
2017	Shohei Ohtani	Fighters	Title Holder
2017	Hayato Sakamoto	Giants	Title Holder
2017	Dennis Sarfate	Hawks	Title Holder
2017	Hirokazu Sawamura	Giants	Title Holder
2017	Tomoyuki Sugano	Giants	Title Holder
2017	Hirotoshi Takanashi	Fighters	Title Holder
2017	Shun Takayama	Tigers	Title Holder
2017	Yoshitomo Tsutsugo	Baystars	Title Holder
2017	Tetsuto Yamada	Swallows	Title Holder
2017	Yuki Yanagita	Hawks	Title Holder
2018	Norichika Aoki	Swallows	Exciting Scene
2018	Yudai Fujioka	Marines	Exciting Scene
2018	Kotaro Kiyomiya	Fighters	Exciting Scene
2018	Daisuke Matsuzaka	Dragons	Exciting Scene
2018	Tomoyuki Sugano	Giants	Exciting Scene
2019	Katsuki Azuma	Baystars	Title Holder
2019	Shota Imanaga	Baystars	Starting Pitcher
2019	Shotaro Kasahara	Dragons	Starting Pitcher
2019	Takayuki Kishi	Eagles	Title Holder, Starting Pitcher
2019	Randy Messenger	Tigers	Starting Pitcher
2019	Naoki Miyanishi	Fighters	Title Holder, Exciting Scene
2019	Yasuhiro Ogawa	Swallows	Starting Pitcher
2019	Yudai Ohno	Dragons	Exciting Scene
2019	Daichi Ohsera	Carp	Title Holder, Starting Pitcher
2019	Tomoyuki Sugano	Giants	Title Holder, Starting Pitcher
2019	Shinasuro Tawata	Lions	Title Holder, Starting Pitcher
2019	Naoyuki Uwasawa	Fighters	Starting Pitcher
2019	Tsuyoshi Wada	Hawks	Exciting Scene
2019	Hotaka Yamakawa	Lions	Title Holder, Exciting Scene
2020	Naomichi Donoue	Dragons	First Win
2020	Kensuke Kondoh	Fighters	AVG Leader
2020	Ryoya Kurihara	Hawks	First Win
2020	Tomoya Mori	Lions	AVG Leader
2020	Hayato Sakamoto	Giants	AVG Leader
2020	Seiya Suzuki	Carp	AVG Leader
2020	Yoshinobu Yamamoto	Buffaloes	First Win
2021	Shintaro Fujinami	Tigers	Exciting Scene, Opening Pitcher, Interleague Play
2021	Kosuke Fukudome	Dragons	Interleague Play
2021	Shuta Ishikawa	Hawks	Opening Pitcher
2021	Ryosuke Kikuchi	Carp	Exciting Scene, Interleague Play
2021	Roki Sasaki	Marines	Interleague Play
2021	Hideaki Wakui	Eagles	Exciting Scene, Opening Pitcher, Interleague Play
2021	Wang Po-Jung	Fighters	Interleague Play
2021	Yoshinobu Yamamoto	Buffaloes	Exciting Scene, Opening Pitcher, Interleague Play
2022	Koyo Aoyagi	Tigers	Title Holder
2022	Mizuki Hori	Fighters	Title Holder
2022	Munetaka Murakami	Swallows	Title Holder, OBP Leader
2022	Takashi Ogino	Marines	Title Holder
2022	Kazuma Okamoto	Giants	Title Holder, OBP Leader
2022	Masataka Yoshida	Buffaloes	Title Holder, OBP Leader

The year with the most subset-only players was 2017 with a whopping 19(!).  This is a little artificial, however, as Calbee only issued two series that year due to a potato shortage (remember that Calbee is distributed with potato chips) so it's likely that a number of those players would have had "regular" cards in Series Three if there had been one.  The most in a year when Calbee issued all three Series was 2019 with 14 followed by 2015 with ten.  On the other end of the spectrum, 2016 only had three and 2013 only had four.  

There's a couple things that really stand out to me with this list.  The first is that Tomoyuki Sugano appears on it THREE times, the most of any player.  Sugano did not have a "regular" card in the 2017, 2018 or 2019 sets.  There are eight other players who appear on this list more than once - Tony Barnette, Ryosuke Kikuchi, Naoki Miyanishi, Tomoya Mori, Shohei Ohtani, Hayato Sakamoto, Hideaki Wakui and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

The second thing is that there's a handful of times when a player appeared in three subsets in a single year.  Now keep in mind that typically Calbee's sets have three subsets - one with each Series (although I'm oversimplifying a bit).  When you realize that Calbee typically does not include multiple cards of a player in the same Series - so if the player appears in that Series' subset he won't have a "regular" card - you might expect this to be more common occurrence but it's some what rare.  It only happened four times in the time period I looked at.  The first was in 2012 with Kenta Maeda appearing in the "Title Holder", "Opening Day Pitcher" and "All Star" subsets.  What's kind of odd is it didn't happen again until 2021 when it happened three times - Shintaro Fujinami, Hideaki Wakui and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were each in the "Exciting Scene", "Opening Pitcher" and "Interleague Play" subsets.

I'm not sure there's an actual problem with Calbee doing this, it's just an odd side effect of the way they do their sets.  And we're likely to see a repeat of 2017 this year if Calbee really does only issue two Series.  But it is kind of interesting to see how it's worked out over the years.