Yuki Matsui Of The San Diego Padres

This past week former Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles pitcher Yuki Matsui signed a four year, $21 million contract with the San Diego Padres.  Matsui is expected to take over the closer role on the team from departing free agent Josh Hader.  UPDATE - between when I started working on this post this morning and when I finished it this evening, the news came out that the deal was actually for five years and $28 million.  I meant to update this before I published but forgot.

Matsui jumped on to everybody's radar pitching for Toko Gakuen High Schoole during the 2012 Summer Koshien tournament.  He struck out 22 batters (including 10 in a row) in the first round game against Imbari Nishi, then followed that up with 19 strikeouts in the second round game against Joso Gakuen.  He struck out 12 Urasoe Commercial batters in the third round and then 15 the next day(!) in a quarterfinal loss to Kosei Academy.  He had 68 strikeouts in 36 innings, good enough for third on the all time list for most strikeouts in a Summer High School Championship tournament.

He entered the 2013 NPB draft after graduating from high school and was selected in the first round by five teams - the Baystars, Dragons, Eagles, Fighters and Hawks - with the Eagles (who would win their first ever Nippon Series championship 10 days later) winning the lottery for his rights.

He spent most of his rookie season of 2014 with the top team and moved into the closers role in 2015.  He's pretty much been the Eagles' closer ever since with the exception of 2018 when I think he was recovering from an injury and 2020 when he switched to being a starter temporarily.  He's led the Pacific League in saves three times (2019, 2022 and 2023) and has 236 career saves.  He's a five time All Star (2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021-22) and was a member of the Samurai Japan teams for the 2015 Premier 12 and the 2017 and 2023 World Baseball Classics.

Matsui's first card was #001 from the 2014 BBM Rookie Edition set.  He had rookie cards in BBM's 1st and 2nd Version sets as well as their Classic, Genesis, Rookie Edition Premium and Eagles team sets.  He also appeared in Calbee's Series One and Three that year along with Bandai's Owners League 02 set and the Eagles team issued set.  Since then he's been a staple of everyone's flagship sets, appearing in every BBM 1st and 2nd Version set and at least one Calbee Series every year from 2014 until this year as well as every Epoch NPB flagship from 2018 to present and every Topps NPB flagship from 2021 to present.  Here's a bunch of his cards:

2014 BBM Rookie Edition #001

2014 Calbee #001

2014 BBM 1st Version #019

2015 Eagles Team Issue "Memorial Uniform" #SS1-01

2016 BBM Classic #031

2018 Topps Museum Collection #WBCPR-YM

2018 Epoch NPB #74

2019 BBM 2nd Version "Franchise Builder" #FB06

2020 BBM 1st Version #056

2021 BBM Eagles #E02

2022 BBM Fusion #TH20

2023 Calbee #C-06

I want to point out that he had a "virtual" card in an issue of Sports Card Magazine.  SCM #95 which was published at the end of September 2012 had a two page spread showing the front and back of four "SCM Fictional Cards".  The cards featured table tennis player Kasumi Ishikawa, volleyball player Saori Kimura and soccer player Yoko Tanaka and Toko Gakuen High School pitcher Yuki Matsui:

To be clear - this is NOT a physical card issued with the magazine, just a picture on the page.  If you see someone selling this card, it's not a legitimate card.