Bonus Players In High End Sets

I got some 1997 Diamond Heroes cards from Dan - aka Korean Cardboard - a few months back.  A couple of the cards were for players who didn't appear in BBM's flagship set that year and it got me to wondering about how often that happened.  How common was it that BBM's "high end" sets (Diamond Heroes from 1996 to 2001, Touch The Game from 2002 to 2011 and Genesis from 2012 to the present) included players who weren't in BBM's flagship set(s) from the same year?

Before I started, I needed to define my terms - what do I mean when I say someone's in the set?  What I mean is that they have a "regular" player card - not a subset card.  What do I mean by BBM's flagship set(s)?  It's their "regular" set (plus Late Series) from 1991 to 2001 and the 1st and 2nd Version sets since then.  I'm kind of counting Fusion as well, but only the "1st Version Update" subset.  My definitions can obviously be nit-picked but that's what I went with for this exercise.  If you have a problem with them, feel free do repeat this with your own terms.

So the next question was how to go about doing this?  I have my personal database with all the BBM flagship cards in it (since I have almost all of them) but I don't have a lot of the "high end" cards so they're not in my database.  The obvious place to go is TCDB but they don't make their underlying database available to query.  I tried brute-forcing it, basically looking at each name in the 1996 Diamond Heroes checklist and seeing if it appeared in the 1996 flagship set but that was both time consuming and unreliable - there was a good chance I was going to miss something.  I had some back and forth with Jason about it and he made the suggestion that I try scraping the checklists from their website.  My day job is computer programming so it wasn't a crazy idea and I quickly threw a program together that allowed me to identify who was in the "high end" set but not in the flagship set.  Since TCDB includes the teams that the players are on, I was also able to identify players who appeared in the flagship set with one team but were in the "high end" set with another.  

Once I had a preliminary list, I needed to sanity-check it.  There were three things I was keeping an eye out for.  The first thing was that TCDB's listings aren't perfect and I had a bunch of false positives because the player listed wasn't the actual player or the player's team was listed incorrectly.  Next I had to manually check if any of the players I had identified were in the Fusion set as TCDB's listing don't specify the "1st Version Update" subset (although I suppose I could have used the card numbers as a clue had I thought about it).  Finally I also had to manually check if I incorrectly decided that a player was in the flagship set because they had a subset card, not a "regular" card because - again - TCDB doesn't necessarily identify cards as being in subsets.  So for example, Takuya Nakamura and Takumi Kuriyama both appear in the 2005 2nd Version set in the "New Wave" subset but neither have "regular" player cards.  Both have regular cards in the 2005 Touch The Game set.  My program did not add these cards to my list since TCDB's checklist didn't identify them as subset cards so I had to do it manually.

OK, that's way too much detail about process.  Let's get to the list.  A quick note - an annotation of '*' means the player appeared in the flagship set with a different team and a '+' means the player has a subset card in flagship but not a "regular" card.  If I know that the player's card in the "high end" set was a subset card rather than a "regular" card, I'll put the name of the subset with the card.  I'll also share a scan of a card from each set if I have one - they're shiny and don't scan well though.

We'll do the Diamond Heroes sets first - that's 1996 to 2001. 

1996 BBM Diamond Heroes #136

1996
9 Kazuya Tabata, Yakult Swallows
29 Shinichi Katoh, Hiroshima Toyo Carp
33 Ken Yamasaki, Hiroshima Toyo Carp
46 Timo Perez, Hiroshima Toyo Carp
52 Balvino Galvez, Yomiuri Giants
57 Mario Brito, Yomiuri Giants
69 Yudai Deguchi, Yomiuri Giants
104 Masataka Endoh, Chunichi Dragons
135 Craig Worthington, Hanshin Tigers
136 Kevin Maas, Hanshin Tigers
138 Katsuhiro Hiratsuka, Hanshin Tigers
146 Rui Makino, Orix BlueWave
149 Masahiko Kaneda, Orix BlueWave
184 Yukihiko Satoh, Chiba Lotte Marines
186 Wes Chamberlain, Chiba Lotte Marines
187 Darrell Whitmore, Chiba Lotte Marines
228 Makoto Kaneko, Nippon-Ham Fighters
258 Ryo Kawano, Fukuoka Daiei Hawks

1997 BBM Diamond Heroes #224

1997
21 Chris Donnels, Orix BlueWave
63 Hiroyuki Takagi, Seibu Lions
64 Yoshiaki Kanemura, Seibu Lions
74 Johnny Ruffin, Kintetsu Buffaloes
75 Akira Okamoto, Kintetsu Buffaloes
76 Isao Kohda, Kintetsu Buffaloes
87 Osamu Abe, Kintetsu Buffaloes
125 Mitsugu Saitoh, Fukuoka Daiei Hawks
146 Dave Pavlas, Yomiuri Giants
149 Yuichi Yanagisawa, Yomiuri Giants
154 Pedro Castellano, Yomiuri Giants
169 Takuichi Koike, Chunichi Dragons
173 Hidekazu Mitsuyama, Chunichi Dragons*
192 Ryuji Yokoyama, Hiroshima Toyo Carp
216 Hiroaki Hirota, Yakult Swallows
224 Toshifumi Baba, Yakult Swallows*
265 Bob MacDonald, Hanshin Tigers
268 Darnell Coles, Hanshin Tigers
269 Reed Secrist, Hanshin Tigers
275 Atsuhiro Motonishi, Hanshin Tigers*

1998 BBM Diamond Heroes #21

1998

13 Hirofumi Watarai, Yakult Swallows
17 Kota Soejima, Yakult Swallows
21 Pat Mahomes, Yokohama BayStars
39 Toshio Haru, Yokohama BayStars
60 Timo Perez, Hiroshima Toyo Carp
66 Akihito Kaneishi, Yomiuri Giants
81 Darrell May, Hanshin Tigers
88 Toyohiko Yoshida, Hanshin Tigers*
108 Samson Lee, Chunichi Dragons
120 Kazuki Inoue, Chunichi Dragons
140 Tatsuya Ozeki, Seibu Lions+
142 Edwin Hurtado, Orix BlueWave
149 Takashi Miwa, Orix BlueWave
150 Troy Neel, Orix BlueWave
176 Takeshi Ohmori, Kintetsu Buffaloes
182 Hiroshi Numata, Nippon-Ham Fighters
190 Toshihiro Noguchi, Nippon-Ham Fighters*
201 Brian Williams, Fukuoka Daiei Hawks
206 Tatsuji Nishimura, Fukuoka Daiei Hawks
238 Yukihiko Satoh, Chiba Lotte Marines

1999 BBM Diamond Heroes #47

1999

35 Hiroyuki Watanabe, Chunichi Dragons
47 Ryuji Kimura, Yomiuri Giants
57 Domingo Martinez, Yomiuri Giants
67 Ryuji Miyade, Yakult Swallows+
69 Koji Takagi, Yakult Swallows
71 Susumu Aoyagi, Yakult Swallows
101 Kento Sugiyama, Hanshin Tigers*

105 Kei Igawa, Hanshin Tigers
107 Shoji Toyama, Hanshin Tigers
114 Shuta Tanaka, Hanshin Tigers
136 Alan Zinter, Seibu Lions
137 Katsuhiro Hiratsuka, Seibu Lions*

156 Tsutomu Ishimoto, Nippon-Ham Fighters
159 Sherman Obando, Nippon-Ham Fighters
179 Robert Perez, Orix BlueWave
184 Tomohiro Nagai, Fukuoka Daiei Hawks
185 Junji Hoshino, Fukuoka Daiei Hawks
190 Rod Pedraza, Fukuoka Daiei Hawks
213 Yosuke Takasu, Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes

2000 BBM Diamond Heroes #175

2000

36 Hiromasa Tamano, Seibu Lions
41 Masao Kida, Orix BlueWave
69 Tasuku Hashimoto, Chiba Lotte Marines
81 Carlos Mirabal, Nippon-Ham Fighters
85 Akio Shimizu, Nippon-Ham Fighters
88 Kevin Ohme, Nippon-Ham Fighters
107 Bob Wolcott, Kintetsu Buffaloes
110 Hiroki Yamamura, Kintetsu Buffaloes
129 Eddie Gaillard, Chunichi Dragons
175 Tatsuhiko Kinjoh, Yokohama BayStars
201 Masato Kawano, Hiroshima Toyo Carp
209 Salvatore Urso, Hiroshima Toyo Carp
214 Luis Lopez, Hiroshima Toyo Carp
221 Minoru Kasai, Hanshin Tigers
230 Hiroshi Hirao, Hanshin Tigers
236 Jason Hardtke, Hanshin Tigers

2001
3 Yusaku Iriki, Yomiuri Giants
5 Min Chul Jung, Yomiuri Giants
10 Tsuyoshi Johbe, Yomiuri Giants
25 Masataka Endoh, Chunichi Dragons
34 Leo Gomez, Chunichi Dragons
48 Susumu Nakanowatari, Yokohama BayStars
65 Satoshi Iriki, Yakult Swallows
68 Shinji Matsuda, Yakult Swallows
84 Masayuki Hasegawa, Hiroshima Toyo Carp
157 Hiroyuki Shibata, Seibu Lions
194 Joseph Vitiello, Orix BlueWave
198 Ikuro Katsuragi, Orix BlueWave
249 Kensuke Tanaka, Nippon-Ham Fighters (New Wave)
250 Ikuro Katsuragi, Orix BlueWave (New Wave)

As you can see, there were quite a few players in the Diamond Heroes sets who were missing from (or with a different team in) the flagship sets - 107 in all.  These numbers would drop considerably during the "Touch The Game" years (2002 to 2011) for a couple reasons.  The first is with BBM splitting their flagship set into two parts - 1st Version and 2nd Version - they had an opportunity to add players who were unexpected contributors to their teams or late signing foreign players to the later 2nd Version set. The other reason is that the "Touch The Game" sets were smaller than the "Diamond Heroes" sets.  The "Diamond Heroes" sets were all over 250 cards in size.  The inaugural edition of "Touch The Game" in 2002 was the only one with more than 200 cards in its base set.  The remainder of the sets fluctuated in size between 132 and 162 cards for the next few years before settling at 108 in 2010.  The "high end" base sets (including every edition of "Genesis") have only had 108 cards in them ever since.  As a result, it's not uncommon for there to be no players in the "high end" set that were not in the flagship set.  Here's the "Touch The Game" list - I'm only listing years were there was at least one player:

2002 BBM Touch The Game #33

2002

33 Yu Sugimoto, Yokohama BayStars

35 Yuji Yoshimi, Yokohama BayStars

52 Kazuyoshi Kimura, Hiroshima Toyo Carp

86 Kentaro Sekimoto, Hanshin Tigers

168 Itsuki Shoda, Nippon-Ham Fighters

183 Yuji Yoshimi, Yokohama BayStars (Rookie Stars)

184 Kazunori Okagami, Hiroshima Toyo Carp (Rookie Stars)

2003

115 Ken Kadokura, Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes

2005

009 Takeya Nakamura, Seibu Lions+

012 Takumi Kuriyama, Seibu Lions+

2006

011 Shoitsu Ohmatsu, Chiba Lotte Marines+

066 Tatsuya Shiokawa, Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles

088 Mitsuru Satoh, Chunichi Dragons+

Quite the drop off, huh?  There's only 13 cards from 2002 to 2011 after there being more than that each year between 1996 and 2001.  And over half of that (7 cards) are from 2002.  This trend continued with the "Genesis" sets (2012-present):

2013

023 Tetsuto Yamada, Tokyo Yakult Swallows

2014

021 Takahiro Fujioka, Chiba Lotte Marines

048 Kensuke Kondoh, Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters

2016

031 Yuji Onizaki, Saitama Seibu Lions

2017 BBM Genesis #103

2017

103 Shota Suzuki, Chunichi Dragons

2018 BBM Genesis #026

2018

026 Kazuki Tanaka, Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles

2019

045 Ikuhiro Kiyota, Chiba Lotte Marines

2020

50 Ryo Ohta, Orix Buffaloes

2021 BBM Genesis #079

2021

7 Masaki Mimori, Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks

79 Naomichi Donoue, Chunichi Dragons

96 Kota Hayashi, Hiroshima Toyo Carp

2022

054 Taiki Sekine, Yokohama DeNA BayStars

060 Keita Nakagawa, Orix Buffaloes

2023 BBM Genesis #026

2023

026 Shinya Hasegawa, Saitama Seibu Lions

099 Takahiro Nakamura, Hiroshima Toyo Carp

I want to wrap up with a couple things I thought were interesting about these results:

- I had written a post a few years back about "Missing Rookies Of The Year" - Rookie Of The Year award winners who did not have a "regular" card in any of BBM's flagship sets the year they won the award.  There have been seven such players - Makoto Kaneko (1996), Tatsuya Ozeki (1998), Tatsuhiko Kinjoh(2000), Itsuki Shoda (2002), Ryo Sakakibara (2010), Hirotoshi Takanashi (2016) and Kazuki Tanaka (2018).  (My original post had eight such players but Kaima Taira ended up appearing in the "1st Version Update" subset of the 2020 Fusion set which was released after I wrote the post.  And I should point out that Tanaka had a card in the 2018 Fusion set but it was not in the "1st Version Update" subset so I don't count it.)  Five of these players - Kaneko, Ozeki, Kinjoh, Shoda and Tanaka - were in the "high end" set the year they won the award.

- Their cards on this list were the only NPB baseball cards for a number of the foreign players - Kevin Maas, Craig Worthington, Wes Chamberlain, Darrell Whitmore, Johnny Ruffin, Bob MacDonald, Reed Secrist, Pat Mahomes, Alan Zinter, Robert Perez, and Salvatore Urso.  

- Timo Perez appears on this list twice - in 1996 and in 1998.  Those were his only two NPB cards.

I've been working on this list off and on for about two months now but I haven't decided yet if I want to pursue these cards or not.  On the plus side, I like getting cards of as many players as I can for each year.  On the minus side, I really have never liked BBM's "high end" cards much.  For one thing, I'm not a fan of shiny cards.  Without much trying, though, I already have 26 of the 135 cards I have listed here.  Well, there was SOME trying - I recently bought the 2021 and 2023 cards from my friend Jason (not that Jason but the Jason I've bought stuff from on Ebay).  I know for a fact that I want at least some of these cards - the Rookies Of The Year, the foreign players sole NPB cards and the Takeya Nakamura, Tetsuto Yamada and Kensuke Kondoh ones.  So maybe I'll start with those and see where I go from there.