This week former Cuban National Team and Chunichi Dragons pitcher Yariel Rodriguez signed a four year deal with the Toronto Blue Jays. He had defected from Cuba last spring after playing in the World Baseball Classic and pretty much had to sit out all of the 2023 season after the Dragons put him on the restricted list.
Rodriguez originally joined the Dragons in 2020 as an ikusei player but was moved to the 70 man roster after pitching well in a handful of games with the farm team. He made his ichi-gun debut as a starter in August and was mostly used as a starter in 2021 as well. The Dragons started to use him in middle relief in 2022 and he excelled in the role, going 6-2 with a 1.15 ERA, 60 strikeouts and 39 holds in 56 appearances. He tied with Atsuki Yuasa of the Tigers for "most hold points" (holds + wins) in the Central League with 45 (Yuasa had 2 wins and 43 holds).
In addition to playing for Cuba in the 2023 WBC, he also played for them in the 2019 Premier 12 which is where he caught the attention of then-Dragons manager Tsuyoshi Yoda. I was surprised to learn that he had also played for the "Cuban National Team" that played in "international portion" of the Can-Am League schedule in 2017 and 2019.
Rodriguez does not have a whole lot of Japanese baseball cards. TCDB lists 17 cards for him but that count includes parallel and autograph cards. The number of base cards is more like nine. His only 2020 cards were Epoch One issues and he only had two 2021 cards that I know of - BBM Dragons (#D31) and Epoch Dragons Rookies & Stars (#17). He had his first BBM "flagship" cards in 2022 - #448 in 2nd Version and #TH21 in Fusion - the latter being a card celebrating Yuasa and him leading the league in hit points - along with a card in BBM's Dragons team set (#D16). It might surprise you to learn that he had two 2023 cards given that most Japanese card companies are very good about keeping their sets up to date but these things happen. His first 2023 card was his first Calbee card - #T-14 in the "Titleholder" subset in Series One. This set was released in late March, right around the time Rodriguez defected so it's really no surprise that he was in the set. It was a bit of a surprise he was in the Topps NPB set though, as that got released two months later and you'd have thought there'd have been enough time to remove him from the set. Oddly enough, both 2023 cards appear to use the same photo. Here's all six cards I have of him:
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| 2021 BBM Dragons #D31 |
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| 2022 BBM 2nd Version #448 |
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| 2022 BBM Dragons #D16 |
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| 2022 BBM Fusion #TH21 |
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| 2023 Calbee #T-14 |
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| 2023 Topps NPB #9 |
5 comments:
I picked up a BBM auto of his the day it first started getting reported the Dragons lost contact with him, had a hunch given how he wasn't even the first Cuban defector during the WBC. Then a few days later, defection news.
Had a whole post planned given what that situation meant for Chunichi but decided against it after realizing relations between the US and Cuba and Japan's role in between them is way out of my depth and needed way more nuance than I could give it.
Yeah, I try not to dig too deep into that topic too although I have opinions.
I've been kind of torn on that one.
On the one hand I'm totally fine with people defecting from communist dictatorships. Seems like a good thing in general to me.
On the other hand though its kind of demoralizing when people engaging in that activity has the unintentional side effect of depleting the bullpen of my favorite team.
If it makes you feel any better, I think the Dragons would have still finished last even if Rodriguez hadn't defected.
I did find it funny how it became really easy to forget Yariel given how Chunichi almost never had a lead so their bullpen was never an issue.
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