The Washington Nationals have signed former Chunichi Dragons pitcher Shinnosuke Ogasawara to a two year contract. Ogasawara is the fourth and final Japanese pitcher to sign with an MLB team this off season and today was the deadline for his posting. If he hadn't signed today, he'd be back with the Dragons this season.
Ogasawara was Chunichi's first round pick in the 2015 NPB draft out of Sagami High School. He was actually not the Dragons' first choice in that round. The Dragons initially picked Junpei Takahashi who was also picked by the Hawks and Fighters. The Hawks won the lottery for him so both the Dragons and Fighters picked Ogasawara. The Dragons won the lottery for him with the Fighters ending up with Kenta Uehara as their third selection for their first round pick.
He split time between the farm team and the top team for his first few seasons, missing some playing time on multiple occasions due to elbow injuries. By 2021, though, he was healthy enough to be one of the Dragons' top three starters (along with Yudai Ohno and Yuyu Yanagi and he was a staple of the starting rotation every since. He made his only All Star team appearance in 2021.
His numbers haven't been great but some of his superficial stats like win-loss have been hurt by the fact that the Dragons have been pretty miserable the last couple years. I saw him pitch twice last May when he was going through a stretch of something like 40 innings where the offense didn't score any runs when he was on the mound. I saw him throw eight-plus shutout innings against the Tigers in Nagoya but he left the game with a no-decision in a game the Dragons ultimately lost 1-0 in 11 innings. Things were better a week later against the Giants in Tokyo - he only went six innings and gave up two runs (one on a home run by Yoshihiro Maru) but the Dragons scored four runs and he got the win.
His first card was in the 2016 BBM Rookie Edition set (#094) and he appeared in several other BBM sets that year including 1st Version (#292), Genesis (#091) and the Dragons team set (#D02). 2016 also saw his first Calbee card (#208 from Series Three) and, somewhat surprisingly, his first Epoch card - #8 from the Chunichi Dragaons 80th Anniversary - Record Breakers set. Here's some of his cards - it's a little heavy on the 2016 cards:
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| 2016 BBM Rookie Edition #094 |
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| 2016 BBM 1st Version #292 |
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| 2016 Calbee Series Three #208 |
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| 2016 Epoch Dragons 80th Anniversary - Record Breakers #8 |
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| 2017 Epoch Dragons #PS-02 |
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| 2018 BBM Dragons #D02 |
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| 2019 Calbee Series One #064 |
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| 2020 Epoch NPB #362 |
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| 2021 BBM 2nd Version #517 |
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| 2022 Topps NPB #164 |
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| 2023 Calbee Series Two #118 |
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| 2024 BBM 1st Version #138 |
I'm kind of excited for the upcoming season as three of the four new NPB imports are playing for the three MLB teams closest to where I live. Tomoyuki Sugano is with the Orioles, Koyo Aoyagi is with the Phillies and now Ogasawara is with the Nationals. Makes it much more likely that I might see one of them in person.
1 comment:
One thing that caught me off-guard is how he was described as the first Japanese player to sign with the Nats but then I realized they're not including the Expos era.
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