2025 Award Winners

NPB announced their major award winners for 2025 a few days ago and Livan Moinelo of the Hawks and Teruaki Sato of the Tigers were the MVPs of the Pacific and Central Leagues respectively.  I was a little unsure if I was going to continue my tradition of showing the BBM flagship cards of the MVPs this year (my little tribute to the MVP subset in the 1975 Topps set) since I didn't buy any cards.  But I decided to lift the images of the cards for both the MVPs and Rookies Of The Year from Jambalaya (but I'm not doing the Sawamura or Best 9 award winners anymore).

2025 BBM 1st Version #168

2025 BBM 1st Version #043

The Rookies of the Year were Misho Nishikawa of the Marines and Kota Shoji of the Swallows:

2025 BBM 1st Version #238

2025 BBM 1st Version #133

I've been tracking for a while how often BBM doesn't have a card of at least one of the Rookie Of The Year winners in 1st Version.  Not to get too deep into the weeds here but there's a difference between a player being a "rookie" on his baseball card (meaning he's in his first year as a professional after getting drafted the previous year) and a "rookie" by NPB standards (meaning he's played less than a particular number of games at the ichi-gun level).  BBM will have cards of all the "rookies" by the baseball card definition in 1st Version each year but may not have a card of all the "rookies" by NPB's definition.  For example, last year Central League Rookie of the Year Hiromasa Funabasama did not have a card in 1st Version.  He was a "rookie" in the baseball card sense in 2023 (because he was drafted in 2022) but didn't play enough with the top team to lose his "rookie" status in NPB's view (or make BBM think he'd be significant enough in 2024 to be included in the 1st Version set).

This year, however, both Rookies Of The Year had cards in 1st Version, the first time that's happened since 2021.  Furthermore, both Rookies Of The Year are "rookies" in the baseball card sense as well as both players were drafted in 2024 (and thus have the little "rookie" icon on the front of their cards).  That's the first time that's happened since 2017 when 2016 draftees Yota Kyoda and Sosuke Genda were the award winners.