Japanese Baseball Cards: Fumito Haraguchi

Saturday, March 7, 2026

Fumito Haraguchi

Long time Hanshin Tiger Fumito Haraguchi retired at the end of last year. Haraguchi was never a big star but he overcame numerous injuries and adversity to be a fan favorite at Koshien.

Haraguchi first made his mark at the Tigers home park was when his high school, Teikyo, played in the 2009 Summer Koshien tournament where they made it to the quarterfinals. He played well enough in the tournament that he was selected for the Japanese team for the Japan-US Friendship High School Baseball Tournament later that summer. A few months later, he was selected by Hanshin in the sixth round of the NPB draft.

He played in only nine games with the farm team in 2010, hitting a paltry .143. His playing time increased to 48 games in 2011 and his batting average increased to .329. A back injury in March of 2012 limited him to just 16 games and a .189 average that year. The Tigers released him at the end of the season and resigned him to an ikusei (development player) contract.

A hit-by-pitch early in the 2013 season broke his arm and he was limited to just 17 games. He was released again at the end of the year and ended up re-upping his ikusei contract. He was finally healthy during the 2014 season and got into 57 games, hitting .264. He injured his shoulder on a pick off play in the post-season Phoenix League (think of something along the lines of the Arizona Fall League) but managed to avoid having to have surgery.

He re-upped his development player contract again for the 2015 season and was healthy enough to play in 59 games although he hit just .220. He got invited to take part in the first team's fall practice, however, at the request of the new Tigers manager Tomoaki Kanemoto. Kanemoto provided one-on-one batting instruction with him during the camp.

Haraguchi and the Tigers once again renewed his development player for the 2016 season but things were different that spring. He joined the top team's training camp late in February and stayed with the team through much of the pre-season games. A month into the regular season, the Tigers registered him to the 70 man roster. They brought him up to the top team on April 27th to make his ichi-gun debut some six years since he had been drafted and after three years as a development player.

He made the most of his opportunity, hitting .380 with 5 home runs and 17 RBIs in his first full month (May), becoming the first former development player to win the "Player Of The Month" award. He wasn't on the All Star ballot but a write-in campaign resulted in him finishing second to Yuhei Nakamura for Central League catcher and he was added to the team's roster by manager Mitsuru Manaka. He finished the season with a .299 average and 11 home runs in 107 games and drew some votes for Rookie Of The Year, ultimately finishing fourth.

He had a late season shoulder injury and he may have affected his performance in 2017 as he hit only .226. His role changed to backup catcher and pinch hitter in 2018 and he did pretty well in that role, hitting .315 despite a hand injury costing him some time late in the season.

His most serious health issue came to light in the off season, however, as he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He had surgery in January and underwent rehabilitation. He returned to the field with the farm team in early May and rejoined the top team a month later. His first at bat resulted in a pinch hit RBI double against the Marines on June 4th. He was selected to the All Star team via the "Plus One" fan vote and homered twice in the All Star games. He finished the season hitting .276 in 43 games.

The next several years (2020-24) were each somewhat similar to each other. He settled into a back up and pinch hitter role, appearing in 50-ish games each year (with the exception of 2022 where he missed time due to catching COVID). His position registration changed from catcher to infielder and he spent a lot of time playing first base plus a little outfield. His playing time dwindled to just 16 games with the top team in 2025 and he announced his retirement towards the end of the season.

His rookie cards are all BBM issues from 2010 - Rookie Edition (#031), 1st Version (#144), 2nd Version (#585) and the Tigers team set (#T040). He only appeared in BBM's Tiger team sets the next few years and didn't have any cards at all in 2015 as BBM stopped including ikusei players in their team sets that year. His first base set Calbee card wasn't until 2017's Series One (#060) and he only had one other "regular" player card in a Calbee set (2020 Series Three #198) although he appeared on a couple checklist cards (and, oddly enough, had a Star card in 2016 despite not being in the base set). He appeared in several of Epoch's NPB sets, even in years when he didn't appear in any of BBM's flagship sets. Here's a handful of his cards: