Last week the SSG Landers of the KBO announced the signing of another Japanese pitcher, Ginjiro Hiramoto. Hiramoto is not being signed as an "Asian Quota" player but rather as a "short term injury replacement" for Mitch White.
Hiramoto has had a bit of an interesting baseball career so far. He was the ace pitcher at Koryo High School, starting (and losing) the final game in the 2017 Summer Koshien Tournament. His battery-mate at Koryo, Shosei Nakamura, was taken in the first round of that fall's draft by the Carp but Hiramoto decided to go to college instead of going pro and spent the next four years at Hosei University. Instead of declaring for the 2021 draft, he joined Nippon Express of the corporate leagues and spent the next four years with them. He signed with the Gunma Diamond Pegasus of the independent Baseball Challenge League this past winter, apparently to increase his possibility of getting drafted by an NPB team this fall, a possibility that will be further increased if he does well in Korea. Of course, the downside is that he'll be 27 when this fall's draft rolls around so it'll be interesting to see what kind of interest he draws.
I was a bit surprised to discover that I had a baseball card of him. As it turned out, he has at least three cards in the JABA sets for the corporate leagues - #14 and #59 from the 2024 set and #19 from the 2025 set. He is definitely not in the 2022 set but I've never been able to put a checklist together for the 2023 set so it's possible he's in it. Here's the card I have:
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| 2024 JABA #24JP059 |
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