Nearing 2000

So after doing my post yesterday about the starting pitchers who were closing in on 200 wins and Meikyukai membership, I thought I'd do a quick post on the batters who are approaching 2000 hits, the threshold required for hitters to join the club.  (I had considered doing relief pitchers approaching 250 saves, the other milestone for entry into the club but there's no one still active within 75 saves - the top two on NPB's list of "active" saves leaders are Kyuji Fujikawa and Dennis Sarfate who have both retired.) 

I'm basing this off NPB's list of active hit leaders.  Now there are five active hitters who are already Meikyukai members (remember that hits in MLB count as long as the player's first hit was in NPB) - Norichika Aoki (2478 hits, 1704 in NPB and 774 in MLB), Kosuke Fukudome (2407 hits, 1909 in NPB and 498 in MLB), Seiichi Uchikawa (2171 hits), Takashi Toritani (2090 hits) and Hayato Sakamoto (2003 hits).  There are seven other hitters that currently have more than 1500 hits.  Here's the list:

7. Tomotaka Sakaguchi, 1506 hits

2012 BBM Pedigree #29

6. Takeya Nakamura, 1522 hits

2012 Lions Winning Game Card #71

5. Yohei Ohshima, 1588 hits

2016 Kabaya Central League Gum #30

4. Yoshio Itoi, 1696 hits

2017 Epoch Tigers #31 (2 star variant)

3. Nobuhiro Matsuda, 1728 hits

2014 Hawks "Special Baseball Card" #5

2. Hiroyuki Nakajima, 1850 hits

2007 Lions "Special Card" #3

1. Takumi Kuriyama, 1926 hits

2013 Lions Fan Club #1

I guess I'm a little less surprised by this group than by the pitchers, although I hadn't realized how many hits Nakajima actually had.  He'd probably be over 2000 by now had he not spent two years in Oakland's organization in 2013-14.  Similarly you wonder if Itoi would have reached 2000 hits by now had he not spent the first two seasons of his career as a pitcher.  It's also kind of funny that three of these players were drafted by the Lions in 2000 and 2001 (Nakajima in 2000 and Kuriyama and Nakamura in 2001).

Of this group of players, I only feel really good about Kuriyama, Matsuda and Ohshima ever reaching the 2000 hit milestone.  If he's healthy, Kuriyama will reach it this season.  I'd love to see Nakamura do it, but he had a very poor season last year and I worry he may be close to being done.  I'm not even sure if Itoi is still with Hanshin.  I'm not sure either Nakajima or Sakaguchi can get enough playing time when healthy to rack up the hits they need although obviously Nakajima's got a better shot at it than Sakaguchi just based on the number of hits needed.

Nearing 200

I got curious recently about who the active NPB leaders in victories were so I took a look at the leaderboard on NPB's website.  After seeing that there's only one pitcher with over 150 wins (Masanori Ishikawa with 173), I started wondering if we'd ever get another pitcher in the Meikyukai which has a 200 victory requirement for starting pitchers.  Ishikawa is 40 years only (he'll be 41 in a couple weeks) so it seems unlikely he will get the other 27 necessary wins.  But then I remembered something important - you don't have to get all 200 wins in Japan!  I did some checking up on Baseball-Reference and came up with a list of seven pitchers who have more than 140 wins between MLB and Japan:

7. Tsuyoshi Wada, 143 wins (138 in NPB, 5 in MLB)

2005 SCM #51

6. Hideaki Wakui, 144 wins

2017 Epoch Pacific League #20

5. Kenta Maeda, 150 wins (97 in NPB, 53 in MLB)

2012 Front Runner Carp Starting Lineup #09

4. Yu Darvish, 164 wins (93 in NPB, 71 in MLB)

2009 BBM 1st Version #505

3. Daisuke Matsuzaka, 170 (114 in NPB, 56 in MLB)

2002 Calbee #OP-6

2. Masanori Ishikawa, 173 wins

2008 Swallows Premium Card Vol 2 #YsS04

1. Masahiro Tanaka, 177 wins (99 in NPB, 78 in MLB)

2009 Eagles Seat Owners Club #18

I'm not sure what surprised me the most - that Tanaka had more wins than Darvish in MLB despite having played two fewer seasons or that Tanaka had more wins than Darvish in NPB despite playing for a worse team (the Eagles) than Darvish (the Fighters).  

Of this seven, I think the only ones who will reach 200 wins are the three players currently playing in MLB.  Darvish is the oldest of the three at 34 while Maeda and Tanaka are both 32.  Wakui is also 34 but he's 56 wins away and I don't have a lot of confidence in him sustaining his effectiveness in the future.  I think there's no way Ishikawa, Matsuzaka (who were teammates on the 2000 Olympic team) or Wada get there.

Card Of The Week January 3

This is not a card that you'd probably expect to be seeing on this blog as not only does it show players on an MLB team but it shows players on my least favorite MLB team.  But obviously these aren't really Yankee players - it's a promo for the movie "Mr. Baseball" that Upper Deck included as an insert in their "High Series" packs in 1992.  If you're not familiar with the movie, it stars Tom Selleck as an aging baseball player named Jack Elliot who gets released by the Yankees when they call up a hot rookie (played by Frank Thomas and nothing seemed as frightening in 1992 as seeing Frank Thomas in a Yankee uniform - thank God that never happened for real) and ends up going to Japan to play for the Chunichi Dragons.  East meets West conflict ensues somewhat predictably but all-in-all it's a pretty good movie.  There's a lot of good footage of early 90's NPB action and some fun cameos by former gaijin like Leon Lee and Brad Lesley.  Plus you get to see what Nagoya Stadium looked like before the Dragons moved to the Dome and the ballpark was downsized for the Dragons farm team.

Now I've known that this card has existed for years but I was never all that interested in picking up a copy of it until I saw the back of it:

Yep, Jack-san himself decked out in a Dragons uniform (well, at least a Dragons hat).  Since the only other Dragons Jack Elliot card I've ever seen has somewhat dubious origins, I thought it would be fun to own this one.  I picked it up from someone on Ebay recently.

2020 In Review - Everything Else (Including Korea)

To wrap up my review of the 2020 releases, here's a quick round up of every card set I know of that was released in Japan last year by an outfit other than BBM, Epoch or Calbee.

Actually this first set I'm going to mention could have been included with the BBM review.  BBM teamed up with the Saitama Seibu Lions to produce a 20 card set that I think was sold in one card packs at the Lions team store starting on July 21st.  

TIC (or Hits or whatever their name is) issued two of their "mini colored paper" (or "mini shikishi") team sets for the Baystars and Hawks.  They were also behind a more traditional looking card set for the Baystars called "Used Ball".

For the third year in a row Konami issued their collectible game card set called Baseball Collection.  These cards can be used in an arcade video game.  This year's set grew from 912 cards last year to 972 this year (81 cards per team).

Once again the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles made their team issued set available nationwide - this is at least the eighth straight year they've done so.

The total count of Japanese baseball card sets issued in 2020 was 64 - this is not including team issued sets other than what I've mentioned here.  This is down from 73 last year and is the lowest number since the 59 issued in 2015.  I don't know if this is pandemic related or not.

In Korea, SCC issued four sets for the KBO.  The first two were collectible game card sets called "Battle Baseball Card Game" Volumes One and Two.  These were followed by the "Premium Collection" and "Golden Premium Collection" sets.  In addition Dan Skrezyna issued the latest set in his "Foreign Attack" series - this one featured all the foreign players in the KBO in 2018.

2020 In Review - Calbee

Of the three major card manufacturers in Japan, Calbee's releases were probably the ones that were least affected by the pandemic in 2020.  As usual the company issued their flagship set in their standard three separate Series.

Series One was released in mid-March.  It had an 88 card base set containing 72 player cards, nine "The Record" cards, three cards for the 2019 post-season and four checklist cards.  In addition there were two insert sets (8 "Legend" cards for 2019 retirees and 20 "Title Holder" cards) and a limited edition 12 card box set called "Sluggers" that was only available from Calbee's Amazon Japan store (I have mistakenly thought in the past that these limited edition box sets were prizes that could be redeemed with "Lucky" cards).

Series Two came out in early July, a little later than normal.  It had a base set of 87 cards - 72 player cards, 12 "AVG Leader" cards and just three checklist cards (normally the Series Two checklist cards show early season highlights but because the start of the season was delayed three months there weren't any highlights to show.  Calbee instead did cards of the three new managers.)  The set also had a 24 card "Star" insert set and a limited edition 12 card box set called "WINS Leader".

Like Series Two, Series Three was delayed a couple of weeks, coming out in early October instead of mid-September.  It had a base set of 89 cards - 72 player cards, 12 "First Win" cards and FIVE checklist cards (making up for the missing checklist card from Series Two and ensuring that the set has its standard 12 checklist cards).  Also like Series Two, this Series had 24 "Star" insert cards.  The associated limited edition box set featured the Opening Day cleanup hitters for each team.

There were a total of 216 player cards included in all three Series which works out to 18 per team.  As usual there are a number of players who had more than one card - 33 in fact which is the highest number in the past few years.  As a result there are only 183 unique players represented in those 216 player cards.  Also as usual there are a number of stars who don't have player cards but appear in subsets such as Hayato Sakamoto (only in the "AVG Leader" subset), Tomoya Mori ("AVG Leader"), Seiya Suzuki ("AVG Leader"), Kensuke Kondoh ("AVG Leader") and Yoshinobu Yamamoto ("First Win").  Why Calbee includes multiple cards of some players while excluding others is always puzzling.

Calbee also issued a set for the Samurai Japan team in late November.  This 37 card set featured most of the Japanese players from the 2019 Premier 12, the last international baseball tournament held before the pandemic hit.

2020 In Review - Epoch

Epoch's 2020 card releases don't appear to have been affected much by COVID-19.  They issued 25 sets this past year which is two fewer than the 27 they did in both 2018 and 2019 but you'd be hard-pressed to pick a particular set that didn't get made this year because of the pandemic.  As usual Epoch's offerings were split between reasonably priced ones and ultra high end ones.

We'll start with the reasonably priced sets.  For the third year in a row Epoch released a "flagship" set called "NPB".  The only real change with this set this past year was the inclusion of 12 cards of OB players which caused the base set to grow from 432 cards to 444 cards.  In addition, Epoch issued "Rookies & Stars" sets for nine of the twelve NPB teams - the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers - which was one more than they had done in 2019 (they added the Hawks).  The big difference this year is that instead of being "comprehensive" team sets (i.e. including all the players on the team's 70 man roster) these team sets only had 36 cards each so only a subset of the team's players were included.  The final reasonably priced set was the Pacific League Rookies set, a box set featuring all of the 2019 draft picks (except for the ikusei picks) for the six Pacific League teams.  This is the third straight year that Epoch has issued this set.

Getting into the more expensive sets...Epoch issued eight combination active/OB player team sets under the "Stars & Legends" title.  They did them for the Baystars, Buffaloes, Carp, Dragons, Fighters, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers (or all the teams they did "Rookies & Stars" sets for).  Epoch also issued a set celebrating the Tigers' 85th Anniversary called "The Legendary Players" that I believe only included OB players.

For the fifth year in a row Epoch issued a set called "Pacific League Premier Edition" that featured active players from the six Pacific League teams.  They also issued their usual two sets in conjunction with the Japan Baseball Promotion Association (JBPA) - aka the OB Club.  This year's offerings were "Career Achievements" and "Holographica".

Epoch also issued an extremely high end set dedicated to Ichiro Suzuki called "Ichiro Suzuki - Orix BlueWave Super Luxury".  I was never able to find a price on boxes for this set but there were only 250 produced.  This is the one set that was affected by the pandemic - it was originally scheduled to be released at the beginning of May but it ended up not being published until the end of October.

In addition to their sets Epoch also issued their on-demand Epoch One cards for the third year in a row.  As was the case last year, Epoch issued these cards for only nine of the twelve NPB teams (which oddly enough are not the same nine teams they issued the "Rookies & Stars" and "Stars & Legends" sets for) although the lineup changed with the Baystars replacing the Carp while still including the Dragons, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Marines, Swallows and Tigers.  There were a total of 676 cards issued which is the fewest number for the three years they've been doing these cards which is probably related to the shortened season.  Although I will point out that it's very odd that they didn't issue any cards for the Nippon Series at all.

2020 In Review - BBM

It goes without saying that 2020 was a challenging year for everyone and that includes baseball card companies.  BBM rose to the challenge and managed to pretty much produced their standard slate of sets although with a delayed schedule.

BBM issued 29 sets this past "year" - as always I'm referring to sets with the "cover date" of 2020 on the cards which this time around started with a set issued in December of 2019 and ended with a set released just over a week ago.  29 is the fewest number of sets that BBM has done in a year since 2006 when they did just 26.  That's not necessarily due to the pandemic, however, as the number of baseball card sets that BBM's been doing has been slowly declining from the 50(!) they did in 2013 and 29 is only slightly less than the 32 they did in both 2018 and 2019.

BBM published all 25 of their perennial sets this year although a number of them were delayed for a month or two.  Things pretty much were on schedule for the first half of the year - the historic set Time Travel 1985 and the ultra high end set Glory came out in December as expected, followed by the "Retirement" set in January, the Rookie Edition set in February, the Icons set (called "Fireballers" this year) in March and the 1st Version set in April.  The 12 "comprehensive" team sets came out in their usual time period between March and July.  However since the start of the season got delayed for three months, the remaining products from BBM also ended up getting delayed.  The two cheerleader/dance team sets - Dancing Heroine Hana and Mai - which normally come out in June and July respectively came out in September and October instead.  The 2nd Version set was delayed two months from August to October.  There were one month delays for the high end set Genesis (September to October), the Rookie Edition Premium box set (October to November) and the Fusion set (November to late December) and a two month delay for the multi-sport set Infinity (October to December).  

The big drop off in sets from BBM were in the single team box sets category.  Instead of the five sets they did in each of the last two years, they one did one this year - a set for the Swallows called Legacy.

The remaining three sets from 2020 had a historic flavor.  There were two similar looking OB team sets - Carp History 1950-2020 and Giants History 1934-2020.  These were very attractive sets and I wonder if BBM will be doing similar sets for other teams in the future.  BBM also issued a set to commemorate their 30th Anniversary of doing baseball cards.

I'm curious about what 2021 will hold for BBM.  Their first set with a 2021 cover date (Glory) came out a few weeks ago but the only other set that's been announced so far is Rookie Edition.  Not only has their been no announcement about the annual Time Travel set, that set is usually out by now.  In addition, so far there's been no mention of the annual "Retirement" and "Shining Venus"* sets which usually come out in January.  Not sure if this means BBM won't be doing the sets or if it simply means they're slow in announcing them.

*Shining Venus is a multi-sport set featuring female athletes.  It usually includes one or two players from the Japan Women's Baseball League which makes it of interest to me but I don't list it as one of BBM's annual 25 baseball card sets.