Japanese Baseball Cards: Shinichiro Koyama

Eagles pitcher Shinichiro Koyama retired at the end of the season. Koyama was the number one draft pick of the Chunichi Dragons in the 1996 draft (Masahiko Morino was their number two pick that year). He didn't make his ichi-gun debut until 2000. He pitched very well for the Dragons ni-gun team from 2001-03 (he lead the Western League in wins in 2001 and won the award for best relief pitcher in 2002 and 2003) but he was unable to stick with the top team. He joined the new Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles in 2005 (he was the last pitcher with the 2005 team that was still with the team) and was a workhorse out of their bullpen for a number of years. He never made an All Star team and he did not appear in the 2013 Nippon Series with the Eagles. Shoulder problems limited him to playing mostly with the farm team the last two seasons.